Antoine De Saint-Exupery's P38 found in the Med

The Poet Pilot
Born in 1900, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry first flew as a boy of 12 at Ambérieu, in a Berthaud-W aircraft with a Labor engine, piloted by Gabriel Wroblewski-Salvez.
On July 9, 1921, he made his first solo flight in a Sopwith F-CTEE, obtaining his pilot’s licence the next year and being offered a transfer to the air force. He found his true calling in flying the mail for the commercial airline company Aéropostale. He flew the mail over North Africa for three years, escaping death several times. In 1928 he became the director of the remote Cap Juby airfield in Rio de Oro, Sahara.
In 1929 Saint-Exupéry moved to South America, where he was appointed director of the Aeroposta Argentina Company, and flew post through the Andes. Eventually the air mail business in Argentina closed down, and he started to fly post between Casablanca and Port-Étienne. He then served as a test pilot for Air France and other airline companies. He persuaded Air-France to let him fly a Caudron Simoun (F-ANRY), and crashed in 1935 in North Africa. He walked across the desert for days before being saved by a camel caravan. In 1937, he bought another Caudron Simoun, and was severely injured in Guatemala in a plane crash.
After the fall of France in World War II Saint-Exupéry joined the army, and made several daring flights, although he was considered unable to fly military planes because of his several injures. However, he was awarded the Croix de Guerre. In June he went to live with his sister in the Unoccupied Zone of France, and then he escaped to the United States.
In 1943 he rejoined the French air force in North Africa. Also in Algiers he continued his lifelong habit of writing in the air. After a bad landing his commanding officer decided that he was too old to continue flying, but after a pause he was allowed to rejoin his unit.
On July 31, 1944 Saint-Exupéry took off from an airstrip in Sardinia on a flight over southern France and disappeared.
See also:
http://www.saint-exupery.org
http://www.westegg.com/exupery/
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/exupery.htm

Found this on the net about the P-38

Parts From Saint – Exupery’s Plane Found
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: April 7, 2004

Filed at 4:49 p.m. ET
PARIS (AP) — It was one of French aviation’s enduring mysteries: Antoine de
Saint-Exupery, the pilot and author of the beloved tale “The Little Prince,”
took off on a World War II spy mission for the Allies and was never seen
again.
After 60 years, officials have confirmed that the twisted wreckage of a
Lockheed Lightning P-38, found on the Mediterranean seabed not far from the rugged
cliffs of Provence, belonged to Saint-Exupery, Air Force Capt. Frederic Solano
said Wednesday.

In France, the discovery is akin to solving the mystery of where Amelia
Earhart’s plane went down in the Pacific Ocean in 1937.
“This was our holy grail,” said Philippe Castellano, president of an
association of aviation buffs who helped authorities identify the debris. “We never
even imagined this.”
It was a stunning revelation: Teams have been searching up and down the coast
for decades, and many experts believed the plane was probably too far out to
sea to be recovered.
Clues to the crash started coming together in 1998, when a bracelet bearing
Saint-Exupery’s name turned up in a fisherman’s net near Marseille. Some
reports said the find was a fake.
“For six years, people had their doubts,” said the fisherman, Jean-Claude
Bianco. “People claimed I made it myself.”
But Bianco’s discovery jogged the memory of a local scuba diver, who first
saw the plane debris nestled in the ocean bed in the 1980s.
The diver, Luc Vanrell, pored over records of downed planes. By 2000, he was
convinced he had found the right one. But it took time to get permission from
France’s Culture Ministry to have the pieces brought up for analysis.
The plane, smashed into hundreds of pieces, lies 100 to 300 feet below the
surface, less than three miles from the coast between Marseille and Cassis. The
key find was a tail piece bearing a tiny serial number, 2734 L — the same as
Saint-Exupery’s, Castellano said.
A piece of the puzzle remains unanswered: the cause of the crash. Theories
have ranged from hostile gunfire to suicide. The debris has so far yielded no
clues.
“It’s impossible to say if he was shot down, if he lost consciousness, or if
he had a mechanical accident,” said Patrick Grandjean of the national
Department of Subaquatic and Submarine Archaeological Research.
Famous for his bravery, Saint-Exupery was selected for the dangerous mission
of collecting data on German troop movements in the Rhone River Valley. His
plane vanished in the night on July 31, 1944, when he was 44.
He has become one of France’s most admired figures, in part because of “The
Little Prince,” a tender fable about a prince from an asteroid who explores
the planets and then falls to earth. Saint-Exupery’s other works, which largely
deal with his aviation experiences, include “Wind, Sand and Stars” and
“Flight to Arras,” about a doomed reconnaissance mission.
Until the euro currency was introduced in 2002, the novelist’s image appeared
on the nation’s 50-franc note. In Lyon, Saint-Exupery’s hometown, the
international airport is named after him.
Castellano, president of the Aero-ReL.I.C. organization that helped identify
the plane, said some Saint-Exupery fans resisted the efforts. They wanted to
keep the mystery alive.
“In the end, I think everyone is satisfied,” he said. “We didn’t find a
body, so the myth surrounding his disappearance will live on.”
——
On the Net: http://www.aero-relic.org

You’re right, Distiller! I was wondering about the Messerschmitt bit. Maybe in WW I, or a small fighter into a big bomber. But at WW II “speeds” and then crashing into the sea. “Entangle” is a journalist imagination, I think.

Best regards

Huhu! http://forum.airforces.info/showthread.php?s=&threadid=23749

Entangled? That wreck is evenly distributed over an area of 1400x400ft. How can it possibly be “entangled”?

Interesting! Maybe it was the bad luck of a mid-air collision that ended St. Ex’s life. But what about his “opponent”?

Best regards