"I shot down Saint Exupéry" says German ex-pilot

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Some news scoops are too good to be true. I hope that this one is not false because it will solve one of the great mysteries of aviation -- and wartime history. A former German fighter pilot has claimed to French researchers that he shot down Antoine de Saint Exupéry, author of Le Petit Prince and legendary French pilot-author.

Horst Rippert, 88, who lives in Wiesbaden, said that he had suffered remorse all his life after discovering that Saint Exupéry was the pilot of a P-38 Lightning of the Free French Air Force that he blew from the Mediterranean sky on July 31 1944. "If I had known that it was him, I would never have fired," Rippert told the authors who traced him and have produced a book.

[Saint-Ex at the controls of his Lightning, 1944]

"Saint-Ex", a lyrical writer and still one of the world's best-selling authors, was flying a twin-engined Lockheed P-38 Lightning on a lone observation mission near Lyon from Corsica when he disappeared at the age of 44. "Pilot did not return and is presumed lost," his US-run Corsican aerodrome recorded.

Major Saint Exupéry's fate was unexplained until a fisherman found his bracelet off Marseilles in 1998 and then in 2001, Luc Vanrell, a diver retrieved parts of a Lightning which were identified by serial numbers as the one that the author was flying.

There were no records of German action in the area and it remained  unknown whether Saint Exupéry had just crashed or been shot down. Mystical explanations even circulated. Saint Ex was an overweight literary lion with rusty skills for a dangerous mission in such a demanding aircraft. After the allied liberation of north western France, the author of Night Flight, Southern Mail and other classics was allowed to fly the high-performance Lightning [picture below] as a gesture to his celebrity. He had been depressed and suicide had long been considered a possibility.

Vanrell and Lino von Gartzen, a German expert on the wartime Luftwaffe, set out to trace surviving pilots who might have been involved. They ran into a wall of silence from members of squadrons that had been based in southern France. Then they were pointed towards Rippert, a war hero who went on to a career as a sports journalist.  "You can stop searching. I was the one who shot down Saint Exupéry," Rippert told von Gartzen when he telephoned, according the an extract of the book in le Figaro magazine.

Rippert, whose story is told in Saint Exupéry, L'Ultime Secret,  described how he was patrolling in his Messerschmitt 109 and found the lone Lightning heading along the Mediterranean coast from German occupied Toulon to Marseilles. The pilot was flying carelessly, as if enjoying himself, at a vulnerable 6,000 feet rather than the safer high altitude used for reconnaissance, he said. 

"If you were used to hard combat flying, that was not normal... He was looking around," Rippert told the authors. "A piece of cake. He was wasn't bothered about my presence. I said to myself, 'Ok old chap, if you don't clear out, I'm going to pot you. I dived towards him and fired, not at the fuselage but at the wings. I hit him. The kite ditched, hit the water, smashed up. No-one baled out.

"It would have been impossible to know that it was Exupéry. I hoped and still hope that it was not him,"  Rippert continued. "In our youth, at school, we all read him and adored his books.. He knew admirably how to describe the sky, the thoughts and feelings of pilots. His work drew many of us to the profession. They told me later that it must have been Saint Exupéry. What a disaster. What have you done, I said to myself." 

The authors, Vanrell and Jacques Pradel, a radio and television host, said that the German pilots appeared to have agreed on a pact of silence when they learned immediately from American radio traffic that the search was on for Saint Exupéry. That could explain why there was no record of a German mission in the Marseilles area on the day of the author's disappearance.

After agreeing to talk,  Rippert told the authors that he had been temporarily taken off flying duties because he was Jewish. He said that he had later been decorated for his victories over allied aircraft by Hermann Goering, the Luftwaffe commander.

While Rippert's story appears to fill in the blanks in the Saint-Ex mystery, it will obviously draw scepticism. Why has it taken 67 years for this to emerge, one wonders. French historians are expected to seek corroboration of his account. His wife told my colleague Roger Boyes in Berlin today that Rippert was too ill with 'flu to be disturbed. Roger thinks there might be something fishy about the tale. Maybe he's right, but when they fished out the bracelet, everyone thought at first that it was a hoax. No-one until 1989 knew where Saint Ex went down, between central France and Corsica. The bracelet proved genuine, as later did the plane.  Rippert's story will not take long to check. 

      

Saint Exupéry's Petit Prince, a children's story about an airman who crashes in the desert and meets a boy from outer space, is one of the world's most read books.  In the 1930s and early 1940s, Saint Ex was a glamour figure, a pioneering long-distance air mail pilot and writer. He is still admired by pilots as  the greatest aviation author and in the literary world as a writer who transcended the genre. A personal note: A few years ago, I bought my old fourth-hand aeroplane at Bastia, on the same Corsican airfield which was Saint Ex's last base. Flying the hour across the Med to Marseille, it was easy to imagine how it must have been for him -- in much tougher times six decades before.

Here's a video of Vanrell talking about his quest for Saint-Ex

      
 

Comments

[Jorg Andersen]

I hope this is true. It would finally lay to rest the mystery. Saint-Ex was an impossible human being but a fantastic writer. At least we will know that he didn't kill himself.... unless he was asking to be shot down with such negligent flying in a combat zone...

[rocket]

and I shot the sheriff sang Clapton

[dot king]

and I shot the sheriff sang Clapton
(Rocket)

and Bob Marley before him

how's that for off-topic in three easy posts?

This might be a naïve question (on-topic - more-or-less) how come a Jewish pilot was flying for the Luftwaffe?
"Rippert told the authors that he had been temporarily taken off flying duties because he was Jewish." (article)

[Mary Fernandez]

1. "A piece of cake. He was wasn't bothered about my presence. I said to myself, 'Ok old chap, if you don't clear out, I'm going to pot you.'"

2. "If I had known that it was him, I would never have fired," Rippert told the authors..."

3. "Rippert told the authors that he had been temporarily taken off flying duties because he was Jewish. He said that he had later been decorated for his victories over allied aircraft by Hermann Goering, the Luftwaffe commander."

With regard to Herr Rippert, the words, 'no place in hell hot enough' come to mind.

[Francois D]

Very nice article.
Thank you also for having made us travel by spirit between Bastia and the Coast in the footsteps of "Saint Ex".
Very good point of view from Jorg Andersen: do you think that it will remain about the circumstances of his death, a doubt that could be called a "suicidal behaviour"?
"The Little Prince", is one of the important books to don't forget before withdrawing on a desert island. And what a wonderful end of story, even formidable legend for future generations, could be this terrible remorse of the German pilot, if confirmed, to bear witness of the stupidity of wars.

[Marguerite.]

Merci de nous avoir replonges dans Saint-Exupery.
On a l'impression que cet Allemand dit n'importe quoi pour se rendre interessant.
J'aimerais continuer a croire que St-Ex a disparu mysterieusement, comme le Petit Prince, tue par "un eclair jaune".

[peter kinsley www.peterkinsley.com]

It would be good to solve the mystery but why wait so long? How is it that this German pilot talks in RAF slang: "a piece of cake", OK, "old chap" "clear out", "pot you", "the kite ditched".
All we need now is: "It was a wizard prang, and the Frog bought it."
Herman Goering sent an emissary to Heinrich Himmler to ask him to spare Jewish aircrew shot down in USAF bombers but Himmler refused, and wanted all Jews, whether pilots, aircrew or others, executed.
Check it out before "buying" this one.

[Peter: the translation was mine from the French, which was a translation of WW2 German pilot slang, their version of wizard prangs and kites buying it, etc... CB]

[Lucy Finsterwald]

Nice post on Saint-Ex. Since the conversion from Francs to Euros, I have missed the Exupery themed 50-Franc bill--complete with the Petit Prince drawing. I still have a couple of them stashed away for posterity.

I guess Exupery is an another example of pilots making great writers (like Bremner!)

[French Blue]

@ PETER KINSLEY : Does it not occur to you that he might have been speaking in German, quite naturally using German pilot's slang which the translator picked up and put into the equivalent English slang?

[peter kinsley www.peterkinsley.com]

D'ac on the translation of the German pilots slang, but I am still suspicious: In The World at War TV series which is seen in schools Adolf Galland, the Luftwaffe ace ***says Hitler told him their attack on England in the Battle of Britain was merely
a f e i n t to distract his planned attack on Russia! Rubbish. Radar and brave pilots and the Spitfire saved Britain, and we could have lost if Goering had not stopped them knocking out the towers on the coast.
Galland was hob-knobbing with Douglas Bader, the legless British ace, in his Mess before the new legs were dropped on a bombing mission, and it has now been revealed that Bader, who was disliked by most of his pilots, was shot down by one of them by mistake.
When the Hitler diaries were cerftified authentic by "experts" the Editor of the Sunday Times who was buying them was warned by Magnus Linklater, then a young editor of the magazine, that they were f a k e d, and tried to stop publication. I doubt if Mr Linklater received a bonus for perception, but the editor was sacked.
*** Galland led the Condor Legion which wiped out Guernica and along with other Nazis, Franco's Fascists and paid promulgators of lies, did not admitted the truth, even though it was witnessed by Noel Monks, the Australian journalist who watched the whole horror of blitzkrieg, the deliberfate murder of civilians to cause terror, and a practise run for Poland and Rotterdam, also led by "ace" Galland.

[Daniel Strohl]

"In our youth, at school, we all read him and adored his books."

If the German pilot is aged 88, he was born in 1920. St-Exupéry published Courrier Sud in 1929, Vol de Nuit in 1931, Terre des Hommes in 1938, Pilote de Guerre in 1942 and Le Petit Prince in 1943.

Hitler took over in 1933. The Nazis burnt many books from Jewish German writers right at the beginning. It would have been somewhat surprising if they had promoted books from a French writer in order to have them read by schoolboys ("we all read him and adored his books"). After 1933, the regime was busy indoctrinating schoolboys against the "Erbfeind", i.e the hereditary ennemy.

This story lacks somewhat of coherence, but may be I am wrong. I have no means to check if Courrier Sud (1929) and Vol de Nuit (1931) have been published in Germany prior to 1933 and, if yes, if they have been reedited under the Nazis.

[Brigitte Offermann]

Having browsed the German papers I'm fascinated how the tale spreads through the web and especially Wikipedia.de as fact and truth!

By the beginning of March the same Mr Rippert made it into the notorious BILD-Zeitung by claiming the inheritance of the late German singer Ivan Rebroff on allegedly being the deceased's brother, formerly hidden from the public.

He then was mentioned aged 85; two weeks later he's 88 and on German TV claiming having shot down St. Ex?

If only there wasn't this smell of basking in reflected glory...

[peter kinsley www.peterkinsley.com]

I phoned a friend on this one for a second opinion, and his first reaction was: "Why should an old man wait this long before speaking about it?" Captain Eric Brown, OBE,DSC,AFC,FRAeS*** thinks it needs further investigation. "We need more solid evidence. It is possible, but not plausible, because, what is so bad about it -- a German pilot shooting down an Allied pilot? "
The Luftwaffe shot down men more famous that St. Exupery without apologies or shame.
The long wait to confess is suspicious and so is the presence of a Jew in the Luftwaffe. His background would have been thoroughly checked by the Gestapo and they had strict physical examinations.
""" "Winkle" Brown flew 487 types of plane, made 5,107 deck landings and catapult launches in the Fleet Air Arm, and flew, as a test pilot 53 German planes, including the Me163 rocket plane and the Messerchmitt Me262 jet plane.

[dot king]

Brigitte, yes, I noticed he was aging rather fast too, almost from one news bulletin to the next.

What strikes me is the way he takes a "pot-shot" at another pilot. They weren't engaged in a "dog-fight" or any kind of combat, not a "him or me" situation, but still he felt the need to kill the "enemy".
In concentration camps, SS officers were using Jewish prisoners for the same sort of target practice, keep their hand in.
Boys' toys. War, upper hand, all that. Eh, what, old chap . . .

Even if it isn't true, the jargon falls too easily into place.

[Travis S]

To answer another reader, it is a myth that all Jews were rounded up and restricted from everything. You just can't do that in a society to any group of people and still have it function.

The German Navy was staffed by a high percentage of Jewish officers (some authors say over HALF, even three-quarters if Jewish ancestry alone and not the weaker-restricted "German Purity Laws"), some say because of the ease and safety (and prestige) of the job, probably the cushiest job in wartime except for the fleet attackers and subs.

Fascinating story. I'd forgotten all about that book, I'd even enjoyed the movie as a youth.

[Tony Eaton]

Suicide? No. Shot down? Maybe. But Saint-Ex was unwell, unfit and very forgetful... It could have been as simple as an oxygen-supply short-changing him without his noticing. If he passed out at altitude, by the time he came to the P-38 could have been in a subsonic dive with no chance of recovery.

I'm sorry they found his plane. For many years his story ended with him taking off one day and simply disappearing into the sky. For the spirit Saint-Ex expressed in the writings he left behind, that was a fitting end.

[Roger Goodacre]

A highly original and unsentimental depiction of the perils of air warfare during WWI and II is called, as it happens, 'Piece of Cake', by Derek Robinson (see amazon.co.uk). An excellent portrayal, full of black humour, of how a cross-section of young men behave, in the realisation that every time they take off the chances of all of them returning are almost nil. When the boys are ordered up into the air yet again to make some token gesture of resistance against impossible odds, quips like 'piece of cake, old boy' acquire a poignant humour.

[Brigitte Offermann]

Apologies for posting links in German. ;-)

Ripperts date of birth according to this last paragraph is 24. Mai 1922.
http://de.news.yahoo.com/ap/20080317/twl-rippert-will-seit-kriegsende-von-abs-1be00ca.html

In this interview he states that nobody in Deutsche Luftwaffe cared about his having a Jewish grandmother.
"Rubbish! One grandmother was Jewish. But no one cared about that I had only three of four proofs (of being Aryan). 
he claims having shot down 28 planes and having been honoured with the "Ritterkreuz" and the "Deutsches Kreuz" medals. After the war, he says, he studied Journalism, helped building up German Television (being the first employee of the ZDF, where he worked long years as a Sports reporter.
http://www.faz.net/s/Rub117C535CDF414415BB243B181B8B60AE/Doc~E030F667DCFA84F73BC288D20BF0971D1~ATpl~Ecommon~Scontent.html

German TV station ZDF (Rippert's former employer) announced a documentary called "Duell in the clouds - the last flight of "the Little Prince" which "...will prove without any doubt that Horst Rippert, now aged 85, was his deadly enemy." So there are books to sell and a TV show to be backed and sold worldwide. I think that with so many of the contemporaries dead and the documents in the case so little it stays arguable until proven, if it can be proven anyway, that is.

@Tony Eaton: That box of Pandora is opened for good, but even with the plane found I cold have done without false tears shed now.

[John J]

Ivan Rebroff was a stage name. His real name was Hans-Rolf Rippert. He and Horst were brothers. In some of the recent German obituaries for Rebroff the relationship and their Jewish grandmother was mentioned. Horst's fear had been that the tabloid press would destroy both brothers' careers if the truth came out. Ivan died just a few weeks ago.

[Harold Coghlan]

It's too bad that St Exupery had to die in wartime, being such a prolific author, yet if it had to happen, it might as well have been flying in defense of one's nation. I don't care whether the German pilot shot him down or not, being Jewish, or otherwise, it still does not change the fact that St Ex died in combat flying, which is what he truly loved. After these many years, we'll probably never know for sure if the story checks out. Regardless, my hat is off to Mr. Rippert for having survived the war himself. It would make a good documentary to follow the life of St Ex, as he flew all over South America, crossing the Andes between Argentina and Chile in those rickety biplanes. As an ex-fighter pilot who flew jets, I am an admirer of those early aviators. They flew by guts alone, no help from technology. Fly on westward, Mon Pilote...