1.  The Death of Antoine de Saint-Exupery 

"A strange human being, exceptional and wonderful, a prince, a generous prince, aloof, lost among us."
(Captain G. Courtain)

An article appeared on Yahoo News during the spring of 2008 that may reveal new information regarding the death of Saint-Exupery.

German author Horst Rippert has claimed in a forthcoming book that he may have killed the French author.  Saint-Exupery was a pioneering pilot of the WWII era.  He had moved to New York when the German Nazis occupied France, but returned to join the Free French air force in fighting them.  He died at the age of 44 in 1944, under mysterious circumstances when his plane went down near Marseilles while on a reconnaissance.  His body was never found.

Horst Rippert, 88, is a former pilot of Germany's Luftwaffe.  Le Figaro magazine published extracts of his forthcoming book "Saint-Exupery:  The Final Secret," in which Rippert was quoted as saying: "It's me, I shot down Saint-Exupery." 

Rippert said that he could not be certain of the identity of the French pilot whose plane he shot down.  "I didn't see the pilot and even so, it would have been impossible for me to know that it was Saint-Exupery.  I have hoped ever since that it wasn't him," he said, because he is a big fan of the author's works.


2.  An excellent biography of Antoine Saint-Exupery by Joelle Eyheramonno may be found at http://members.lycos.nl/tlp/antoine.htm