IWC - Airmail Adventurer
IW Magazine - 15 November 2012
Born in 1900 at the dawn of the golden age of flight, Antoine de Saint-Exupery was a pioneer of aviation who helped to establish these dangerous airmail routes as part of France's Aeropostale.
He was also a war hero who was decorated with the Military Cross for accomplishing a dangerous photo reconnaissance flight over Arras during WWII, and who disappeared in 1944 over the Mediterranean while on an Allied flying mission in occupied France.
But while he was all these things, he is still best recognized around the world as the author and illustrator of The Little Prince. In recent years, IWC has honored Saint-Exupery with a special collection of pilot watches.
"With our long tradition of manufacturing Pilot's Watches, we feel that there are b bonds that bind us to Antoine de Saint-Exupery," explains Georges Kern, CEO of IWC.
"We were inspired by a man who was also a passionate designer and who obtained his first aeronautical patent in 1936, the very year that IWC, with the same obsession for engineering, built its first Special Pilot's Watch and unveiled it to the public. We have enormous admiration for a pilot who was prepared to risk his life in the name of technological progress. And we are honoring Saint-Exupery, the great writer and humanist, with whose works many of us grew up. Mankind and its pursuit of happiness are themes that are prevalent throughout his work."
Youth Foundation
As a humanist and award-winning writer, Saint-Exupery reflected on the human condition and accorded a very high value to man, believing in universal values of fraternity, friendship, duty, valor, selflessness and the invisible links that bind men together. And from these values the Antoine de Saint-Exupery Youth Foundation (www.fasej.org)was born. Believing that the world needs responsible young citizens, the Foundation was established in Paris in June 2009 by the Saint-Exupery - d'Agay Estate (the heirs of Antoine de Saint-Exupery).
With an increasing number of young people living in unfavorable conditions, the Foundation's objective is to offer them tangible support in domains like education and the fight against illiteracy by helping them build better futures for themselves so that they participate actively in society and contribute to enriching the world.
The IWC-Saint-Exupery partnership, begun in 2005, represents a tribute to aeronautics and IWC's longstanding pilot's watch tradition. Fascinated with technology and engineering, Saint-Exupery registered around fifteen patents for aviation-related inventions in his lifetime, echoing the hunger for technical innovation present at IWC.
The name "Antoine de Saint-Exupery" thereafter appeared alongside that of IWC through a series of aviation-focused projects, which debuted in 2006 with the opening of the IWC-Saint-Exupery Space at the Museum of Air and Space in Le Bourget near Paris and an exhibition on time, aviation and pilot's watches.
The exhibit also included wreckage from Saint-Ex's Lockheed P-38 Lightning that had been salvaged from the Mediterranean. Since then, IWC has paid homage to Saint-Ex's life's work as an aviator and writer by creating different limited-edition and single-piece pilot's watches.
The first four models were associated with his literary oeuvre and, each time, one unique example was created in platinum. That model was then auctioned with an original manuscript, or autographed first-edition copy of the book, with the entire proceeds sent to a charitable project jointly chosen by IWC and the Saint-Exupery - d'Agay Estate.
Pilot models
The Pilot's Watch Chronograph launched in 2006, which paid tribute to Exupery's book Night Flight, was followed the next year by the Pilot's Watch Automatic, in homage to Southern Mail. In 2008, the Pilot's Watch UTC honored Wind, Sand and Stars, and 2009's Big Pilot's Watch revered a lifetime's work. The fifth timepiece in 2010 was the limited-edition Big Pilot's Watch Perpetual Calendar, which marked IWC's renewal of its partnership with and commitment to the Foundation - a true vote of confidence in its humanitarian work.
The sixth and latest tribute is the Pilot's Watch Chronograph Edition Antoine de Saint Exupery, launched last April, which marks the centenary of Saint-Exupery's first flight in 1912, when the 12-year-old convinced the pilot Gabriel Salvez to take him for a spin in a Berthaud-Wroblewski.
In a limited edition of 500 pieces, the new 43-mm red gold chronograph features a signature Saint-Ex tobacco-colored dial with sunray-pattern finish and brown calfskin strap with quilted stitching. The in-house developed and manufactured 89361 mechanical automatic caliber with 68-hour power reserve powers a date display, central chronograph seconds hand, chronograph hours and minutes combined on a single totalizer at 12 o'clock, flyback function and small hacking seconds at six o'clock.
A special engraving depicting a P-38 Lightning, the last aircraft Saint-Exupery ever flew on a mission from which he never returned, adorns the caseback.
Adventurous life
Saint-Exupery's life reads like an adventure novel. He started as an airmail pilot on the France-Spain route, then later on to Morocco and Senegal, before crossing the Atlantic to South America. He piloted legendary early-model aircraft and lived out incredible experiences in the Spanish Sahara as station chief of the Cape Juby postal stopover, as well as in Argentina where he set up the first functional airmail service over the snow-capped Andes from Buenos Aires to the southernmost tip of Patagonia. There he inaugurated night-time flights to beat ships and trains in the race against time.
Called up by the French Air Force in 1939, he resumed active service before his exile in the U.S. from 1940 to 1943, where he set about trying to convince the Americans to enter the war against Nazi Germany.
Internationally-renowned during his lifetime, he became a legend after his death. Today, such is his enduring notoriety that there exist two private museums dedicated to him in Japan and Korea.
At the same time, Saint-Exupery wove many of his personal experiences and flying adventures into his literary works. He wrote to feel less alone, as he chain-smoked and drank endless cups of coffee and Coca-Cola, working late into the night. His semi-autobiographical masterpiece, The Little Prince, written during WWII and first published a year before his disappearance, revealed his melancholic state.
He had constantly drawn sketches of this sad little boy with blond curls and a long scarf, the image of whom he had carried in his heart since the early '30s. He believed that to change the world, you had to be able to communicate with children.
No simple children's tale, The Little Prince is a philosophical declaration of a wounded man who foresaw his impending death, which not only criticized the world of adults, but society at large.
This pocket-sized book of poetic and philosophical significance, which has been taken into space by French, American and Russian astronauts, is the most widely-known French work of literature and has been translated into more than 260 languages and dialects.
The Foundation relies on an important international charity network already working on the ground carrying out local projects, which comprises hundreds of committed members, often volunteers, in approximately thirty countries.
Saint-Exupery wrote in Wind, Sand and Stars: "To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible. It is to feel shame at the sight of what seems to be unmerited misery. It is to take pride in a victory won by one's comrades. It is to feel, when setting one's stone, that one is contributing to the building of the world." The Antoine de Saint-Exupery Youth Foundation is following in the footsteps of this man who was as great a storyteller as he was an impassioned pilot, continuing on its path empowering youth across the globe.
Making all of Saint-Exupery's illustrations in The Little Prince accessible to visually-impaired children by 2013 in celebration of the 70th anniversary of the publication of the book's first edition in New York in 1943
Music for the Growing Mind, which offers free musical education to underprivileged children in Hong Kong and Mainland China.
First flights in light aircraft of 100 sick and handicapped children from the Ain region in France in collaboration with the non-profit Les Ailes du Petit Prince, which will take place at the French air base where Saint-Exupery flew for the first time in 1912
Opportunities for youth to discover the world of aviation and its various professions by visiting airbases and participating in airshows through a privileged partnership with the French Air Force
Creation of a youth and cultural center providing educational and sociocultural activities for disadvantaged adolescents from Tegucigalpa, Honduras, by Paris-Tegu.
SIPAR, which combats illiteracy in Cambodia by providing 10,000 children access to reading materials and literary activities every month, setting up libraries and educational centers, and operating mobile library buses serving remote areas.
[Rating: 5 / 5 stars]
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