Saint-Exupery mystery solved: Little Prince author's plane found crashed off Marseille

Expatica.com ^ | April 7, 2004 | AFP

[aculeus]

MARSEILLE, France, April 7 (AFP) - A French underwater salvage team has discovered the remains of the plane piloted by the author of "The Little Prince", Antoine de Saint-Exupery, six decades after his mysterious disappearance, state researchers said Wednesday.

The pieces of the famous writer and aviator's Lockheed Lightning P38 aircraft, which vanished July 31, 1944 during a wartime reconnaissance mission, were found off the coast of the Mediterranean city of Marseille, the Culture Ministry's Department of Sub-aquatic and Submarine Archeological Research said.

The discovery is a galvanising moment for France, which had long speculated as to the fate of Saint-Exupery, an aristocratic adventurer whose life and books turned him into one of the country's biggest heroes.

"The Little Prince", his edifying tale about an interstellar-travelling little boy who recounts his experiences to an aviator he meets in the Sahara Desert, brought him posthumous international fame.

The book, first published in New York in English in 1943 and since translated into more than 100 languages, is one of the best-selling titles on the planet, after the Bible and Das Kapital by Karl Marx.

Saint-Exupery, a veteran pilot who helped establish Latin America's Aeropostale air delivery service in the late 1920s, went missing shortly after flying out of his base on the French island of Corsica in good weather to photograph parts of southern France in preparation for the Allied landings there.

The pilot, then aged 44, never returned, and, until recently, it was not known whether his plane went down in the mountainous back country on the mainland, or somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea in between.

In May 2000, a professional French diver found the remains of a P38 plane in 70 metres (230 feet) of water off Marseille -- in the same area that a fisherman two years earlier had brought to the surface a bracelet inscribed "Saint-Ex".

"The zone containing the pieces was very large, one kilometre long and 400 metres wide," the diver, Luc Vanrell, said.

Another diver who is also an amateur aviation expert, Philippe Castellano, said the combination of the bracelet and his information on the 42 P38 planes that had gone down in southern France convinced him "it could only have been Saint-Ex's plane".

But a state ban on further dives in the area delayed further searches until October 2003, when a contracted salvage team recovered the pieces from the aircraft for the culture ministry's researchers.

One of them bore a manufacturer's number, 2734, that researchers finally confirmed corresponded to the military number given to Saint-Exupery's plane -- 42-68223.

"I had tears in my eyes when I saw the number," Pierre Becker, the head of Geocean, one of the engineering companies involved, said.

Castellano said the discovery was a dream for historians, even if it did not explain why the plane came down.

"There was no bent propellor, no bullet holes.... Looking at the pieces, we are thinking of a hypothesis of a near-vertical dive at high speed. But that's just a guess," he said.

The head of the culture ministry department that announced the news of the find, Patrick Granjean, said it was now formally established that the author's plane had gone down off Marseille.

But, he added: "We don't know why -- we probably never will."

© AFP

[bonfire]

What a gift to arrange words so beautifully.

Amen. I feel weepy just reading this thread! Also feel the same about "The Velveteen Rabbit". Never could get thru that book without bawlin'!

[vikingchick]

Thanks for the link!

[TrueBeliever9]

Another of my favorites! Wasn't the Skin Horse the best!

[vikingchick]

"The Velveteen Rabbit".

Now you've done it....sob....

[bonfire]

Yes!

don't tell anyone, but my middle son still has his bunny "Frito" on his bed. He's worn and grandma has stitched new eyes for him at least 3 times thru the years. My son is 19.

[bonfire]

Sorry.... one of the most beautiful, heartwrenching books ever!

[Moonmad27]

Thanks for mentioning the movie. That reminded me to check on Amazon for it and there it is; can't wait to get it, at long last.

[bonfire]

I loved the movie almost every bit as much as the book. Very well done.

[vikingchick]

Absolutely heartbreaking. One of my favorites.

[TrueBeliever9]

I gave my daughter a special edition copy of The Velveteen Rabbit on her 25th birthday because her copy from childhood was packed away somewhere. I wanted her to reconnect with that book as a young woman. I can't wait until my grandson is old enough for it. BTW, my son used to keep a stuffed Rottie on his bed when he was on the Force Recon Team(LOL) that his sister gave him. He was the youngest guy on the team, so he got a lot of pranks and jokes.

[william clark]

And, coincidentally, the musical movie version of "The Little Prince" (the final collaboration of Lerner and Lowe) came out on DVD today.

[Tall_Texan]

It was Bush's fault.

[bonfire]

Love the story about your son! I hope the edition you bought had good pictures. I bought a new edition a few years ago and had to search to find one that had "old-fashioned" illustrations.

[SAMWolf]

Thanks for the ping tubebender.

[uncle fenders]

Don't mean to threadjack... but didn't they admit a few years ago that Glen Miller had really died with a prostitute in France ... Could have swore I heard they had kept it quiet for obvious reasons... I also know there was a bomber that had dropped unused bombs while returning from a mission. They had believed they might have hit his plane...Can't say I am sure of it, but I do recall hearing something.....

[Criminal Number 18F]

It was not a Lockheed P-38. He flew a special F-5 recon aircraft.

Technically you're correct; the F-5 is a reconnaissance version of the P-35 with cameras in the nose, instead of guns.

From the description of the wreckage field a few possibilities come to mind: hypoxia; loss of control, possibly due to spatial disorientation; a dive to the point of compressibility, which was a problem with the P-38 airframe, are all possible.

Funny, I knew him as the author of Wind, Sand and Stars which I first read at about age 12 in a Reader's Digest Best Loved Books for Young Readers edition. Parents should seek those books out in used bookstores; they're a well-chosen and brilliantly-edited set of anthologies.

I knew The Little Prince but never connected it to Saint-Ex! And to the writer of this piece, it was his most significant achievement!

Ah, there was a time when the French were men! It's worth remembering that they suffered three terrible wars on their own soil in the span of a lifetime. It is a truism that war has a dysgenic effect, for those that are sacrificed are invariably the nation's best men.

Au revoir, Antoine de Saint-Exupèry.

How wan the face, O traveller, this wan
Gray landscape looked upon;
And how forlornly in the high tree-tops
Lamented thy drowned hopes!

-------- Verlaine

d.o.l. Criminal Number 18F

[Criminal Number 18F]

F-5 is a reconnaissance version of the P-35

Obviously, I meant, P-38.

I shall read my posts when I preview them...
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I shall read my posts when I preview them...
I shall read my posts when I preview them...
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I shall read my posts when I preview them...
I shall read my posts when I preview them...
I shall read my posts when I preview them...
I shall read my posts when I preview them...
I shall read my posts when I preview them...
I shall read my posts when I preview them...
I shall read my posts when I preview them...
I shall read my posts when I preview them...
I shall read my posts when I preview them...

[Criminal Number 18F]

Along with Hildy's link to the actual story, here is an interesting site about Saint-Ex's character and biography, as it relates to the development of The Little Prince.

http://habpro.tripod.com/visionslp/index.html

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[BenLurkin]

He also wrote a book about flying called "Nigth Flight"

[bootless]

Au revoir, indeed. From "Wind, Sand and Stars":

"To come to man's estate it is not necessary to getoneself killed round Madrid, or to fly mail planes, or to struggle wearily in the snows out of respect for the dignity of life. The man who can see the miraculous in a poem, who can take pure joy from music, who can break his bread with comrades, opens his window to the same refreshing wind off the sea. He too learns a language of men.

But too many men are left unawakened."