The BBC story says a mystery about the Little Prince author has been solved.

Mr von Gartzen told the BBC News website that he made 1,200 phone calls to former Luftwaffe pilots and their families in search of the man who shot down the French writer.

Finally, he was told about a man who had a clear memory of the events of 31 July 1944, the date Antoine de Saint-Exupery disappeared.

“I presented myself as doing research and he said: ‘You can stop researching now because I shot down Saint-Exupery’.”

That sounds like a confession. Case closed?

Lino von Gartzen said it came as a big shock: “I never thought I would find who shot him down. I was quiet for some minutes as this was too much for me”.

For another two years he continued to check Horst Rippert’s story and is convinced by it.

“From my point of view as a professional historian it’s a very, very good hypothesis and everything he told us seems to be true.

Two years of checking a story is a nice luxury to have. Most investigations I get to work on have a half-life of a couple weeks.

“He feels guilty and very, very sorry about it. He was very scared that the cheap press would massacre him.”

In the published extracts, Mr Rippert describes being a fan of de Saint-Exupery’s work. “In our youth, at school, we had all read him. We loved his books,” he said.

Talk about a gut-wrenching conclusion to the tale. Does he feel he will avoid massacre if he claims to be a fan of the man he killed? Or was he really a fan? Imagine if fighter pilots were actually worried they might shoot down their favorite author — fear of literary impact. I guess that would be a form of conscientious objection to war.