For more than fifty-five years, the disappearance of French writer and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry remained one of the great unsolved mysteries of World War II. Numerous witnesses came forward with stories of an accident, a suicide, or an attack, yet no trace of his aircraft was ever found.
That changed in September 1998, off the coast of Marseilles. Jean-Claude Bianco, a fisherman from the Samu Creek, made the discovery of his lifetime while sorting his catch. A silver bracelet surfaced in the nets, and when Bianco rubbed it clean, he saw the name "Antoine" engraved on it.
Curiosity pushed him to look closer. The full inscription read "Antoine de Saint-Exupéry," followed by "Consuelo" and an address on 4th Avenue in New York City. Bianco turned to his mate and said, "Habib, we've trawled up something really special. We found Saint-Exupéry's bracelet."
The very next morning, Bianco brought the bracelet to Henri-Germain Delauze, the head of COMEX, a major underwater exploration company. Delauze immediately understood the significance. For weeks, the discovery was kept secret, and the search for the wreck began in earnest.
Delauze and his crew spent years scanning the seafloor. Using sonar and magnetometers, they crisscrossed the area relentlessly. Over four years of searching, from 1999 to 2003, they found nine wrecks. But none of them was Saint-Exupéry's plane.
Meanwhile, a professional diver named Luc Vanrell noticed the COMEX vessel operating around the Riou archipelago. Vanrell had already located several World War II plane wrecks in the Marseilles area. He remembered a pile of metal he had discovered years earlier that resembled the type of plane Saint-Exupéry flew on his last mission.
Working with his friend Philippe Castellano, a specialist in plane crashes at sea, Vanrell began exploring known wrecks. They examined a virtually intact P-38 Lightning in the Bay of Le, but it had nothing to do with the writer's aircraft. Still, the search continued.
Vanrell believed the key lay in the remains of a plane near the Riou archipelago. He spent twenty months studying the features of every Lightning model ever built, determined to identify the wreckage with certainty. Then came the day of the decisive dive.
Reaching into the undercarriage housing of the wreck, Vanrell struggled with his gloves and diving equipment. He could not feel the part he was looking for, but the collars holding it gave way, and he pulled it out. When he saw it, he knew. It was the right part, a numbered component in the landing gear that could only belong to one aircraft.
"This is Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's plane," he said. "It can't be any other aircraft. It's the only aircraft lying at the bottom of the Mediterranean where you find this part on it."
The part was brought to the surface with the help of COMEX. From that point, Vanrell and others tried to reconstruct the final moments of Saint-Exupéry's life. The facts are these: the writer took off from Borgo in Corsica around 9:00 in the morning on July 31, 1944, for a photographic reconnaissance mission over Savoy. His plane was not armed. Two and a half hours later, it disappeared from American radar screens.
Saint-Exupéry seemed to have everything against him for that kind of mission. He was too old, too tall for the cramped cockpit of the Lightning, and not in great physical shape. He had survived terrible crashes, including a fractured skull and a broken shoulder, but he was also a pilot with deep experience from the airmail service and the early days of aviation.
Some believed he had flown his last mission deliberately. His writings, including letters to his wife Consuelo, were read by some as the words of a man defying death. "Darling, we'll meet in heaven," one letter read. For some, this was evidence of despair. For others, it was the courage of a hero.
Vanrell soon received a surprising answer to his questions. A German fighter ace named Horst Rippert made an astonishing declaration. He confirmed that he had shot down a P-38 Lightning near Marseilles late in the morning of July 31, 1944. Rippert described seeing the plane below him, turning out toward the sea, and deciding to attack.
This version of events gained broad acceptance, including within Saint-Exupéry's family. For years, the family had chosen not to search for the wreck, preferring to remain within the legend of the writer who, like the Little Prince, seemed to have vanished without a trace.
Olivier de Kersauson, who managed Saint-Exupéry's estate, eventually entrusted the silver bracelet to the Air and Space Museum in Le Bourget, where it is displayed alongside the landing gear and personal effects. The family acknowledged that there is a high probability the writer was shot down by Rippet, though questions remain.
At the end of the investigation, one thing is certain: Saint-Exupéry lies in the depths of the Mediterranean. The exact circumstances of his death still depend on the word of a single man, and the mystery has not been fully solved.
Many of his friends believed he met the death he wished for, disappearing like the aviators Mermoz and Guillaumet, whose traces were never found. Saint-Exupéry once said, "There's certainly more pleasure in seeking the truth than in knowing it. It's the quest that is the pleasure, not the result."