WWII Mystery Dredged Up

This story looks fascinating. I've never heard it, but now I want to get the book!

Here's an excerpt:

"PARIS — One of France's most enduring mysteries has been solved with the discovery of the wreckage of the aircraft piloted by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of the children's classic "The Little Prince."
Two pieces of his Lockheed Lightning P-38, which vanished on July 31, 1944, during an Allied reconnaissance mission, have been pulled from the Mediterranean Sea near Marseilles, a French air force spokesman said Wednesday."

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Current:
2014 VW Tiguan SEL 4Motion 43,000 miles.

2016 Hyundai Santa Fe Sport (wife's).

Past:
2006 Jetta TDI 135,970 miles. Sold Nov. '13.
1995 E-320 Special Edition. 220,200 miles. Sold Sept. '07.
1987 190-E 16 valve. 153,000 miles. Sold Feb. '06.
1980 300-D 225,000 miles. Donated to the National Kidney Foundation.
1980 240-D manual, 297,500 miles. Totaled by inattentive driver.

Any sign of tje Little Prince?

Great story, by the way!

__________________
Learn as though you will live forever.
-Ancient Hindu Proverb
(Are there any modern ones?)

1998 E320 Blk\Blk
1995 BMW 530i (bad engine) sold
1989 BMW 535i sold after 170,000 fun miles
1996 Lincoln Town Car (6 passenger land barge, still smooth and quiet at 130,000 miles, make me an offer!)

Doesn't sound like his style:

ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPERY: BIOGRAPHY (June 29, 1900 - July 31, 1944)

Antoine de Saint-Exupery was born in Lyons on June 29, 1900. He flew for the first time at the age of twelve, at the Amberieu airfield, and it was then that he became determined to be a pilot. He kept that ambition even after moving to a school in Switzerland and while spending summer vacations at the family's chateau at Saint-Maurice-de-Remens, in eastern France. (The house at Saint-Maurice appears again and again in Saint-Exupery's writing.) Later, in Paris, he failed the entrance exams for the French naval academy and, instead, enrolled at the prestigious art school I'Ecole des Beaux-Arts.

In 1921 Saint-Exupery began serving in the military and was stationed in Strasbourg. 'there he learned to be a pilot, and his career path was forever settled. After leaving the service in 1923, SaintExupery worked in several professions, but in 1926 he went back to flying and signed on as a pilot for Aeropostale, a private airline that flew mail from Toulouse, France, to Dakar, Senegal.

In 1927 Saint-Exupery accepted the position of airfield chief for Cape Juby, in southern Morocco, and began writing his first book, a memoir called Southern Mail, which was published 'in 1929. He then moved briefly to Buenos Aires to oversee the establishment of an Argentinean mail service. When he returned to Paris in 1931, he published Night Flight, which won instant success and the prestigious Prix Femina.

Always daring, Saint-Exupery tried in 1935 to break the speed record for flying from Paris to Saigon. Unfortunately, his plane crashed in the Libyan desert, and he and his copilot had to trudge through the sand for three days to find help. In 1938 he was seriously injured in a second plane crash, this time as he tried to fly between New York City and Tierra del Fuego, Argentina. The crash resulted in a long convalescence in New York. Saint-Exupery's next novel, Wind, Sand and Stars, was published in 1939. A great success, the book won the Academie-Francaose's Grand Prix du Roman (Grand Prize for Novel Writing) and the National Book Award in the United States.

At the beginning of the Second World War, Saint-Exupery flew reconnaissance missions for France, but he went to New York to ask the United States for help when the Germans occupied his country. He drew on his wartime experiences to write Flight to Arras and Letter to a Hostage, both published in 1942. His classic The Little Prince appeared in 1943.

Later in 1943 Saint-Exupery rejoined his French air squadron in northern Africa. Despite being forbidden to fly (he was still suffering physically from his earlier plane crashes), Saint-Exupery insisted on being given a mission. On July 31, 1944, he set out from Borgo, Corsica, to overfly occupied France. He never returned.

--Harcourt


His book The Little Prince is believed to be the third best selling book of all time, after The Bible and The Koran. While often referred to as a children's book, his story carried a message for children and adults alike.

__________________
Learn as though you will live forever.
-Ancient Hindu Proverb
(Are there any modern ones?)

1998 E320 Blk\Blk
1995 BMW 530i (bad engine) sold
1989 BMW 535i sold after 170,000 fun miles
1996 Lincoln Town Car (6 passenger land barge, still smooth and quiet at 130,000 miles, make me an offer!)

I didn't like the way they characterized the P-38 as being difficult to fly. I know some of the protos had issues but I was under the impression that Kelly Johnson had ironed out most of the problems.

The P-38 is one of my favorite WWII planes, second only to the P-51. I'm not a pilot but these things were awesome.

The Lockheed P-38 Lighting is one of my all time favorite prop driven fighters. The trade off for its strengths as a fast, high altitude, air superiority fighter/bomber was that the twin supercharged engines were beasts to control until you got the hang of it and with all the front loaded weight, you had to keep an eye on airspeed in a dive. Other than that, it was fast and willing.

A look at the books he wrote and the life he lived makes it clear he was a courageous person. My guess is that the plane was too much for him to handle after his earlier injuries. His insisting on flying a mission was probably noble and courageous but not a wise decision.

__________________
Learn as though you will live forever.
-Ancient Hindu Proverb
(Are there any modern ones?)

1998 E320 Blk\Blk
1995 BMW 530i (bad engine) sold
1989 BMW 535i sold after 170,000 fun miles
1996 Lincoln Town Car (6 passenger land barge, still smooth and quiet at 130,000 miles, make me an offer!)

The dad of a friend (dad now deceased, I never knew him) flew one in the Pacific on mostly recon missions. Also some close air support. A life-long pilot of many aircraft and ownder of an air service, he loved the plane and had lots of photos of himself and other pilots with whom he flew. If you ever fly general aviation into Lafayette LA go to Fournet's Air Service for a look at those pix and many other interesting photos.

The employees still talk about him with fondness and humor. Must've been quite a guy.

B