There are a number of conflicting accounts about Masson’s background, but the most reliable information indicates that he was born in Asnières, France, on February 23, 1886. After a brief career as an apprentice jeweler, he enlisted in the French army in 1903. When his service was completed, he worked several years for a magneto manufacturer. In 1909 he met the famous aviator Louis Paulhan, who hired him as a mechanic. Masson later recalled that he made his first solo flight in France that year in a Farman biplane.

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Masson came to the United States in 1910 with Paulhan, who launched a major aerial exhibition tour across the country. With help from his mentor, Masson flew whenever he could during 1911 and 1912, both solo and with other pilots, but he could not afford to acquire his own airplane. Only when he joined the Glenn Martin Flying School did he receive his pilot’s license, Aero Club of America Certificate No. 202, in January 1913.

A number of well-publicized flights in California and in the Midwest in 1912 had given Masson a reputation as a daring and durable aviator. Consequently, during the Mexican delegation’s visit to the Martin facility early in 1913, the officials offered Masson $300 a month base pay, plus $50 for each reconnaissance flight and $250 for each bombing run he made, if he would join the revolutionary forces.

Captains in the U.S. Navy or colonels in the U.S. Army were then paid about $300 a month. The Mexican delegation’s offer was tempting to the young pilot, particularly when he learned that as part of the deal the Mexicans would spend $5,000 to buy, for his use, a Martin pusher biplane with which he was already familiar. So Masson, along with his Australian mechanic Thomas J. Dean, decided they would go to work for the Mexican revolutionaries as the crew of the primitive-looking American airplane. Masson was given the rank of captain in the revolutionary army.

Aircraft designers were starting to produce airplanes with tractor engines and covered fuselages in 1912, but the Martin biplane’s configuration was more reminiscent of the Wright brothers’ original plane. It was adequately powered in that it had a 75-hp Curtiss-built pusher engine, which gave it a range of 100 miles with a passenger on board. The pilot and passenger sat out in front of the engine in an exposed position among the rods and struts that held the plane together.

Masson had assumed responsibility for getting the Martin biplane across the border into Mexico as a part of his arrangement with his Mexican employers. The movement of the plane was no secret. The New York Times reported that it was being boxed and transported by truck and wagon from Tucson to the border town of Naco, Ariz. There, a one-legged deputy sheriff named Hopkins aided in the crossing by conveniently looking the other way; for his assistance, he was later rewarded with a major’s commission in the revolutionary army. As a result of the news coverage, it was no secret that aerial warfare was in the offing in northwest Mexico.

The plane was hauled to a newly created airstrip only about 40 miles from Guaymas, and several railroad passenger cars served as headquarters of the aviation unit. Guaymas was the major port of the state of Sonora, located on the Gulf of California (or the Sea of Cortez), about 230 miles south of Nogales, Ariz. After considerable difficulty assembling the plane and getting it running, Masson eventually test-flew the machine for the first time from Mexican soil, thus becoming a one-plane air force for the army of Colonel Obregon. The installation of the bombardier’s seat and a primitive cross-hairs bombsight changed the plane into a bomber. It was named Sonora for the state in which it first took to the air for the Constitutionalists.

No aviation ordnance of any type existed in North America at that time, so homemade bombs were created for the attacks. The bombs were 18-inch-long pieces of 3-inch pipe, filled with sticks of 40-percent dynamite, among which rivets were distributed for shrapnel. A push-type detonator was rigged to the bottom through a pipe nipple, and a crude fin was mounted on the top to ensure that the bombs would fall in an upright position. The 30-pound bombs were launched by pulling a toggle that released them from the rack on the undercarriage, where eight of them could be stowed.

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