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Originally Posted by Jimbuna

Southern Front

American naval aviation pioneer Richard C. Saufley is killed on Santa Rosa Island on a flight out of the Naval Aeronautic Station, Pensacola, Florida when his Curtiss Model E hydroplane AH-8 goes down at the 8-hour-51-minute mark of his flight.

America's first naval aviator to see combat: http://www.usni.org/magazines/navalhistory/2009-10/performed-all-their-duties-well

Naval aviation was barely three years old in 1914 when it had its baptism of fire over Mexico. Lieutenants (junior grade) Patrick N. L. Bellinger and Richard C. Saufley(photo) raced over to hydroaeroplane AH-3 and rose aloft in barely five minutes. The members of the naval aviation section assigned to the battleship USS Mississippi deployed to Vera Cruz, Mexico, answered their first call to action after receiving an urgent message at 0908 on 6 May 1914:
It is reported by natives that at a point known as Punta Gorda, consisting of one large stone building near the beach, about one mile north of Vera Cruz, a company of Mexican soldiers, about 100 men, is encamped. A report is requested. By order of Col. Waller McGill.
As the aviators headed northward along the coast toward Boca del Rio Antigua at an average altitude of 3,200 feet, they flew low over a group of Mexican Army stragglers, who opened fire with their rifles and hit the fragile plane. Bellinger immediately pulled up, and he and Saufley miraculously escaped unhurt. On returning to base, the men stepped out of AH-3 and grimly inspected the bullet holes in the wings-the first damage sustained by a U.S. aircraft from enemy fire. As Bellinger> later recounted in an article for National Geographic, the U.S. aircraft carried no weapons and on one of his last flights in Mexico, he decided to exact some measure of revenge on the Mexican forces and grabbed the nearest thing he could find in camp. Thus, he made a bar of soap the first air to ground ordnance dropped from a Navy aircraft.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_N._L._Bellinger USS Mississippi's two Curtiss floatplanes enroute to Vera Cruz < the Curtiss AH-3 is on the turret (photos enlarge) Considering the remarkable career of Vice Admiral Bellinger, the loss of equally able LTJG Sauffley was tragic indeed.