Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, vicomte de Saint-Exupéry – an aviator that needs no introduction. Who has not heard about ´The Little Prince´ and the author of this book? However, that book was just one among many works by Saint-Exupéry and most of them were the aviation stories with a bit of autobiographical addition to them.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was born on 29th June 1900, in Lyon, France, to an old and prestigious French aristocratic family with roots reaching back to the 5th century.
Initially, he was going to study at École navale (the French naval academy) but after failing his exams twice, Saint-Exupéry entered an art school. There, the young aristocrat began to study architecture but never managed to graduate.
In 1921, Saint-Exupéry enlisted the French army as just an ordinary soldier in a light infantry regiment. However, he used his private funds to begin pilot´s training and, in consequence, was transferred into the French Air Force.
Saint-Exupéry´s service as the fighter pilot was marked with some aviation accidents. This made his fiancée, Louise Lévêque de Vilmorin, to force Saint-Exupéry to switch for an office job.
However, the couple broke shortly after and Saint-Exupéry returned to aviation. This time, as a commercial pilot and a pioneer of air mail flights. In 1930, his work for Aéropostale company and development of air postal service in the western Africa earned Saint-Exupéry the first Légion d’honneur (National Order of the Legion of Honour).
Yet a year earlier, Saint-Exupéry was transferred to Argentina, where he was appointed director of Aeroposta Argentina, a subsidiary of Aéropostale. There, the French aviation pioneer took care of establishing new air routes in South America, as well as flew with the air mail.
Following the outbreak of the Second World War, Saint-Exupéry returned to France and served with the French Air Force until the Armistice of 22 June 1940.
After the fall of France, he fled to New York where he lobbied for convincing the USA to enter the war against Nazi Germany. In 1943, Saint-Exupéry decided to return to flying and joined the Free French Air Force.
On 31st July 1944, Saint-Exupéry took-off from Corsica in his F-5B (an unarmed reconnaissance variant of P-38) for a mission over the Rhone Valley. The mission from which he did not return, vanishing without a trace.
More information about Saint-Exupéry´s service in the Second World War can be found in our article 31 July 1944 – death of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
Cover photo: ´The last mission´, illustration by Florence Ramioul, Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0
