Pilot Horst Rippert claimed Saint Exupéry : 31 July 1944 / 15 March 2008 !

[Nick Beale]

Originally Posted by Andy Saunders

As RolandF says....lets see! Maybe they have the proof after all. Bring on the evidence,ZDF!

Or they could just get hold of a copy of Luftwaffen-Revue issue 1/93 (March 1993) and read the article «Träume und Wirklichkeit: Das Ende von Antoine de Saint-Exupéry» by Georg Pemmler. (title = Dreams and Reality: the end of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)

Pemler (correct spelling) was an officer in 2./NAG 13 in Southern France in the Summer of 1944 and wrote his own memoir Route National Nr. 7.

Pemler recounts the enquiries that were made in his own unit and with JG 200 and Flak outfits when an Allied message was heard, in clear, over the emergency frequency alerting people to watch for a missing P-38 and naming the pilot. (Pemler knew the name having read some of his books). There were sighting reports from German ground echelons of a high-flying recon plane but nobody made any claim of shooting it down.

The French media could check out back numbers of Le Fana de l'Aviation (my xerox of the article doesn't have an issue number/date) for an article by Thierry Thomassin "Le P-38 de Saint Exupéry n'est probablement pas là où on le cheche." ( = Saint-Exupéry's P-38 is probably not where people are looking for it).