Saint_ Exupery

The second candidate for the shooting down
of Saint Exupéry was Horst Rippert of JGr.
200. In this area, he operated as a fighter
pilot for several years. Due to his ‘non-aryan’
roots, he tended to have problems with his
superiors. He was even to have been sent as
a foot soldier to the Eastern Front. However,
due to connections, he was able to remain in
the south of France as a mechanic.
In the summer of 1943, the unit then known as
JGr. Süd, received a new commanding offi-cer, the legendary Heinz Bär. He vehemently
opposed Rippert’s role and placed him back
among the combat pilots. Over the course of
1944, Rippert became one of the most su-ccessful pilots to operate in the area. By the
end of July of that year, he had accounted
for six four engined heavy bombers, a photo
reconnaissance twin engined Mosquito, and
a Mustang fighter.
He flew to the end of the war (with JG 27),
and it is known that he accounted for at least
29 aerial victories. According to the Bunde-sarchiv, eight of these were confirmed. One
was not confirmed, and a determination of
another two were postponed. The remainder
were never determined or their details remain
unknown. After the war, he became a sports
television director with ZDF, and the license
plate of his car must not have been missing
the number ‘109‘. His brother was the Ger-man singer Ivan Rebroff (Hans Rolf Rippert).
I have the honor of owning Horst Ripper-t’s journal with his dedication. From them,
it is evident just how narrow the radio contact
had been with ground control during action
against the enemy. At one point, after shoo-ting down an American fighter into the sea,
he used the term ‘Aufschlagbrand’ (fire after
impact with the ground) and was promptly in-carcerated on his landing, because the auto-matic conclusion was that he had made the kill
up, since he was operating over water. All was
eventually explained, and Rippert continued
to fly. This is only one small example of how
activities of the Luftwaffe could be documen-ted on both sides of the front.
About five years after the end of the war,
Rippert began to consider the notion that he
perhaps did shoot down Saint Exupéry. He fi-nanced his own research into the subject and
concluded that he could not have had any-thing to do with the event, and was still to the
year 2000 convinced of this fact. And the end
of Saint Exupéry was still a mystery.
In 2000, in the ocean not far from Marseille,
Luc Vanrell discovered the wreckage of an
allied aircraft. After the aircraft’s raising
and an analysis of construction numbers, it
was certain the aircraft in question was Saint
Exupéry’s.
Luc Vanrell and Jacques Pradel published
a book in 2008, which is based on new alle-gations of Rippert that he did in fact shoot
Saint Exupery down. What led him to change
his mind, I don’t know. And what’s more, it is
apparent from the book that the authors did
not know about the above described events
documented in various archives, which were
accessible.
I am adding my small contributions and disco-vered documentation to research that is prin-ted on his website www.ghostbombers.com by
Nick Beale.
src- Jan Bobek @ Eduard News 8/2014.