Antoine de Saint-Exupery
 

Have just heard via a Radio BBC relay that Antoine de Saint-Exupery's P-38 may have been discovered. Is this true? Any latest news would be very much appreciated. Sometimes we in the Southern Hemisphere lag behind hearing things of interests.

Where are you from, New Zealand?
Perhaps you should look at newspapers or listen to the radio a wee bit more.

Tsk tsk OVC - some of us that do more mundane jobs that do not involve twiddling our thumbs for days on end between trips find it more difficult to keep as up to date with the news as we would like. Sympathy and sharing of knowledge is required, not castigation.

So, oh Omnipotent Venerable Cleverdick - has the aircraft been found? http://www.pprune.org/ubb/NonCGI/tongue.gif

CJ2

[This message has been edited by Conky Joe (edited 28 May 2000).]

http://news2.thls.bbc.co.uk/hi/engli...000/203153.stm

Yes,kifis....apparently.
Some parts of the wreck have been identified as belonging to a P-38 J or F5.
As St Ex's plane was the only one missing in the area,chances are they hit ,at last the right aircraft.
Keep watching this bulletin.
The plan is to send a diving team "very soon".
I'll try to get you posted.
Bye

KIFIS

This was in our local rag (Arab News, from Agence France Presse) today:

MARSEILLE - The discovery of the wreck of a World War II US P38 Lightning aircraft 85 meters (280 feet) down in the Mediterranean off Marseille has rekindled speculation about the fate of novelist and air ace Antoine de Saint Exupery.

The author of "Le Petit Prince", translated into 110 languages, took off one day in 1944, headed out across the Mediterranean and was never seen again. The mystery of his disappearance has intrigued successive generations.

Speculation erupted more than 50 years on (1998) when a fisherman trawled up a silver identity bracelet off Marseille inscribed with Saint Exupery's name, that of his Argentinian wife and the name and address of his New York publishers.

Now local diver Luc Vanrell says he has found a Type J Lockheed Lightning in the same area - but cannot be certain whether it was of the reconnaissance type piloted by St Ex when he took off on that last flight 56 years ago.

His disappearance enhanced the cult of St Ex as a romantic man of action, an aura matching his continuing fame as author of "The Little Prince" {a series of parables about a boy prince recounting his adventures among the stars to a downed pilot on Earth and is one of the highest selling books in the world} and "Night Flight".

St Ex took off on 31 July 1944 in a Lightning P38J F-5B, a type modified asa special reconnaissance aircraft without armament, with cameras in the forward position where normally a cannon would be.

The discovery of the wreckage was announced last Thursday {25 May 2000} by France's Department of Subaquatic and Submarine Archaeological Research.

Director Luc Long said the diver had discovered the remains of a plane "probably a P38J, scattered over several hundred meters."

But the nose of the plane had not been found, which meant it was impossible to determine whether this was indeed St Ex's. A total of five P38J F-5B aircraft had been reported missing in the area.

Henri-Germain Delauze, head of the submersible robot engineering firm COMEX, has offered to deploy a remote-controlled device to seek out fragments such as the cockpit, engines or landing gear which could help identification.

Regards

CJ