Celebrating Saint-Exupéry

Saint-Exupéry was born in 1900 in Lyon, France. After a string of failures in the naval academy and college, his career took off in the military where he took private flight lessons. He transferred to the French Air Force in 1921 and was stationed in Morocco. Later, at the urging of his family, he left the air force for an office job.

In 1926, he became a pioneer of international postal flight, joining Aéropostale, an airmail company and predecessor of Air France, and flying between Toulouse, France, and Dakar, Senegal. He also worked in the Sahara, and finally, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, as director of the Aeroposta Argentina airline, surveying the new air routes in South America.

During World War II, Saint-Exupéry flew with a reconnaissance squadron of the French Armée de l’Air, and after France’s armistice with Germany, he went into exile in North America. For two years, he and his wife, Consuelo, lived in New York City where he wrote his last two novels, including The Little Prince.

In 1943, despite being eight years above the age limit, he rejoined the French Air Force and flew the P–38 Lightning. On his last reconnaissance mission in 1944, he took off from Corsica to collect information on the movement of German troops.

He never returned, vanishing without a trace over the Mediterranean.

Saint-Exupéry was known by his colleagues for his habit of reading and writing at the controls of his aircraft, with some saying he’d once circled an airport for an hour before landing so that he could finish his novel.

He flew long solitary flights over vast and sometimes empty landscapes. Armed with a small notebook, he wrote some of the philosophical works that would later make up his novels and give him international fame.

Capucine Cordina is a former assistant editor for AOPA media.