The Man Who Killed The Little Prince’s Father
Antoine de Saint-Exupery (left) and the man who shot him down, Horst Rippert.
The story is a few days old, but becomes interesting again because the face of the man who downed his favorite author has been revealed:
How a German wartime flying ace discovered he shot down his hero.
A German fighter ace has just learned that one of his 28 wartime ‘kills’ was his favourite author. Messerschmidt pilot Horst Rippert, 88, said he would have held his fire if he had known the man flying the Lightning fighter was renowned French novelist Antoine de Saint-Exupery, creator of The Little Prince.
The fliers clashed in the skies over southern France in July 1944. “He was below me,” said Rippert. “I saw his markings, manoeuvred myself behind him and shot him down. If I had known it was Saint-Exupery, I would never have shot him down. I loved his books. I am shocked and sorry. Who knows what other great books he would have gone on to write?”
Source (Mail on Sunday) | Antoine de Saint Exupéry (wiki) | The Little Prince (wiki)
Fri 21-Mar-08 | Posted in: People, History
Print this post | Permalink | Stumble it! |
Comments
Comment from oblomov
Time: March 21, 2008, 10:18 pm
Unfortunately the Germans got him after he\’d written \”le Petit Prince\” and \”Vol d\’Ennui.\”
[Unfortunately? — RS]
Comment from Dave
Time: March 21, 2008, 7:36 pm
Sad irony of life…war in particular. I enjoyed the story so much I read it in 3 languages. Franz Marc was a favorite artist of mine for years, member of die Blaue Reiter group in Germany, killed in WWI early in his artistic career. I always wondered what he would have gone on to do without the war intervening.