Telegraph One of France's most enduring mysteries has been solved with the discovery of the wreckage of the aircraft piloted by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of the children's classic The Little Prince.
Two pieces of his Lockheed Lightning P-38, which vanished on July 31, 1944, during an Allied reconnaissance mission, have been pulled from the Mediterranean near Marseilles.
Archives confirmed that the manufacturer's serial number, 2734L, stamped on a piece of salvaged fuselage, matched that of Saint-Exupéry's plane.
....The mystery of why the plane crashed remains. "There was no bent propeller, no bullet holes," M Castello said.
"Looking at the pieces, we are thinking of a hypothesis of a near-vertical dive at high speed. But that's just a guess." Theories have ranged from hostile gunfire to mechanical problems or suicide.
Two pieces of his Lockheed Lightning P-38, which vanished on July 31, 1944, during an Allied reconnaissance mission, have been pulled from the Mediterranean near Marseilles.
Archives confirmed that the manufacturer's serial number, 2734L, stamped on a piece of salvaged fuselage, matched that of Saint-Exupéry's plane.
....The mystery of why the plane crashed remains. "There was no bent propeller, no bullet holes," M Castello said.
"Looking at the pieces, we are thinking of a hypothesis of a near-vertical dive at high speed. But that's just a guess." Theories have ranged from hostile gunfire to mechanical problems or suicide.
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