For the blue fighter pilots I present...

[Doc]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WKK1RQoewM

[ATAG_Colander]

ouch!

[ChiefRedCloud]

Very interesting .... thanks

[Atreides]

Great how they filmed this well known story. I know the German pilot (I'm unsure if he heard the name of his opponent that same day or months or even years later) had great difficulty forgiving himself, since Antoine de Saint-Exupйry was well known and respected by both sides of the war.

[III./ZG76_Keller]

According to the Wikipedia entry for Antoine de Saint-Exupйry, two German pilots claimed to be the pilot responsible for downing his plane. Neither has actually been proven.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_de_Saint-Exup%C3%A9ry

From Wikipedia:


Speculations in 1981 and 2008

In March 2008, a former Luftwaffe pilot, 85-year-old Horst Rippert (the brother of the singer Ivan Rebroff), told La Provence, a Marseille newspaper, that he engaged and downed a P-38 Lightning on 31 July 1944 in the area where Saint-Exupйry's plane was found.[48][50][51] Rippert, who was on a reconnaissance mission over the Mediterranean sea, said he saw and engaged a P-38 with a French emblem near Toulon.[52] Rippert, who said he saw the P-38 crash into the sea, was the second Luftwaffe fighter pilot to publicly state this, after Robert Heichele reported in 1981 that he had shot down Saint-Exupйry's plane.[53][Note 14]

Two books were published by French and German researchers discussing the alleged Saint-Exupйry shootdown.[52][54] Rippert's and Heichele's stories are unverifiable, possibly self-promotional, and have met with criticism from German, French and British investigators.[55][56]

Contemporary archival sources, including intercepted Luftwaffe signals, strongly suggest that Saint-Exupйry was not shot down by a German aircraft,[57] although an American Lightning flown by Second Lieutenant Gene Meredith was shot down the previous day on 30 July.[Note 15] By contrast, there were no claims on file from either of the Luftwaffe pilots, Heichele or Rippert, for a Lightning on 31 July 1944, nor any supporting Allied signals intelligence or radar reports for that area on that date.[Note 16] Rippert's explanation that he and his Luftwaffe squadron colleagues immediately 'covered up' the shootdown after-the-fact due to Saint-Exupйry's stature was met with extreme skepticism, as the Allies had made no mention of the author's status for two to three days after he failed to return from his mission.[58]

[Atreides]

Guess we'll never know for sure then. Though it's irrelevant to the question how he got killed, I think him maybe having been shot down by someone who admired him accentuates the horror of that war.