Antoine de Saint-Exupery: biography, photos and interesting facts. Antoine Saint Exupery: biography

His short life was not easy: at the age of four he lost his father, who belonged to the dynasty of counts, and his mother took care of all the upbringing. During his entire career as a pilot, he suffered 15 accidents, was seriously injured several times, being on the verge of death. However, despite all this, Exupery was able to leave his mark on history not only as an excellent pilot, but also as a writer who gave the world, for example, The Little Prince.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery was born in the French city of Lyon to Count Jean-Marc Saint-Exupery, who was an insurance inspector, and his wife Marie Bois de Foncolombe. The family came from an old family of Perigord nobles.

Young writer. (Pinterest)

At first, the future writer studied in Mance, at the Jesuit College of Sainte-Croix. After that - in Sweden in Friborg in a Catholic guesthouse. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts at the Department of Architecture. In October 1919, he enrolled as a volunteer at the National Higher School of Fine Arts in the Department of Architecture.

The turning point in his fate was 1921 - then he was drafted into the army in France. At first, he is assigned to a work team at repair shops, but soon he manages to pass the exam for a civilian pilot.

In January 1923, the first plane crash happened to him, he received a head injury. After Exupery he moved to Paris, where he devoted himself to writing. However, in this field, at first he was not successful and was forced to take on any job: he traded cars, was a salesman in a bookstore.

Only in 1926, Exupery found his calling - he became a pilot for the Aeropostal company, which delivered mail to the northern coast of Africa.

Pilot. (Pinterest)

On October 19, 1926, he was appointed head of the Cap Juby intermediate station, on the very edge of the Sahara. Here he writes his first work - "Southern Postal". In March 1929, Saint-Exupery returned to France, where he entered the higher aviation courses of the navy in Brest. Soon, Gallimard's publishing house published the novel Southern Postal, and Exupery left for South America.

In 1930, Saint-Exupery was promoted to the Knights of the Legion of Honor for his contribution to the development of civil aviation. In the same year, Saint-Exupery wrote "Night Flight" and met his future wife, Consuelo from El Salvador.

In the spring of 1935, Antoine became a correspondent for the Paris-Soir newspaper. He was sent on a business trip to the USSR. After the trip, Antoine wrote and published the essay Crime and Punishment in the Face of Soviet Justice. This work was the first Western publication in which the author made an attempt to comprehend and understand Stalin's strict regime.

Soon, Saint-Exupery becomes the owner of his own aircraft C. 630 "Simun" and on December 29, 1935, he makes an attempt to set a record for the flight Paris - Saigon, but crashes in the Libyan desert, narrowly avoiding death.

Officer. (Pinterest)

In January 1938, Exupery went to New York. Here he proceeds to work on the book "The Planet of the People". On February 15, he begins the flight New York - Tierra del Fuego, but suffers a serious accident in Guatemala, after which he recovers his health for a long time, first in New York, and then in France.

During World War II, Saint-Exupery made several sorties on the Block-174 aircraft, performing aerial reconnaissance missions, and was presented with the Military Cross award. In June 1941, after the defeat of France, he moved to his sister in the unoccupied part of the country, and later left for the United States. He lived in New York, where, among other things, he wrote his most famous book, The Little Prince.

On July 31, 1944, Saint-Exupéry left the Borgo airfield on the island of Corsica on a reconnaissance flight and did not return. For a long time, nothing was known about his death, and they thought that he had crashed in the Alps. And only in 1998, in the sea near Marseille, one fisherman discovered a bracelet.

A Saint-Exupéry bracelet found by a fisherman near Marseille. (Pinterest)

In May 2000, diver Luc Vanrel stated that at a depth of 70 meters he found the wreckage of an aircraft, possibly belonging to Saint-Exupery. The remains of the aircraft were scattered over a strip a kilometer long and 400 meters wide.

Monument to Antoine de Saint-Exupery in Tarfay. (Pinterest)

In 2008, 86-year-old German Luftwaffe veteran Horst Rippert claimed that it was he who shot down Antoine de Saint-Exupery in his Messerschmitt Me-109 fighter. According to Rippert, he confessed in order to clear the name of Saint-Exupery from charges of desertion or suicide. According to him, he would not have fired if he knew who was at the controls of the enemy aircraft. However, the pilots who served with Rippert express doubts about the veracity of his words.

Now the recovered fragments of Exupery's plane are in the Museum of Aviation and Cosmonautics in Le Bourget.

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Biography, life story of Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger de Saint-Exupéry was a French writer and aviator.

Childhood

Antoine was born on June 29, 1900 in the city of Lyon (France). He was the third of five children of Jean de Saint Exupery and Marie de Fontcolombe. Antoine's father was a representative of an old noble family. Unfortunately, when little Antoine was only four years old, Jean died. He did not leave any money to his family, and his wife and children had to face many troubles.

Despite the financial need, the family lived very friendly. Antoine grew up playful and active boys, adored animals, loved to tinker with various models of motors. Antoine was very friendly with his brother Francois, however, he also had warm feelings for his sisters. Alas, when Antoine was seventeen, François died of a fever.

In 1912, Antoine for the first time felt the full power and infinity of the sky. The famous pilot Gabriel Wroblewski took the boy to fly in an airplane at the airfield in Amberye. This event impressed Antoine very much, after the flight he was in complete delight for a long time.

Education

At the age of eight, Antoine was accepted to study at the School of Christian Brothers of St. Bartholomew in his hometown. A little later, he transferred to the Jesuit College of Sainte-Croix (Mans, France). In 1914, Antoine entered the Friborg Marist College (Friborg, Switzerland). After college, the boy planned to enter the Saint-Louis Naval Lyceum in Paris, but he did not pass the competition. As a result, in 1919, Antoine de Saint-Exupery became a volunteer lecturer in architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts.

Military service

1921 was a turning point in Antoine's life. That year he was drafted into the French army. The young man enrolled in the second regiment of fighter aviation in Strasbourg. Initially, Saint-Exupery was assigned to a working team at repair shops. But the passion for the sky, which appeared in childhood, did not give Antoine peace. He decided to take the exam for a civilian pilot. Having proved to the management that he was able to fly an aircraft, Antoine moved to Morocco (North Africa). There Antoine received the rights of a military pilot. After Morocco, the young man went to Istres (France).

CONTINUED BELOW

In 1922, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry successfully completed the courses for reserve officers and became a junior lieutenant. In October of the same year, he was assigned to the 43rd Aviation Regiment in the town of Bourges. In early 1923, Antoine was in a plane crash. The pilot survived, but received a head injury. As a result, in March 1923, Saint-Exupery was commissioned.

Pilot and writer

After the life of a military pilot was left far behind, Antoine moved to Paris. At first, he tried to earn a living as a writer, but he did not do it very well. Due to an acute shortage of money, Antoine had to grab hold of all the work that came across in his path. At one time, he traded cars, sold books ... All this joyless period of his life, Antoine dreamed of heaven. In the spring of 1926, he was lucky - he managed to become a pilot for the Aeropostal company, which was engaged in delivering mail to the northern coast of Africa. Having excellently shown his abilities, already in the autumn Antoine became the head of the intermediate station in the city of Villa Bens (Morocco). It was there, on the edge of the Sahara Desert, that Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote his first work, entitled Southern Postal.

In the spring of 1929, Antoine returned to France and entered the aviation courses of the navy in Brest (western country). While he was studying, his debut novel was published. After the course, Antoine moved to South America, where he became the technical director of the local branch of the Aeropostal company.

In 1930, Antoine de Saint-Exupery was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor for his impressive contribution to the development of civil aviation. In the same year he left America and returned to his native country.

In 1931, the company Antoine worked for went bankrupt. In the same year, Saint-Exupery published his next masterpiece called Night Flight.

In February 1932, Antoine de Saint-Exupery began working for the Latecoera airline. A little later, he became a test pilot. True, this work almost ended in tragedy - during the testing of a new seaplane, Antoine almost died.

Journalistic investigations

In the spring of 1935, Antoine became a correspondent for the Paris-Soir newspaper. He was sent on a business trip to the USSR. After the trip, Antoine wrote and published the essay Crime and Punishment in the Face of Soviet Justice. This work was the first Western publication in which the author made an attempt to comprehend and understand the strict regime.

At the end of the summer of 1936, Antoine traveled to Spain as a representative of the Entransijan newspaper. Having been in the thick of things (at that time there was a terrible civil war in the country), Antoine wrote several high-profile reports.

Personal life

Antoine fell in love for the first time during his service in Strasbourg. Her name was Louise. She was the daughter of a young and wealthy widow, Madame de Vilmorin. Louise was a very weak and sickly girl, but this is what attracted Antoine to her. Seeing how a graceful girl lies on her bed in a light negligee, the huge Antoine (he was almost two meters tall) felt small and defenseless in front of this unearthly beauty. He immediately wrote to his own mother that he had found a life partner. Soon he proposed to Louise. However, Madame de Vilmorin was categorically against her daughter's marriage to a poor aristocrat. Fate decreed that a few weeks after the marriage proposal, Antoine ended up in the hospital (he had an accident on a new plane). He lay there for several months. During this time, Louise acquired new fans and forgot about the unfortunate groom. When he left, the girl did not want to see him and demanded that he forget about her.

In 1930, in Beenos Aires, Antoine de Saint-Exupery met a petite and very sweet girl named Consuelo Gomez Carrilo. Charming Consuelo immediately struck Antoine's imagination. She was so fickle, so alive, so... There were many of her and she was everywhere, despite her modest proportions. Before meeting Antoine, Consuelo had been married twice (her second husband committed suicide). Young people started dating, and a little later they moved to Paris. There they got married. Consuelo simply adored France and, as it turned out a little later, loved to lie. She lied about everything without even thinking about what she was doing. She composed ridiculous stories, embellished reality. As a result, her passion for lies grew to such an extent that by the end of her days she herself could not understand what was true and what was fiction.

Despite this, Antoine adored his wife. He carefully guarded her, pampered, tried to give her all his love. However, she still remained unhappy. However, it was difficult to make happy a woman who could not figure out what was real and what was not, a woman who was slowly going crazy every year. Consuelo was forever unhappy with her husband. As a result, she began to live her own life - she went to bars, did not spend the night at home ... Antoine forgave everything to her eccentric wife, but felt that family life had exhausted him. Over time, he had other women. True, he was not going to get divorced. He had mixed feelings towards Consuelo - he could no longer live with her under the same roof, but he could not imagine life without her.

War

On September 3, 1939, France declared war on Germany. The very next day, Antoine de Saint-Exupery arrived at the military airfield. On November 3 of the same year, he got into the aviation unit of long-range reconnaissance in Orconte (Champagne, France). Friends tried to dissuade Antoine from a career as a military pilot, assuring him that he would be much more useful to society as a writer. However, Antoine did not listen to them. He stated that he could not calmly watch his homeland suffer.

During the war, Saint-Exupery made several sorties as a photographic reconnaissance. In 1941, when France was defeated, he briefly moved to a safe part of the country to his sister, and a little later he moved to New York (USA). It was on American soil that Antoine de Saint-Exupéry created The Little Prince, his most famous work.

In 1943, Antoine returned to the military again. He was assigned to pilot a new high-speed aircraft.

Doom

On July 31, 1944, Antoine de Saint-Exupery went on a reconnaissance flight to the island of Corsica (Mediterranean Sea). Antoine never returned from that flight. This day is considered the official death day of the talented writer and brave pilot. At the time of his death, he was only forty-four years old.

Interesting Facts

Antoine de Saint-Exupery was left-handed.

The image of a rose in the novel "The Little Prince" is written off from his adored wife, Consuelo.

Throughout his life, Antoine was involved in fifteen plane crashes.

Saint-Exupery was a master of card tricks.

Antoine created several inventions in the field of aviation and even received patents for them.

Awards and prizes

In 1930, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry received the Femin Prize for his novel Night Flight.

In 1939 he received two awards: the Grand Prix du Roman of the Académie française for The Planet of Men and the US National Book Award for Wind, Sand and Stars. In the same year he was awarded the Military Cross of the French Republic.

Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger de Saint-Exupery- a famous French writer, poet and professional pilot.

Childhood, adolescence, youth:

Antoine de Saint-Exupery was born in the French city of Lyon, descended from an old family of Perigord nobles, and was the third of five children of Viscount Jean de Saint-Exupery and his wife Marie de Foncolombe. At the age of four, he lost his father. The upbringing of little Antoine was carried out by his mother.

In 1912, at the airfield in Amberier, Saint-Exupéry took to the air for the first time in an airplane. The car was driven by the famous pilot Gabriel Wroblewski.

Exupery entered the School of the Christian Brothers of St. Bartholomew in Lyon (1908), then with his brother François studied at the Jesuit College of Sainte-Croix in Mance - until 1914, after which they continued their studies in Fribourg (Switzerland) at the College of Marists, prepared to enter the "Ecole Naval" (passed the preparatory course of the Naval Lyceum Saint-Louis in Paris), but did not pass the competition. In 1919, he enrolled as a volunteer at the Academy of Fine Arts in the department of architecture.

The turning point in his fate was 1921 - then he was drafted into the army in France. Interrupting the deferral he received when he entered a higher educational institution, Antoine enrolled in the 2nd Fighter Aviation Regiment in Strasbourg. At first, he is assigned to a work team at repair shops, but soon he manages to pass the exam for a civilian pilot. He was transferred to Morocco, where he received the rights of a military pilot, and then sent for improvement to Istres. In 1922, Antoine completed courses for reserve officers in Avora and became a second lieutenant. In October he was assigned to the 34th Aviation Regiment at Bourges near Paris. In January 1923, the first plane crash happened to him, he received a head injury. In March, he is commissioned. Exupery moved to Paris, where he devoted himself to writing. However, in this field, at first he was not successful and was forced to take on any job: he traded cars, was a salesman in a bookstore.

Only in 1926, Exupery found his calling - he became a pilot of the Aeropostal company, which delivered mail to the northern coast of Africa. In the spring, he begins to work on the transportation of mail on the line Toulouse - Casablanca, then Casablanca - Dakar. On October 19, 1926, he was appointed head of the Cap Juby intermediate station (Villa Bens), on the very edge of the Sahara.

Monument to Antoine de Saint-Exupery in Tarfay

In March 1929, Saint-Exupery returned to France, where he entered the higher aviation courses of the navy in Brest. Soon Gallimard's publishing house published the novel Southern Postal, and Exupery left for South America as the technical director of Aeropost - Argentina, a branch of the Aeropostal company. In 1930, Saint-Exupery was promoted to the Knights of the Legion of Honor for his contribution to the development of civil aviation. In June, he personally participated in the search for his friend, the pilot Guillaume, who had an accident while flying over the Andes. In the same year, Saint-Exupery wrote "Night Flight" and met his future wife, Consuelo from El Salvador.

Pilot and correspondent:

In 1930, Saint-Exupery returned to France and received a three-month vacation. In April, he married Consuelo Sunsin (April 16, 1901 - May 28, 1979), but the couple, as a rule, lived separately. On March 13, 1931, Aeropostal was declared bankrupt. Saint-Exupery returned to work as a pilot on the France-South America postal line and served the Casablanca-Port-Etienne-Dakar segment. In October 1931, Night Flight was published, and the writer was awarded the Femina literary prize. He takes another vacation and moves to Paris.

In February 1932, Exupery again begins working for the Latecoera airline and flies as a co-pilot on a seaplane serving the Marseille-Algiers line. Didier Dora, a former Aeropostal pilot, soon got him a job as a test pilot, and Saint-Exupery almost died while testing a new seaplane in Saint-Raphael Bay. The seaplane overturned, and he barely managed to get out of the cabin of the sinking car.

In 1934, Exupery went to work for the Air France (formerly Aeropostal) airline, as a representative of the company, traveled to Africa, Indochina and other countries.

In April 1935, as a correspondent for the Paris-Soir newspaper, Saint-Exupery visited the USSR and described this visit in five essays. The essay "Crime and Punishment in the Face of Soviet Justice" became one of the first works of Western writers in which an attempt was made to comprehend Stalinism. On May 3, 1935, he met with M. A. Bulgakov, which was recorded in the diary of E. S. Bulgakov.

Soon, Saint-Exupery becomes the owner of his own aircraft C.630 "Simun" and on December 29, 1935, he makes an attempt to set a record for the flight Paris - Saigon, but crashes in the Libyan desert, again narrowly avoiding death. On the first of January, he and the mechanic Prevost, who were dying of thirst, were rescued by the Bedouins.

In August 1936, according to an agreement with the Entransizhan newspaper, he travels to Spain, where a civil war is going on, and publishes a number of reports in the newspaper.

In January 1938, Exupery was sent aboard the Ile de France to New York. Here he proceeds to work on the book "The Planet of the People". On February 15, he begins the flight New York - Tierra del Fuego, but suffers a serious accident in Guatemala, after which he recovers his health for a long time, first in New York, and then in France.

War:

On September 4, 1939, the day after France declared war on Germany, Saint-Exupéry is at the place of mobilization at the Toulouse-Montaudran military airfield and on November 3 is transferred to the 2/33 long-range reconnaissance air unit, which is based in Orconte (Champagne). This was his response to the persuasion of friends to abandon the risky career of a military pilot. Many tried to convince Saint-Exupery that he would bring much more benefit to the country as a writer and journalist, that thousands of pilots could be trained and that he should not risk his life. But Saint-Exupery achieved an assignment to the combat unit. In one of his letters in November 1939, he writes: “I am obliged to participate in this war. Everything I love is at stake. In Provence, when the forest is on fire, everyone who cares grabs buckets and shovels. I want to fight, I am forced to this by love and my inner religion. I can't stand by and look at it calmly."

Saint-Exupery made several sorties on the Block-174 aircraft, performing aerial reconnaissance tasks, and was presented with the Military Cross (Fr. Croix de Guerre) award. In June 1941, after the defeat of France, he moved to his sister in the unoccupied part of the country, and later left for the United States. He lived in New York, where, among other things, he wrote his most famous book, The Little Prince (1942, published 1943). In 1943, he joined the Fighting France Air Force and with great difficulty achieved his enrollment in a combat unit. He had to master the piloting of the new high-speed Lightning R-38 aircraft.

Saint-Exupéry in the cockpit of the Lightning

“I have a funny craft for my age. The next person behind me is six years younger than me. But, of course, my current life - breakfast at six in the morning, a dining room, a tent or a whitewashed room, flying at an altitude of ten thousand meters in a world forbidden to humans - I prefer unbearable Algerian idleness ... ... I chose work for maximum wear and tear and, since it is necessary always squeeze yourself to the end, no longer back down. I only wish this vile war would be over before I melt like a candle in a stream of oxygen. I have something to do even after it” (from a letter to Jean Pélissier on July 9-10, 1944).

On July 31, 1944, Saint-Exupéry left the Borgo airfield on the island of Corsica on a reconnaissance flight and did not return.

“Aviation and poetry bowed over his cradle. He was probably the only modern writer who was touched by true fame. His life is a whole series of triumphs. But he never knew peace.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery was born 115 years ago. Aviator, essayist and poet. The man who said: "Before you write, you need to live."
“How could you not love him? exclaimed André Maurois. - He possessed both strength and tenderness, intelligence and intuition. He fought in the air in 1940 and fought again in 1944. He was lost in the desert and was rescued by the lords of the sands; once he fell into the Mediterranean Sea, and another time - on the mountain ranges of Guatemala. Hence the authenticity that sounds in his every word, from here the life stoicism originates, for the deed reveals the best qualities of a person.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery 1900 - 1944

Antoine de Saint-Exupery (fully Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger de Saint-Exupéry, fr. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry) was born on June 29, 1900 in the French city of Lyon in the family of a provincial count. At the age of four, he lost his father.

Exupery's family castle was built in the early Middle Ages from large round boulders, and in the 18th century it was rebuilt. “Once upon a time, gentlemen de Saint-Exupery sat out the raids of English archers, robber knights and their own peasants here, and at the beginning of the 20th century, the rather dilapidated castle sheltered the widowed Countess Marie de Saint-Exupery and her five children.

Mother and daughters occupied the first floor, the boys settled on the third. A huge entrance hall and a mirrored living room, portraits of ancestors, knightly armor, precious tapestries, upholstered with damask furniture with half-worn gilding - the old house was full of treasures. Behind the house was a hayloft, behind the hayloft a huge park, behind the park stretched fields still belonging to his family.

The upbringing of little Antoine was carried out by his mother. He studied unevenly, glimpses of a genius appeared in him, but it was noticeable that this student was not created for schoolwork. In the family, he is called the Sun King because of the blond hair crowning his head; comrades nicknamed Antoine the Astrologer, because his nose was upturned to the sky.

Not far from Saint-Maurice, in Amberier, there was an airfield, and Antoine often went there by bicycle. When he was twelve, he had a chance to fly on an airplane, and Antoine received an "air baptism". This event is usually associated with the name of Jules Vedrine. No one knows how this version was born, because neither one nor the other ever talked about it. But, apparently, she turned out to be quite beautiful: Vedrin was a famous aviator, a war hero, and in general a bright personality, and therefore the version began to be repeated without checking. Only recently was the only documentary evidence discovered, namely, a postcard depicting the first aircraft and the pilot who "gave an air baptism." And signed by Antoine himself. The truth turned out to be no worse than the legend.

The postcard shows the monoplane LBerthaud-W (Bertha is the name of the industrialist who financed the development), created in 1911 by the brothers Peter and Gabriel Wroblewski. This promising design, alas, did not "conquer the sky." Talented aviator brothers were not destined to live up to the era of the domination of metal monoplanes - on March 2, 1912, they died in a test flight on the third and last copy of their car, after which work on it was stopped.

Gabriel Wroblewski (it was he who "christened" Antoine in July 1912) received his pilot's diploma just a month before this event that went down in history. The diploma had the number 891. Saint-Exupery's flying career began only nine years later, after the First World War, but it was then, in his first and only "children's" flight, that he, one might say, joined the spirit of "childhood" of aviation itself. An airplane of self-taught engineers ahead of its time, pilots, timid flights for the sake of the very fact of overcoming gravity, and, finally, an aura of mystery and achievement - all this could not but leave a deep imprint on the young soul.

Childhood ended when his beloved brother Francois died of a fever. He bequeathed to Antoine a bicycle and a gun, took communion and departed to another world - Saint-Exupery forever remembered his calm and stern face. Exupery graduated from the Jesuit school at Le Mans, studied at a Catholic boarding school in Switzerland, and in 1917 entered the Paris School of Fine Arts at the Faculty of Architecture.
“One has only to grow up, and the merciful God leaves you to the mercy of fate,” Saint-Exupery will express this sad thought much later, when he is about thirty, but it also applies to the entire first period of life in Paris. Now he lives a real bohemian life. This is the most deaf period of his life - Antoine does not even write to his mother, experiencing everything that happens to him, deep in himself. He still meets and argues with friends, visits the Lippa restaurant, goes to lectures, reads a lot, replenishing his knowledge in literature. Among the books that attract him especially are the books of Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Plato.

And although we do not know what exactly Antoine was talking about then, one can guess that his trial was very harsh. When, many years later, a secular lady who knew Saint-Exupery in his twenty years was asked to tell about him, she said: "Exupery? Yes, he was a communist!"

Antoine de Saint-Exupery in 1921, having interrupted the deferral he received when he entered a higher educational institution, quit his studies at the Faculty of Architecture and enrolled as a volunteer in the 2nd Aviation Regiment in Strasbourg with the rank of private. At first, the volunteer is listed as an aircraft mechanic. Luckily for him, the 2nd Aviation Regiment was led by Major Guard, the most charming commander you could wish for. In the past, a huntsman on foot, who became a fighter pilot during the war, he was well versed in people. His officers were a match for him. The discipline in the regiment was not distinguished by strictness - the atmosphere of comradeship of a combat squadron, preserved from the time of the war, still reigned here. And soon a significant change takes place in the position of Saint-Exupery. He becomes a civilian pilot, after which he is trained as a military pilot. Strange wording, but there is no mistake in it. However, to understand this, some comments are required.

Here is what Robert Aeby, Saint-Aix's first flight instructor, says:
"It happened in April 1921, on Sunday, at the Neuhof airfield. On a beautiful spring morning, we took out of the hangar all the planes of the Transaerien company - one Farman, three Sopwith and one Salmson. Five planes for the company in which I was the only pilot ... True, the Mosse brothers - Gaston and Victor - co-directors, were also pilots.

We hoped to get the Strasbourg - Brussels - Anver line, but the competitors were ahead of us. Then the company was transformed and now offered clients flights on demand, christenings, aerial photography. Especially baptisms.

The client was just approaching. He was not dressed very well - a cap, a scarf around his neck, trousers without pleats.
- Can I get an air baptism?
- Yes... But it will cost 50 francs.
- I agree!
And he settles in "Farman". I make a circle with him. Ten minutes, on the usual route. I sit down, drive to the hangar, get out of the plane.
- And again?
- But it will cost you another 50 francs!
- Yes Yes! I agree.
And we flew. This time I showed him what he wanted - the north and south of Strasbourg, the Voss, the Rhine. He was delighted. I didn't know his name yet. After landing, I asked him to write down his name on paper. Then I read: Antoine de Saint-Exupery. He also said that he was assigned to the 2nd Fighter Aviation Regiment (his hangars were located next to ours) for military service.

After a while, he reappeared, but in military uniform...
- Do you recognize me?
- Well, of course.
And without further ado: - Can I fly myself?
- You can always, but to be able to fly, you must be able to fly! You need to get trained.
- That's exactly what I wanted to know... Is it possible here?
Yes, but under certain conditions. First of all, you need the permission of your commander, because he is responsible for you. And then, it is necessary to agree with the director about the price.

A few days later, the commander of the unit, Colonel Gard, agreed, against all the rules, as an exception (there was definitely something incredible here), to allow the young soldier to learn to pilot.

June 18, 1921, Saturday. On this day (one might say, it was almost a historical date!), Saint-Exupery made his first flight with an instructor on the LFarman-40.

According to my flight book, the second flight that day was followed by a third ... And the lessons continued, to the satisfaction of the student and teacher. Two weeks later we already had 21 export flights and 2 hours 5 minutes. flight time. Unexpectedly, we had to leave the Farman, whose engine gave its soul to God, and I transferred my pet to the Sopwith, a more rigorous piloting machine. On Friday, July 8, I took him out twice on this new aircraft.

The next day at 11 o'clock I once again took out Saint-Exupery on the Sopwith One and a half rack. At 11:10 a.m. we were at the start for the second flight. I got out of the front seat.
- Take off! One. I'm letting you out. When it's time to land, I'll launch a green rocket. Let's go!
He started fine. Taxiing smooth, takeoff flawless, here he is climbing, turning right to the left, going downwind, finishing the circle of the lane ... I launch a green rocket ... He is coming in for a landing, but too high and too fast ... Five meters to the ground - and now he will either "skip" the lane, or lose speed and fall into a tailspin - but he does the only thing that remains in such cases - he accelerates again. Saint-Exupery confidently starts the second "box" - it seems that this little incident did not unbalance him - and when I send the green rocket again, he enters normally, lands beautifully, and returns the plane to the hangar.
In the afternoon I went to Colonel Gard and reported that I had released Private Saint-Exupery. He thought, looked at some papers in the folder, and dropped:
- Stop there.
Our joint flights to Transaerien are over.

The soldier in love with the sky managed to persuade the commanders to take another unprecedented step - to allow him to fly as a pilot (including the new two-seat SPFD-20 Erbemon fighters) and train as an air gunner, again, without being appointed to the appropriate position.
Well, soon the amateur experience was repeated at a new qualitative level and accordingly documented. Having learned about the recruitment of volunteers for service in the 37th Fighter Wing, based in Morocco, Saint-Exupery immediately filed a report. There he rose to the rank of corporal, but most importantly, he trained as a fighter. He passed his exams with excellent marks, and he is offered to enter the school of reserve officers, where he meets his old friend Jean Esco. Let's give him the floor...

"On April 3, 1922, Saint-Exupéry was accepted as a cadet at the Air Force Reserve Officer School in Avora. The most urgent thing for us then was to find out how we could resume flights. Indeed, the program, the crown of which was the diploma of the letnab, included theory (navigation, meteorology , communications, combat use) and flying practice, but precisely as a letnab. In the end, we were announced that we could fly as pilots before the start of classes, that is, from 6 to 8 in the morning. So our days were filled to overflowing. At the end of the internship, high graduation points gave us the opportunity to choose the place of future service ourselves. It turned out that we had the same reflex - to be closer to home. And having received the rank of junior lieutenant, we each went our separate ways - he was in the 34th air regiment in Bourges, and I - in Lyon-Bron, in the 35th.

For two years of military service, Saint-Exupery received as a result a unique training - impossible in other, seemingly more favorable conditions - he mastered piloting a wide variety of aircraft, was a navigator, a pilot, and a gunner, studied the use of aviation. But besides all this, he was also a mechanic ...

Thus, Exupery received his pilot's license in 1922.

Soon after moving to Paris, he turned to writing. However, in this field, at first he did not win laurels for himself and was forced to take on any job: he traded cars, was a salesman in a bookstore.

In 1926, Saint-Ex again began his career as a pilot, now a civilian, from the workshops of the Aeropostal company, which delivered mail to the northern coast of Africa. His first flight in a mail plane took place in October 1926. Two years later he was appointed head of the airport in Cap Juby, on the very edge of the Sahara, and there, at last, he found that inner peace, which his later books are full of.

Didier Dora, director of Latecoera Airlines, recalls:
“I accepted Saint-Exupery and from the very first day forced him to submit to the regime common to all his fellow pilots: at first they all had to work side by side with the mechanics. Just like the mechanics, he bugged the engines, dirty. .. hands with grease. He never grumbled, was not afraid of menial work, and soon I was convinced that he won the respect of the workers ...

The school of ground services came in handy for Saint-Exupery in his personal life, more precisely, when he got his own plane. I will not go into details, but I will say one thing - he did not live well then, but he owned an airplane. At that time, civil aviation was barely spreading its wings; few foresaw then its amazing flowering. Just at that time, aviators were in honor. The general public believed that they were all some kind of eccentrics, adventurers, though cute, but what drives them and what they aspire to is unclear.

Yes, public opinion considered it a gamble, yes, it required courage, but it was justified and based on accurate calculations. Saint-Exupery belonged to the cohort of the most sought-after people in aviation at that time - those who combine courage and composure, have logical thinking. Here is how his work in Cap-Juby was assessed by his superiors:
"Exceptional data, a pilot of rare courage, an excellent master of his craft, showed remarkable composure and rare selflessness. The head of the airfield in Cap Juby, in the desert, surrounded by hostile tribes, constantly risking his life, performing his duties with devotion that is beyond praise. Spent several brilliant operations.Repeatedly flew over the most dangerous areas, looking for pilots Rena and Serra taken prisoner by hostile tribes.Rescued from the area occupied by an extremely militant population, the wounded crew of a Spanish aircraft, which almost fell into the hands of the Moors.Unhesitatingly endured the harsh conditions of work in desert, daily risked his life. With his zeal, devotion, noble dedication, he made a huge contribution to the cause of French aeronautics, significantly contributed to the success of our civil aviation ... "

In 1929, Exupery took charge of his airline branch in Buenos Aires. In 1931, he marries the widow of the Spanish writer Gomez Carrillo - Consuelo, a native of South America.

In 1931 he returned to Europe, again flew on postal lines, was also a test pilot.

In 1934-1935, he worked as an officer at large for the Air France company in Asia, from Turkey to Vietnam, where he preferred, so to speak, "with or without reason" to travel by airplane. The books described many times forced landings in the desert, a little less emergency splashdowns of seaplanes. But in practice there was a very interesting case.
“His first trip to Cambodia was interrupted by an accident, the engine failed when he flew over the flooded forests in the Mekong basin. Waiting for a rescue boat, Saint-Exupery and his friend Pierre Godillier spent the night among this chaotic mixing of water and land, talking peacefully to itchy singing mosquitoes and the croaking of frogs.

Since the mid 1930s. He also acted as a journalist, in particular, in 1935 he visited Moscow as a correspondent for Paris-Soir and described this visit in five interesting essays. On May 20, 1935, an article was published in the Izvestiya newspaper, which speaks for itself: "On the driving force."
I flew on a plane "Maxim Gorky" shortly before his death. These corridors, this salon, these cabins, this powerful roar of eight engines, this internal telephone connection - everything was not like the air environment familiar to me. But even more than the technical excellence of the aircraft, I admired the young crew and the impulse that was common to all these people. I admired their seriousness and the inner joy with which they worked ... The feelings that overwhelmed these people seemed to me a more powerful driving force than the power of the giant's eight magnificent motors. Deeply shocked, I am experiencing the mourning in which Moscow is immersed today. I, too, lost friends whom I had only just recognized, but who already seemed infinitely close to me. Alas, they will never again laugh in the face of the wind, these young and strong people. I know that this tragedy was not caused by a technical error, not by the ignorance of the builders or the oversight of the crew. This tragedy is not one of those tragedies that can make people doubt their abilities. There was no giant aircraft. But the country and the people who created it will be able to bring to life even more amazing ships - miracles of technology.

There was one enterprise in Antoine's biography that can be called truly adventurous. The story of its completion - the 1935 accident in the Libyan desert - entered the "Planet of the People", but this, as they say, is a few inches. But the roots ... Saint-Ex learned about a large cash prize for the Paris-Saigon route record and decided to accept the challenge - at that time he really needed money. True, there was no time (and, in fact, funds) for preparation, but he took a chance. There was not even a radio station on the plane, which was removed to take an extra canister of gasoline, and if it were not for that random Bedouin ... Truly, Fate, which can be seen, would have liked the further continuation of his work!

The second flight New York - Tierra del Fuego in 1938 was prepared according to all the rules, but at the Guatemalan airfield some kind of "Bedouin" - a tanker mistakenly filled the tanks with too much fuel. Heat, rarefied air (the airfield was located almost 1.5 km above sea level) and a short strip left no chance - the overloaded car collapsed, barely leaving the ground. Saint-Exupéry and his mechanic, Prevost, are removed from the rubble and hospitalized. There was no fault of the organizers and the crew here. Apparently it's fate again.

He also went to war in Spain as a correspondent. In 1937, Saint-Exupéry flew from Paris-Soir to Spain, engulfed in civil war, on his own plane. He was not a "Spanish pilot", but his task was no less important. The great powers tested new weapons there - "information warfare" technologies - and the appearance on the fronts of an unprecedented number of world-famous cultural figures (Saint-Ex was just one of many famous writers, journalists, film directors, etc.) is far from accidental. The tests were successful - never before had the word had such an impact on the course of the war - and later Saint-Exupery would use this power to attract the United States to liberate France from the Nazis.

In March 1939, Saint-Exupery went to the Third Reich. “He returned to Paris the next day after the Germans entered Prague, refusing the promised meeting with Goering - he didn’t want to stay in a hostile state for an hour longer, the head of which had already thrown off his mask,” wrote Georges Polissier. “Who produces so many cars and leaves without shelter, in the rain and wind, if he does not think to put them into action immediately! Dear friend, this is war!

A little-known chapter of Saint-Exupery's life related to the war concerns his activity as an inventor. Even before the start of active hostilities, he developed the principle of night camouflage of ground objects with the help of ... light.
At the beginning of the war, Polissier wrote, flying at night over darkened Toulouse, he noticed that on a clear night one could discern the entire layout of the city, down to the smallest detail, and it was not difficult to drop bombs on any target. The blackout masked Toulouse very poorly. The flood-lit Buenos Aires he saw on the mail flight was superbly sheltered. Therefore, in order to mask the city, it is better not to darken it, but to illuminate it. But this is only at worst. Thus, you hide individual details, but you reveal the whole purpose. And Saint-Ex immediately finds a great way to confuse the enemy: you have to blind him! He will never recognize cities and individual targets at night if they are flooded with a wide band of very bright, evenly distributed lights. Saint-Ex developed his project comprehensively, down to the finest technical details...
Military specialists became interested in his invention... The first practical tests gave excellent results. But this experience could not be continued: it was interrupted by the German invasion.

It was he who proposed to deal with the freezing of machine guns at high altitudes, using a special lubricant that would absorb condensing vapors and prevent, accordingly, jamming of the weapon. It is said that he foresaw the future dominance of jet engines, the advent of radar and even nuclear weapons, but here he acted more like a deep thinker with the ability of an engineer.

By the beginning of the "strange war" in 1939, Antoine had enough authority to somehow influence his appointment during mobilization. And he asked to be a fighter - fortunately, there was experience in maneuverable air combat. In addition, the single-seat fighter ideally corresponded to his ideas about the fight - one on one, eye to eye with the enemy, when the outcome of the battle depends entirely on the skill of the pilot, his unity with his car ...

However, the age and results of the medical examination (plus the desire of the country's leadership to save the famous writer) allowed him only to get on bombers, and even then as an instructor in a training unit. Of course, this did not satisfy him. In addition, as friends recalled, he did not accept for himself the very concept of bomber aircraft, "bringing death blindly, to everyone indiscriminately." Saint-Ex continues to harass the command by all means and, in the end, he is sent to the combat squadron 2/33, the pilot of the Bloch B.174 - a long-range reconnaissance aircraft, created on the basis of the bomber.

But the most interesting thing is that then this situation repeated itself. After the surrender, Saint-Ex sought to be sent to the Eastern Front, to the Normandie squadron, but was refused.

At the beginning of World War II, Saint-Exupery made several sorties and was presented with an award ("Military Cross" (Croix de Guerre)).

In July 1940, when there were only a few days left before the armistice (as the French politicians preferred to call the surrender of their country), in the 2/33 group, in which Saint-Ex was fighting, they were ordered to evacuate to Algiers, and he makes a desperate attempt to at least something to help continue the fight against Nazism.

In Bordeaux, right from the factory, he takes away a large four-engine "Farman-223" and, having loaded into it several dozen "irreconcilable" French and Polish aviators, heads south. But soon a truce is signed in North Africa, and he leaves for the United States.

Now, for Saint-Exupéry, only the word is a weapon. In 1942, "Military Pilot" was published. It is curious that this book is immediately banned both by the Nazis and the puppet government of Vichy, and ... de Gaulle's supporters. Moreover, the former are for propaganda of disobedience and resistance, while the latter are for supposedly "defeatist moods." However, it continues to be published underground.

“I visited him on Long Island in a large house that they rented with Consuelo. Saint-Exupery worked at night. After dinner he talked, told, showed card tricks, then, closer to midnight, when others went to bed, he sat down at the desk. I fell asleep. At two o'clock in the morning I was awakened by shouts on the stairs: "Consuelo! Consuelo! .. I'm hungry ... Cook me scrambled eggs. " Consuelo descended from her room. Finally waking up, I joined them, and Saint-Exupery spoke again, and he spoke very well. Having had his fill, he again sat down to work. We tried to fall asleep again, but the sleep was short-lived, for in two hours the whole house was filled with loud cries: “Consuelo! I'm bored. Let's play chess." Then he read us the newly written pages, and Consuelo, herself a poet, suggested skilfully invented episodes."

In New York, among other things, he wrote his most famous book, The Little Prince (1942, published 1943).

And in 1943 he took up arms again, arriving in North Africa with the American Expeditionary Force. The Americans appointed him as co-pilot on the B-26 bomber - again, in a unit that, as they say, "did not shine" with active hostilities. But the tireless St. Ex achieved a return to his squadron. This time, it was armed with Lockheed P-38F-4 and P-38F-5 aircraft - reconnaissance variants of the Lightning. Unlike the low-speed V..174, the Lightnings felt much more at ease in the military skies of Europe. Even the lack of weapons did not interfere - they easily evaded any persecution. At least almost anyone. Indeed, only a few types of the latest German machines could compete with them in speed and altitude. But the Focke-Wulf FW-190D-9 belonged to just such. “Antoine demanded that all flights to the Annessy area, where he spent his childhood, remain with him. But none of them went well, and the last flight of Major de Saint-Exupery ended there. The first time he barely eluded the fighters, in the second, he passed the oxygen device and he had to descend to a height dangerous for an unarmed scout, in the third, one of the engines failed.Before the fourth flight, the fortuneteller predicted that he would die in sea water, and Saint-Exupery, laughingly telling his friends about it, noticed that she most likely mistook him for a sailor."

And on July 31, 1944, a pair of German fighters successfully intercepted a Lightning-type reconnaissance aircraft off the French coast, which "... after the battle caught fire and fell into the sea," according to German radio. On that day, Major de Saint-Exupery left the Borgo airfield on the island of Corsica on a reconnaissance flight and did not return from the mission. His route passed just in this area ...

For a long time, nothing was known about his death. And only in 1998, in the sea near Marseille, one fisherman discovered a bracelet. It had several inscriptions: "Antoine", "Consuelo" (that was the name of the pilot's wife) and "c/o Reynal & Hitchcock, 386, 4th Ave. NYC USA. This was the address of the publishing house where Saint-Exupery's books were published.

In May 2000, diver Luc Vanrel announced that he had found the wreckage of an aircraft at a depth of 70 meters, possibly belonging to Saint-Exupery. The remains of the aircraft were scattered over a strip a kilometer long and 400 meters wide. Almost immediately, the French government banned any searches in the area. Permission was received only in the fall of 2003. Specialists raised fragments of the aircraft. One of them turned out to be part of the cockpit, the serial number of the aircraft was preserved: 2734-L. According to the American military archives, scientists compared all the numbers of aircraft that disappeared during this period. So, it turned out that the tail serial number 2734-L corresponds to the aircraft, which was listed in the US Air Force under the number 42-68223, that is, the Lockheed P-38 Lightning aircraft, a modification of the F-4 (long-range photographic reconnaissance aircraft), which was flown by Exupery.

The journals of the German Air Force do not contain records of aircraft shot down in this area on July 31, 1944, and the wreckage itself does not have obvious signs of shelling. This gave rise to many versions of the crash, including versions of a technical malfunction and the pilot's suicide. According to press releases in March 2008, German Luftwaffe veteran Horst Rippert, 88, claimed to have shot down Antoine Saint-Exupery's plane. According to his statements, he did not know who was at the controls of the enemy aircraft: "I did not see the pilot, only later I found out that it was Saint-Exupery."

The books of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, a French aviator and writer, have been enjoying well-deserved popularity 65 years after his death. Most of the publications, in addition to the works themselves, contain articles by literary critics and researchers that tell about the life of the "flying prophet of the twentieth century", his character, worldview.

They almost always, one way or another, say that "we will not be able to fully understand the work of Saint-Exupery without understanding what aviation was for him." However, it is the facts from his flight biography that are still among the little-known.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery lit his star. She will forever shine over the Planet of Humans, serving as a beacon on the path of all romantics and seekers of Truth.

Literary awards

* 1930 - Femina - for the novel "Night Flight";
* 1939 - Grand Prix du Roman of the French Academy - "Wind, sand and stars";
* 1939 - US National Book Award - "Wind, Sand and Stars".

Military awards

In 1939 he was awarded the Military Cross of the French Republic.

Names in honor

* Aéroport Lyon-Saint-Exupéry in Lyon;
* Asteroid 2578 Saint-Exupéry, discovered by astronomer Tatyana Smirnova (discovered November 2, 1975 under the number "B612");

Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger de Saint-Exupery (fr. Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger de Saint-Exupery) was born on June 29, 1900 in Lyon (France) into an aristocratic family. He was the third child of Comte Jean de Saint-Exupéry.

The father died when Antoine was four years old, and the mother was engaged in raising the boy. He spent his childhood in the estate of Saint-Maurice near Lyon, which belonged to his grandmother.

In 1909-1914, Antoine and his younger brother François studied at the Jesuit College of Le Mans, then at a private school in Switzerland.

Having received a bachelor's degree at the college, Antoine studied for several years at the Academy of Arts in the architectural department, then he entered the aviation troops as a private. In 1923 he was issued a pilot's license.

In 1926, he was accepted into the service of the General Company of Aviation Enterprises, owned by the famous designer Latecoer. In the same year, Antoine de Saint-Exupery's first story, The Pilot, appeared in print.

Saint-Exupéry flew on the postal lines Toulouse - Casablanca, Casablanca - Dakar, then became the head of the airfield at Cap Juby Fort in Morocco (part of this territory belonged to the French) - on the border of the Sahara.

In 1929, he returned to France for six months and signed an agreement with the book publisher Gaston Guillimar for the publication of seven novels, in the same year the novel Southern Postal was published. In September 1929, Saint-Exupéry was appointed director of the Buenos Aires branch of the French airline Aeropostal Argentina.

In 1930 he was promoted to the Order of the Legion of Honor of France, and at the end of 1931 he won the prestigious Femina literary prize for his novel Night Flight (1931).

In 1933-1934, he was a test pilot, made a number of long-distance flights, suffered accidents, and was seriously wounded several times.

In 1934, he filed the first application for the invention of a new aircraft landing system (in total, he had 10 inventions at the level of scientific and technological achievements of his time).

In December 1935, during a long flight from Paris to Saigon, Antoine de Saint-Exupery's plane crashed in the Libyan desert, he miraculously survived.

From the mid-1930s he worked as a journalist: in April 1935, as a special correspondent for the newspaper Paris-Soir, he visited Moscow and described this visit in several essays; in 1936, being a front-line correspondent, he wrote a series of military reports from Spain, where the civil war was going on.

In 1939, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was promoted to officer of the Legion of Honor of France. In February, his book "Planet of People" (in Russian translation - "Land of People"; American title - "Wind, Sand and Stars"), which is a collection of autobiographical essays, was published. The book was awarded the French Academy Prize and the National Prize of the Year in the United States.

When the Second World War began, Captain Saint-Exupery was mobilized into the army, but he was recognized as fit only for service on the ground. Using all his connections, Saint-Exupery achieved an appointment in an aviation reconnaissance group.

In May 1940, on a Blok-174 aircraft, he made a reconnaissance flight over Arras, for which he was awarded the Military Cross for Military Merit.

After the occupation of France by Nazi troops in 1940, he emigrated to the United States.

In February 1942, his book "Military Pilot" was published in the United States and was a great success, after which Saint-Exupery received an order from Reynal-Hitchhock publishing house to write a fairy tale for children in late spring. He signed a contract and began work on the philosophical and lyrical fairy tale "The Little Prince" with author's illustrations. In April 1943, "The Little Prince" was published in the United States, in the same year the story "Letter to a Hostage" was published. Then Saint-Exupery worked on the story "The Citadel" (not finished, published in 1948).

In 1943, Saint-Exupéry left America for Algiers, where he underwent medical treatment, from where he joined his air group based in Morocco in the summer. After great difficulties in obtaining permission to fly, thanks to the support of influential figures in the French resistance, Saint-Exupery was allowed to carry out five reconnaissance flights with aerial photography of enemy communications and troops in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bhis native Provence.

On the morning of July 31, 1944, Saint-Exupéry, on a Lightning P-38 aircraft equipped with a camera and not armed, went on a reconnaissance flight from the Borgo airfield on the island of Corsica. His task in that sortie was to collect intelligence in preparation for the landing operation in the south of France, occupied by the fascist invaders. The aircraft did not return to base and its pilot was declared missing.

Searches for the remains of the aircraft have been going on for many years, only in 1998 the Marseille fisherman Jean-Claude Bianco accidentally discovered a silver bracelet near Marseilles with the name of the writer and his wife Consuelo.

In May 2000, professional diver Luc Vanrel told the authorities that he had found the remains of the plane on which Saint-Exupery made his last flight at a depth of 70 meters. From November 2003 to January 2004, a special expedition removed the remains of the aircraft from the bottom, and on one of the parts they managed to find the marking "2374 L", which corresponded to the Saint-Exupery aircraft.

In March 2008, 88-year-old Horst Rippert, a former Luftwaffe pilot, claimed that he had shot down the plane. Rippert's statements are confirmed by some information from other sources, but at the same time, no records were found in the journals of the German Air Force about the plane shot down that day in the area where Saint-Exupery disappeared, the fragments of his plane found did not have obvious signs of shelling.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was married to the widow of the Argentine journalist Consuelo Suntzin (1901-1979). After the disappearance of the writer, she lived in New York, then moved to France, where she was known as a sculptor and artist. She devoted a lot of time to perpetuating the memory of Saint-Exupery.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from RIA Novosti and open sources