The Aviator Prince

The life and times of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. One of the greatest French authors of the 20th C..

The Sahara Desert stretched endlessly, a golden ocean of silence and death. The sand, sculpted by the wind, whispered secrets of lost travellers, their bones long buried beneath the shifting dunes. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and his navigator, Alain Kristoff—whom he only half-jokingly called "the Moustache"—lay beside the wreckage of their downed aircraft, their sanctuary and their tomb.

The crash had been sudden, a cruel trick of fate. One moment, the rhythmic hum of the engine carried them through the boundless sky; the next, they were plummeting, swallowed by the indifferent desert. They hadn’t been shot down—of that, they were certain. But certainty meant little in a place where the sun ruled like a merciless king, burning away reason, peeling away hope.

By the third day, thirst was an iron vice around their throats. Their meagre rations—chocolate, crackers, a flask of wine—mocked them for their inadequacy. The water was nearly gone. The nights, colder than the grave, left them shivering, while the days seared their flesh and blurred their vision. Hallucinations danced at the edges of their consciousness—phantom oases, spectral figures drifting in the heat haze. Sometimes, Antoine saw something stranger: a childlike figure with golden hair, standing atop a dune, watching him with wise, sorrowful eyes.

At times, when clarity returned, both men found themselves staring at their service pistols. A final mercy, a way to escape this slow and torturous demise. But something—perhaps defiance, perhaps madness—kept their fingers from the trigger.

Then, on the fourth day, salvation appeared like the cruellest mirage yet: a lone figure atop a camel, his robes billowing in the wind, moving toward them as if he had stepped out of a dream. Antoine blinked, unable to trust his own senses. Kristoff cursed under his breath, then laughed—a broken, delirious sound.

But the figure did not waver. He did not dissolve like all the other ghosts. He was real.

And with that, Antoine and Alain knew—they would live.

Years later, as he wrote The Little Prince, Antoine would think back to that moment, to the delirium and the visions the desert had given him. He would remember the lesson he had learned in the endless dunes:

That what is essential is invisible to the eye.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry dreamt of airplanes from an early age. He also dreamed of piloting them, and as soon as he was of age, he volunteered to fly for his beloved country.

He wasn't about to let anything stand in the way of becoming a great pilot. His love of aviation was only matched by his fascination with writing.

But he couldn't stay away from trouble. Engine trouble or being-fired-upon trouble. And yet, he was always the first to volunteer to the most dangerous missions. Sometimes, he got his way; sometimes, he didn't. But that wouldn't stop him from trying again the next time.

He was born in Lyon, France, in 1900, and by 1921, he was already enlisted in the French military, although in the cavalry. Biding his time, he waited until the right moment and asked for a transfer to the Air Force, that long being his true calling.

But he felt disappointed by his assignments and just like a true rebel, he quit the armed forces and took a job flying for a mail service in North Africa.

He learned as much as he could from the Bedouin culture and kept their costumes and traditions close to his heart.

He suffered many concussions, broken bones, and a cracked skull in his time as an aviator, but he continued to fly regardless.

During World War 2, he returned to the Air Force for what was the last time --and as usual, he volunteered for a reconnaissance mission in the Mediterranean, by the island of Corsica.

On July 31, 1944, he was flying solo, therefore he couldn't see the German Messerschmitt closing in on him from the left side. When he did, he immediately took evasive maneuvers but he caught several rounds near the cabin. The German plane, seeing his advantage, pursued him, but since Antoine’s plane was not a fighter plane, he realized he was at the mercy of the circumstances. The German, becoming aware of the situation, started toying with him, flying around him in circles, knowing that the man's life was in his hands. Antoine, in a desperate attempt not to go down without a fight, tried his best to crash his plane against the German’s, but the Messerschmitt was faster, and it was all over soon after. A rapid volley of high-caliber rounds and he watched intently as Antoine’s plane crashed into the calm waters of the sea below.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was 44 years old.

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Then, in 1998, a fisherman off the coast of Marseille found something in his nets: a silver bracelet. It bore the name Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

More clues followed. In 2000, divers discovered the wreckage of a P-38 at the bottom of the Mediterranean. Serial numbers confirmed—it was his.

Later, a former German pilot, Horst Rippert, claimed he had shot down a P-38 in the same area on that fateful day. He was a fan of The Little Prince but hadn’t known the pilot’s identity until much later. If true, it was a tragic irony: a man who wrote about peace had been taken down by war.

The Prince Who Never Came Home

Saint-Exupéry’s body was never found, adding to the legend. Some say he became like the Little Prince himself—disappearing into the stars, never truly gone.

His story remains one of adventure, loss, and mystery. A poet of the skies, lost in the vastness of the world he loved so much.

He left us with this wonderful quote from The Little Prince:

“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

Lest we forget.

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