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

Expatica.com ^ | April 7, 2004 | AFP

[aculeus]

Belated ping.

[Molly Pitcher]

Yes!! How old were you when you first read it?

I read it as a teenager in French in h.s. .....as you grow older and re-read it, you understand more and more.

2 things have never changed: my delight in the exquisite illustrations & my fascination with the baobab tree.

[TrueBeliever9]

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."

Oh yes! All gifts from a loving LORD - words (poems), music, bread, wind and sea - the language of love and healing.

[Samwise]

I loved that book. I guess I have a good excuse to read it again. Thanks for the ping.

[GreenLanternCorps]

Report to Mrs. Krabapple's classroom, when Bart's done, you have the board.

[GreenLanternCorps]

I knew he had died in a plane crash. I did not know it was during the war.


RIP...

[First_Salute]

George W. Goddard invented the camera technology that went into the cameras in the nose of the F-5 (and into many other vehicles).

Mr. Goddard's work, most people do not even notice.

The man was a genius who was always overlooked by the public's attention toward "the other Goddard," Robert H. Goddard, who was the rocket scientist.

Then, most people also overlook, because of Robert H. Goddard's rocket work, the heavy lifting performed by Theodore von Karman.

There's a lot more to the story, but it's classified.

George Goddard lived near Enon, OH, outside of Wright-Patterson AFB at various times, where much of his research was conducted at various times.

He and Tooey Spaatz had a very long-lived work relationship.

A friend of my grandparents, flew special, custom-made, high-altitude Sopwith Camels and SPADs during World War I, over the German lines; at close to 30,000 ft, well above anything that the Germans could put up.

The photographs assisted in bringing the war to an end.

The camera gear was among the many inventions of George Goddard.

If I recall all that correctly.

[Criminal Number 18F]

I'll see what I can learn about George Goddard. He sounds interesting. There are quite a few books about reconnaissance but more focus on the derring-do of the pilots than on the technology. Another unsung hero (who is just starting to get sung) is Dr. Edward Land of Polaroid fame, who developed much of the optical reconnaissance technology used in the early U-2, the SR-71, and the first recon satellites.

I have always been interested in Robert H. Goddard; we are natives of the same city, originally, and relatives of mine lived in his street. Of course, a cult has built up around him, but his pioneering theoretical work was equally sound as Oberth and Tsiolkovsky's. The three of them worked in ignorance of one another while independently developing the mathematical and physical proofs that space flight was possible -- one of many incidents of independent development of ideas, in scientific history.

Where Goddard differed from the other theoreticians, is that he was also a practical experimenter of some note. Unfortunately, like the Wrights, he was so focused on patents and secrecy and making money that the field passed him by. (In the end, the US Government wound up paying his estate for patents that it had infringed for years). Goddard hated von Karmán and everyone associated with GALCIT or JPL and thought they were stealing his stuff. (They weren't of course).

When I was in the 10th SF Group at Fort Devens one of my favourite runs took me by the "Goddard Memorial," a fullsize model of Goddard's 1926 rocket. It was on a muddy dirt road in the middle of nowhere, and for most of the time it was there, civilians could not get access to it. When the military gave up most of the base, the memorial vanished; I don't know what became of it. IMHO it should have stood, because Goddard actually launched (or attempted to launch) some of his rockets there.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[Voss]

I'm slightly embarrassed to say I didn't discover it until a trip to France a couple of years ago. I bought some Little Prince postcards for friends with kids, and ended up falling in love with the book myself.

[VOA]

Ah, there was a time when the French were men!

I can't recall the name of the show, but IIRC, he spent some time in New York City
in a funk after the fall of the French...and before he got back into the fight.
He was a cultured warrior-aviator.

Also, he got a fair bit of coverage in a PBS 4-part special about the birth/growth of civil aviation
"Chasing The Sun". (I think that was the title)

His forced landing and recovery in Africa (flying mail service and recovery),
as well as some of his writing about his love of flght made for interesting
side-bar about the early days of civil aviation.

[VOA]

Just me or is that funny?

Yes, at first blush.
But the book was popular even with the teenage crowd in my VERY conservative Church of Christ
in Oklahoma (back in the mid-1970s).

[NotQuiteCricket]

Marx?

[Xenalyte]

The book is terrifically boring. It never could hold my attention, and I'd read the back of the shampoo bottle. Now, my two-year-old niece hates it . . . "Not the boring book!" she says when we brandish it at her.

[JETDRVR]

Cheers to a Master Aviator. One of the few Frenchys Id have have a beer with!
Btw fellow Freepaviators, anybody been to Belize recently?
Got a trip there next month, havent been there since 94.

[NormsRevenge]

A 1936 file photo of French novelist Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of 'The Little Prince', at his Paris home. A French scuba team has discovered parts of Saint Exupery's warplane in the Mediterranean near the southern France city of Marseille, a French Air Force official said Wednesday, April 7, 2004. Saint Exupery disappeared in 1944 while flying a reconnaissance mission for the Allies. (AP Photo/files)

AP article - Parts From Saint-Exupery's Plane Found

[VOA]

Marx?

Whoa! Maybe I wasn't clear...and didn't fully get your meaning.

I thought you found it amazing that "The Little Prince" was that big of a seller.
BUT, looks like I was "typing without sufficient thought"!

I think I now see what you were driving at...that "Das Kapital", a Communist tome
would be a best seller...something we'd associate with real-life capitalism!

I guess I was a little blinded...as I'm around the academic crowd and the
thought of paying money for a copy of Das Kapital didn't seem that weird.
(Of course, it's all done with money from grants funded by taxpayer dollars!)

[HungarianGypsy]

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.
And my 9 year old is terrified that everyone will find out he still has a dinosaur he sleeps with named Spike. I keep telling him that I slept with my teddy bear until I got married. (btw, I got the teddy bear in question when I was 12. hehe)

[Rockpile]

I have seen both the prostitute theory and the taken down by accident in the bomb dumping area about Miller's loss. i think that the hooker story is not too credible. on the day Miller's plane was lost an RAF bomber crewman said he SAW a twin engine plane lost to a bomb string below their levelon return from an aborted mission in the bomb disposal zone. That seems a lot more credible.

[RJL]

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

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.

Unless acted upon by other forces, a near vertical dive wouldn’t produce a kilometer long debris field.

[Dajjal]

"C'est un chapeau." bump