After the disappearance of Amelia Earhart, the demise of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry on a reconnaissance mission in World War II has long ranked as one of aviation’s great mysteries. Now, thanks to the tenacity and luck of two amateur archaeologists, the final pieces of the puzzle seem to have been filled in.

The story that emerged about the disappearance of Saint-Exupéry, the French aviator, author and émigré from Vichy France, proved to contain several narratives that would have pleased the author of the charming tale The Little Prince. It was a tale about a little interstellar traveller, which was also a profound statement of faith.

On July 31, 1944, Saint-Exupéry took off from the island of Corsica in a Lockheed Lightning P-38 reconnaissance plane. Saint-Exupéry never returned, leading to numerous theories: that he had been shot down, lost control of his plane, even that he committed suicide.

The first clue surfaced in September 1998, when fishermen off this Mediterranean port city dragged up a silver bracelet that bore the names of Saint-Exupéry and his New York publisher. Further searches by divers turned up the badly damaged remains of his plane, though the body of the pilot was never found.

The bracelet prompted Luc Vanrell, 48, a diving coach and marine archaeologist, to inspect more closely some marine wreckage he had noticed years before near the remains of Saint-Exupéry’s plane. An engine block serial number and a Skoda symbol proved it to be a Daimler-Benz V-12 aircraft engine.

In 2005, Vanrell and another diver, Lino von Gartzen shipped the motor to Munich for study by German experts. It turned out to be part of a series produced in early 1941.

The researchers deduced it had powered a Messerschmitt fighter plane flown by Prince Alexis von Bentheim und Steinfurt, a 22-year-old who was shot down by American planes in late 1943, on his first and last solo flight. The tale might have ended there. Yet von Gartzen was not content. Consulting archives and with the help of the staff of the Jägerblatt, a magazine for Luftwaffe veterans, he tracked down veterans who had flown in Prince von Bentheim’s unit. He contacted hundreds of former pilots, most now in their 80s.

In July 2006, he telephoned a former pilot in Wiesbaden, Horst Rippert searching for information about Saint-Exupéry. Without hesitating, Rippert replied, “I shot down Saint-Exupéry.”

Rippert, who will be 86 in May, worked as a television sports reporter after the war. In 2003, when he learned that Saint-Exupéry’s plane had been located, his suspicion that he had killed him grew stronger, but he said nothing publicly. He described to von Garten the odd, evasive loops flown by Saint-Exupéry, who at the time was 44, overweight and in pain from fractures sustained in numerous flying accidents. Several days later, when German radio intercepted American reports of a search for Saint-Exupéry, he suspected he might have shot down his idol.

Evidence to support Rippert’s claim is lacking because documents, like flight logs, were destroyed in the war. But Rippert described in detail how in the summer of 1944 German radar had alerted his fighter squadron at Marignane, near Marseille, to a group of Allied reconnaissance planes over the Mediterranean. Rippert, then 22, found a P-38 with French colours and shot it down.

In Paris, Saint-Exupéry’s grandnephew, Olivier d’Agay, who is a spokesman for the family, said that Rippert’s version of the events was credible. “Rippert said he often felt desperate. If he had known what he was doing, he never would have done it.”
JOHN TAGLIABUE (NYT)

editor@expressindia.com

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