Awww... poor Nazi fighter pilot has regrets.
There, there.
What was his total bodycount and how many would he take back?
What if Saint-Exupery had identified himself and lined him up, would he have fired then or accepted death by literary respect?
Would he have fired twice if Saint-Exupery were Jewish?
These people don't need their names published, don't need their stories told, and can take their regrets and shove them.
I think the pilot's regrets are sincere.
I'm glad he stepped forward and resolved the mystery.
This Globe and Mail story adds a little more detail:
[External Link]
Obviously, Rippert still can't be certain he shot down Saint-Exupery ("I have hoped ever since that it wasn't him" is quoted elsewhere.), but most of the pieces seem to fit, which is as close to certainty as you can get in cases like this.
I'm surprised they were still using P-38s in the ETO that late. My understanding was they weren't particularly well-suited to combat over Europe, but it looks like they were still useful for recon, as in this case. Interesting.
Dara: You do realise that Germany had conscription, and that there's no particular reason to believe that the man in question was, in fact, a Nazi to any extent beyond that required to survive in a Nazi state (ie, lip service) - even if he was a volunteer?
By 1944, you see, Germany was under attack, not attacking, and one need not be a Nazi to want to defend one's nation ... even if it's being run by Nazis and has committed great crimes - human psychology is more complex than you seem to be able to grasp.
(And for that matter that the military in general was among the least-Nazified areas of German society? That's why they felt the need to make the Waffen-SS units, because the Army wasn't sufficiently ideological.)
"He was in the Luftwaffe, therefore he hated Jews!" indicates a staggeringly shallow understanding of the history of the era.
(Regarding his "body count", he was a fighter pilot, shooting other pilots and aircraft. One doesn't expect that to generally be regretted, no matter which country the pilot was flying for. The pilot's attitude as published is exactly comparable to that of American or British pilots shooting down Germans.
That he regrets shooting down a great literary figure indicates nothing more than that he's human - something you otherwise seem eager to deny because he happened to be a Kraut, and to have been drafted and indoctrinated by the wrong side.)
Without going into the complex politics of Nazi-era Germany, here's an interesting (and unusual)picture taken in Paris during the war. The fellow in the uniform is a Luftwaffe officer, better known as Dr. Jazz, and the band includes 4 blacks, a jew, and the great gypsy guitarist, Django Reinhardt.
[External Link]
Sigivald,
"one need not be a _____ to want to defend one's nation ... even if it's being run by _____ and has committed great crimes - human psychology is more complex than you seem to be able to grasp. "
Geez when I sub in Islamofascist into that argument I catch all kinds of flak on this blog.
But sorry, we're talking Nazis. Conscripted Nazi fighters at that. Would you like to confer that immunity to Afghans who get forced into fighting with the Taliban?
[External Link]
The Jewish comment stems from the ludicrous focus on a single incident to characterize this pilot. If he wouldn't have shot down *that* guy, then he must have considered some people worthy targets. I'm just wondering what his metrics for a worthy victim were before I start giving a damn about his exceptions.
I understand that a German uniform doesn't make you the devil incarnate, but during WWII it certainly made you part of the problem.
If stories about Germans in WWII offend you, I suggest you get a human rights commission to look into the matter. Maybe they can ban all publication of such information, so you won't get the vapours reading about a fighter pilot shooting down someone he admired, and regretting it. Which, incidentally, is exactly as far as this story goes, your attempts to characterize the pilot on the basis of zero further information notwithstanding.
Posted at 2008-03-18 13:37:35 [PermaLink]"your attempts to characterize the pilot on the basis of zero further information"
I do believe that the only characterization I did was on the basis that he was flying for Hitler in 1944.
The fact that 60+ years later he regrets 30 seconds of his career in the Luftwaffe rounds off to "zero information" in my books which is why I can hardly believe this doe-eyed treatment when he tells us that he's sorry that there was no La Petit Prince Deux.
Crispytoast: A good piece on the P-38 in the ETO:
[External Link]
The "Forked-Tailed Devil" really wasn't up to things there. More, esp. on recon, and its better record in the Pacific:
[External Link]
'The new Lightnings were operated by the US Army Eighth Air Force in Europe beginning in 1943 for long-range escort missions, but did not achieve great success in this role. This was partly because it was harder to fly than a single-engine aircraft and, since it had no engine in front of the pilot to keep him warm, was an "icebox" during high-altitude missions.
The Eighth operated F-5 recon variants with more enthusiasm and success. They were also operated by a Free French squadron, which worked as part of the USAAF Twelfth Air Force, and in fact the French would continue to operate the type up to 1952.
Unfortunately, since F-5s operated alone, when their missions went wrong they generally disappeared without a trace. The noted aviation pioneer and writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery vanished in an F-5 while on a reconnaissance mission over Lyons, France, on 31 July 1944. A French scuba diver found the wreckage of a Lightning in the Mediterranean off Marseilles in 2000, and this wreck attracted interest as there was reason to believe it was Saint-Exupery's.
Despite its mixed career in Europe, the Lightning remained an outstanding success in the Pacific. Freezing cockpits were not a problem in the warm tropics. In fact, since there was no way to open a window while in flight, as it caused buffeting by setting up turbulence through the tailplane, it was often too hot, and pilots would fly stripped down to shorts, tennis shoes, and parachute.
P-38 pilots racked up big scores against the Japanese...
The P-38 fought all around the Pacific, from the Aleutians to New Guinea to Burma and China. A P-38 is said to have been the first American aircraft to land in Japan after VJ-Day, when a pair of them set down on Nitagahara, with the pilots later claiming they were "low on fuel".'
Mark
Ottawa
Of course, one the P-38's biggest "scores" was shooting down Admiral Yamamoto's Betty bomber.
Posted at 2008-03-18 15:54:09 [PermaLink]Great links, Mark. Thanks.
From the second link, I shudder at this:
"Standard Lightnings were even used as crew and cargo transports in the South Pacific. They were fitted with pods attached to the underwing pylons, replacing drop tanks or bombs, that could carry a single passenger in a lying-down position or cargo."
!!!
This is interesting:
"On 15 July 1942, six P-38Fs and two B-17Es were flying from Greenland to Iceland on a leg of a trans-Atlantic shuttle to Britain when they ran into a blizzard. They turned back to Greenland but the base was socked in, and they were forced to belly in on the Greenland icecap. [...] The eight aircraft of the "Lost Squadron" forgotten until 1981. Two Americans, an airplane dealer named Patrick Epps JR and an architect named Richard Taylor, were chatting. Taylor owned a Learjet but told Epps he really wanted a P-38. Epps replied that he knew where six were, and said they would be like new. All they would have to do is shovel some snow off them.
They mounted a number of expeditions to find the machines, finally locating them in 1988 with ice-penetrating radar. Epps knew they would be buried in ice, but everyone was astounded when they found the aircraft at a depth of well over 86 meters (250 feet)!"
Damn that pesky global warming.
"They were fitted with pods attached to the underwing pylons, replacing drop tanks or bombs, that could carry a single passenger in a lying-down position or cargo."
Crispy - don't give Air Canada ideas.
![[External Link]](http://www.djangomontreal.com/images/DoctorJazz.jpg){kind=link}