Saint-Exupéry, himself one of the fire-flung pilots of the French air force in the early, desperate days of the war, makes several damning observations on the futility-fatality quotient of their missions.  His slim book, ostensibly describing a single sortie, paints a shocking picture of the dangers involved.

There were aviation crews still melting like wax flung into the fire.

Source: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Flight to Arras, trans. by Lewis Galantière (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961), p. 100

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