At midday on 31 July 1944, the noted aviation pioneer and writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry ("Night Flight", "Wind, Sand and Stars" and "The Little Prince") vanished in his P-38 of the French "Armée de l'Air's" "Groupe de Chasse II/33", after departing Borgo-Porreta, Corsica. His health, both physically and mentally, had been deteriorating. Saint-Exupéry was said to be intermittently subject to depression and there had been talk of taking him off flying status. He was on a flight over the Mediterranean, from Corsica to mainland France, in an unarmed F-5B photoreconnaissance variant of the P-38J, described as being a "war-weary, non-airworthy craft".