David, I couldn't find the NYT article you refer to, but I found some
other
articles:
The Wikipedia article describes the P-38 St. Exupery flew in 1944 as "war
weary."
The following article says that Rippert just recently discovered that one
of his 28 kills was St. Exupery.
As to how he did it in his Messerschmidt: '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?"
http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_art
icle_id=536468&in_page_id=1811
Here is a more complete story:
http://galliawatch.blogspot.com/2008/03/mystery-solved.html
If St Exupery was on a reconnaissance mission, he may not have been going
fast. Rippert's description doesn't make it sound as though St. Exupery
was
paying attention. It doesn't sound as though they were engaged in a
dog-fight. >
Lawrence Helm
San Jacinto
-----Original Message-----
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of David Ritchie
Sent: Monday, April 28, 2008 2:22 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Saint Exupery
Some of you may be following the news about Saint Exupery--NYT, April
11 etc. The short version is that a plane has been found, a German
says he shot the author down and he's now writing a book about this.
Wikipedia has an up-to-date version of events.
I thought it might be fun to have Lawrence and Bill Ball and maybe
Robert Paul and others wade in on the matter. Here's my reading of
the situation.
The puzzle in my mind as I read the article over lunch was that the
NYT didn't mention what kind of plane the German was flying. Why is
that a puzzle? When I was at the Evergreen Air museum recently, a
cursory reading of the display notes showed the kind of aircraft that
Saint Exupery was flying--a P38--outpacing the German fighters on
show in that museum by a hundred miles an hour. So my question was,
how did the German catch him and shoot him down?
The article says that Saint E was not in good physical shape, and old
(44!), and that his evasive moves weren't very good. But a hundred
miles an hour of extra speed is a lot to make up!
There are clues online. First, in the Wikipedia article on Saint E,
there's mention that the German fellow may not be quite what he
seems. Also there's no "combat damage" to Saint E.s plane. But
elsewhere I found that the French may have been given P38s that were
a hundred miles an hour slower than the American ones, sans
turbochargers, and that some P38s were notoriously hard to control
once they went into a dive.
Do I conclude that the German may not have shot him down, but he
might have forced him into the water?
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
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