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112k | View on the ship's afterdeck, while she was carrying the Navy's first combat air group to Vera Cruz, Mexico, in April 1914. Planes visible include a Curtiss "AB" type flying boat (on deck at left), and a Curtiss "AH" type floatplane (atop the after 12"/45 gun turret). Note boom rigged to the battleship's superstructure, at left, for hoisting the planes on and off the ship. | Official U.S. Navy Photograph, # 80-G-461428, now in the collections of the National Archives. | |
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344k | A Curtiss AB-3 on special rails leading to the catapult aboard North Carolina (ACR-12), the first ship in the Navy to be authorized to carry and operate aircraft on 12 July 1916. | U.S. Navy Photograph submitted by Pieter Bakels. | |
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68k | A Curtiss AB-3 lowered into water from Mississippi (BB-23), April 1914. | Photo from the University of San Diego History Department & submitted by Bill Gonyo. | |
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86k | On 25 April, Lieutenant (junior grade) Patrick N.L. Bellinger climbed aboard the AB-3 flying boat and made a reconnaissance over the waters around Veracruz in search of mines that had been reported, thus having the distinction of making the first flight of an American military aircraft under combat conditions. Operating from rustic encampments ashore, the naval aircraft instituted a regular schedule of flights from both Tampico and Veracruz, though the most action came at the latter location. On 2 May 1914, Bellinger and Ensign W.D. Lamont flew the AH-3 hydroaeroplane in direct support of ground troops when they were called upon to perform aerial reconnaissance near Tejar, Mexico, in search of enemy forces firing at encamped U.S. Marines. Four days later, Bellinger and Lieutenant (junior grade) Richard C. Saufley returned from a mission with bullet holes in the fabric wing of their aircraft, having been taken under fire by Mexican riflemen during a scouting flight. 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. |
Photo & text from April 2009 edition of navalaviationmuseum.org. Photo added 06/16/09. | |
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