Antoine de Saint-Exupéry vanishes flying a reconnaissance Lightning

Around midday on 31 July 1944 the aviator and writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of Night Flight, Wind, Sand and Stars and The Little Prince, took off from Borgo-Porreta, Corsica, in an unarmed F-5B, the photo-reconnaissance version of the P-38J, of the French air force's Groupe de Chasse II/33. He was flying over the Mediterranean towards mainland France and never returned. In 2000 a French diver located scattered remains of a Lightning on the seabed off the coast of Marseille, which were recovered in 2003.