A close-up of B-17 bombers on Buckinghams ramp, from the April 14 1944

Description: Buckingham was a flexible gunnery training base, used to train the gunners who would defend bombers.

It was constructed starting in 1942 at a cost of $10 million on a total of 7,000 acres of swamp land, which had to be drained with an extensive system of newly constructed canals.

Training was conducted in both air-to-air & air-to-surface gunnery.

The air-to-air training used a variety of aircraft, including T-6, RP-63, B-17, and B-24s.

For ground-based training, a number of facilities were available, including moving target ranges and a number of gunnery simulators.

The foundations of these simulators are still present in the thick overgrowth west of the airfield.

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