Author of 'The Little Prince' shot down, former pilot confesses

From 'I shot French literary hero out of the sky' :

The 63-year-old mystery surrounding the death of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the celebrated French aviator and author of the beloved book Le Petit Prince, has finally been solved. An 88-year-old Luftwaffe veteran has confessed to shooting down the writer's plane over the Mediterranean on 31 July, 1944.

Saint-Exupéry was last seen alive when he took off in his Lockheed Lightning P-38 from Borgo air base in Corsica at around 14:30.

He was 44 when he died and his body has never been found.

"If I had known, I wouldn't have fired," lamented the former Luftwaffe pilot, Horst Rippert, who greatly admired the author and kept the secret of how he died until he was tracked down by a German historian.