Antoine de Saint-Exupery was the French answer to Charles Lindbergh, a pilot whose feats became so legendary that he was known familiarly as Saint-Ex.

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Antoine de Saint-Exupery was the French answer to Charles Lindbergh, a pilot whose feats became so legendary that he was known familiarly as Saint-Ex. As a young man between the wars, he flew the mails across the French empire, survived a crash in the Sahara, and celebrated the joy and freedom of the air in a rapturous literary style all his own. Apatriot through and through, he fought in the French air force, took the defeat of 1940 very hard, and left an account of his experiences as a combat pilot. For a while afterward, he was in New York, where he wrote The Little Prince, a wonderful fable of innocence and hope that has sold more than 50 million copies. Rejoining his squadron in Algeria, he disappeared without trace on a reconnaissance mission over the Mediterranean. A book just published in Paris solves the mystery. A former Messerschmitt pilot, Horst Rippert, now 88, believes he shot down that reconnaissance plane. Like others, he had been inspired to fly by his victim's books, and says ruefully, "If I had known that it was him, I'd never have fired." It's a fitting coda to the Saint-Ex legend.