'I shot French literary hero out of the sky'

THE 63-year-old mystery surrounding the death of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the celebrated French aviator and author of the beloved book Le Petit Prince, has finally been solved.

An 88-year-old Luftwaffe veteran has confessed to shooting down the writer's plane over the Mediterranean on 31 July, 1944.

Saint-Exupéry was last seen alive when he took off in his Lockheed Lightning P-38 from Borgo air base in Corsica at around 14:30.

He was 44 when he died and his body has never been found.

"If I had known, I wouldn't have fired," lamented the former Luftwaffe pilot, Horst Rippert, who greatly admired the author and kept the secret of how he died until he was tracked down by a German historian.

The search for Mr Rippert and his description of the events leading to Saint-Exupéry's death are the subject of a book entitled Saint-Exupéry, l'Ultime Secret (Saint-Exupéry, the Final Secret) to be published in France on Wednesday. It was written by Luc Vanrell, a professional diver who found the wreck of Saint-Exupéry's plane on the Mediterranean seabed in 2000, and journalist Jacques Pradell.

"I did not target a man I knew. I fired at an enemy aircraft which was shot down. There it is," said Mr Rippert, who appeared inconsolable at having killed Saint-Exupéry. "His works inspired many among us to become aviators," he added.

No trace of Saint-Exupéry was found until 1998 when Jean-Luc Bianco, a French fisherman, discovered an identity bracelet engraved with the name of Saint-Exupéry's wife, Consuelo, and that of his publishers, Reynal & Hitchcock, in his nets off the coast at Marseilles.

Mr Vanrell, a local deep sea diver, then began searching the Marseilles coastline for the remains of the writer's aircraft. In 2000 he discovered pieces of Saint-Exupéry's plane lying on the sea bed 80 metres deep near the Ile de Riou. The plane wreck was formally identified in 2004 as being Saint-Exupéry's by its serial number.

Near to the plane he had also found wreckage from a German Messerschmitt. Had the writer fallen victim to a collision in mid-air with an enemy aircraft? He contacted Lino von Gartzen, a German historian specialising in the Luftwaffe, who led him to the final piece of the puzzle: Horst Rippert, one of the last German pilots based in the south-east of France in the summer of 1944.

After investigating 130 Luftwaffe veterans, Mr von Gartzen narrowed the search to five.

So when Mr von Gartzen called Mr Rippert he was astounded by his immediate confession. "He replied straight away: 'You can stop searching, it was I who shot down Exupéry'."

Mr Rippert recounted how he had been surprised to see the French pilot's Lightning flying alone and too low in his sector near Toulouse.

"Like me, he was over the sea and flying toward the mainland. I said to myself: 'My boy, if you don't get lost, I'm going to shoot you," said Mr Rippert, who was 25 at the time. "I dived in his direction and I fired, not at the fuselage, but at the wings. I hit him. The plane crashed into the sea. No-one jumped.

"I did not see the pilot and even so, it would have been impossible for me to tell that it was Saint-Exupéry. In our youth at school we had all read him, we loved his books. I loved his personality. If I had known I wouldn't have fired. Not at him."

BOOK LOVED BY MILLIONS

SINCE its publication in 1943, The Little Prince has sold more than 80 million copies worldwide.

Outwardly a children's book, it makes several profound points about life and humankind. In it, Saint-Exupéry tells of being stranded in the Sahara Desert – which occurred to him on a pioneering flight – where he meets a young extraterrestrial prince.

In their talks, the author reveals his own views about simple truths and the follies of mankind.

The book's essence is in the famous line uttered by the fox to the Little Prince: "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."

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