Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s life was as tempestuous and thrilling as his works of fiction. His most famous work, The Little Prince, was inspired by his actual crash landing in the Sahara desert, and he was presumed lost and dead due to a plane crash in the ocean during the second World War.
By the mid-1930s, Saint-Exupéry was an accomplished flier and desirous of breaking the air speed record from Paris to London. Unfortunately, he and his navigator, Andre Prevot, crashed in the Sahara. They wandered around for days, experiencing near-deadly exposure, starvation, and dehydration. They were only rescued when they came across a traveling Bedouin caravan.
It was 5 AM on July 31, 1944 when Saint-Exupéry left Corsica on a reconnaissance mission for France during the war. He was due back by 12:30 but did not return. He was officially reported missing at 3:30 PM. Family and friends held out hope for a time, but a service was finally held in 1945.
By 1988, it was presumed likely that his Lockheed P-38 was somewhere off the coast of Marseilles, thanks to a local fisherman discovering a silver identity bracelet in his net that belonged to Saint-Exupéry. This was odd, though, as he was not supposed to be anywhere near here; he should have been flying over Lyon. In 2000, a French diver found the remains of the plane and a further dive in 2004, necessitated by a state ban on dives in the area, located a piece of the plane with the author’s military number inscribed on it. Ruminations on whether or not the author killed himself or had a mechanical failure or was shot down are still common. According to Aviation History’s website, “Luftwaffe pilot from World War II, Horst Rippert, hearing that Saint-Exupéry’s plane had been found, said that he had shot down the French flyer. In modern-day interviews, Rippert says that—as a youth—he had read the flyer’s writings and would not have fired on Saint-Exupéry if he had known who the Frenchman was. However, military records and interviews with other surviving Luftwaffe pilots raise doubts about Rippert’s claim.” The question of suicide was even more problematic. Saint-Exupéry’s nephew stated, "Legends like Saint-Exupéry's should not be tinkered with” when the wreckage of the plane was found. Indeed, at the time of his death, Saint-Exupéry was demoralized from the difficulties he experienced getting to serve the Free French, was experiencing troubles with his marriage, and had begun drinking heavily. Aviation historian Bernard Mark explains, "Eight days before his last mission he had hinted that he was thinking of suicide. He was spotted by German fighters over Turin, who were intrigued to see that he didn't vary his course: he let them come. Saint-Exupéry even said himself that he saw them arrive; he turned his rear-view mirror and waited for them. In the end the Germans left.”
Ultimately, Patrick Granjean, the head of the Culture Ministry department, states it best: ''We don't know why [he crashed]. We probably never will.''
