His desert crash, is his inspiration for the book The Little Prince..



Antoine de Saint Exupéry[1] (pronounced [ɑ̃twan də sɛ̃tɛgzypeˈʀi]) (June 29, 1900—July 31, 1944) was a French writer and aviator. He is most famous for his novella The Little Prince, and is also well known for his books about aviation adventures, including Night Flight and Wind, Sand and Stars.

Antoine Jean-Baptiste Marie Roger de Saint Exupéry was born in Lyon to an old family of provincial nobility, the third of five children of Marie de Fonscolombe and Count Jean de Saint Exupéry, an insurance broker who died before his son was even four.

After failing his final exams at preparatory school, Saint Exupéry entered the École des Beaux-Arts to study architecture. In 1921, he began his military service with the 2nd Regiment of Chasseurs (light cavalry), and was then sent to Strasbourg for training as a pilot. The following year, he obtained his license and was offered transfer to the air force. Bowing to the objections of the family of his fiancée—the future novelist Louise Leveque de Vilmorin—he instead settled in Paris and took an office job. The couple ultimately broke off the engagement, however, and he worked at several jobs over the next few years without success.

By 1926, Saint Exupéry was flying again. He became one of the pioneers of international postal flight, in the days when aircraft had few instruments. Later he complained that those who flew the more advanced aircraft had become more like accountants than pilots. He worked on the Aéropostale between Toulouse and Dakar.

Desert crash

On December 30, 1935 at 14:45 after a flight of 19 hours and 38 minutes Saint Exupéry, along with his navigator, André Prévot, crashed in the Libyan Sahara desert en route to Saigon. Their plane was a Caudron C-630 Simoun n°7042 (serial F-ANRY). The crash site is believed to have been located in the Wadi Natrun. The team were attempting to fly from Paris to Saigon faster than any previous aviators, for a prize of 150,000 francs. Both survived the landing, but were faced with the prospect of rapid dehydration in the Sahara. They had no idea of their location. According to his memoir, Wind, Sand and Stars, their sole supplies were grapes, one orange, and a ration of wine.

What Saint Exupéry himself told the press shortly after rescue was that the men only had a thermos of sweet coffee, chocolate, and a handful of crackers, [2] enough to sustain them for one day. They experienced visual and auditory hallucinations; by day three, they were so dehydrated they ceased to sweat. Finally, on day four, a Bedouin on a camel discovered them, saving Saint Exupéry and Prévot's lives. Saint Exupéry's fable The Little Prince, which begins with a pilot being marooned in the desert, is in part a reference to this experience
Further reading>>>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_de_Saint-Exup%C3%A9ry


"If you want to build a ship, don't herd people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work but rather, teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."

~Antoine de Saint-Exupery


"Grown-ups love figures. When you tell them that you have made a new friend, they never ask you any questions about essentail matters. They never say to you, “What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies?” Instead, they demand: “How old is he? How many brothers has he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make?” Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him."
~ From The Little Prince

Also from the book.

"“All men have the stars,” he answered, “but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travellers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems. For my businessman they were wealth. But all the stars are silent. You–you alone–will have the stars as no one else has them–”"