Buckingham Gunnery School

Simultaneous to the development of the Army base at Page Field, headquarters were being set up for the Army Air Force's Gunnery School in a wasteland area of dead pine trees and palmettos, ten miles east of Fort Myers.

According to Grismer, the site at Buckingham was obtained by Lt. Col. W. A. Maxwell, commandant at Tyndall Field, Panama City, who arrived in Fort Myers on January 19, 1942, with a "board of Army officers."

Maxwell said the Army Air Corps needed a large tract to establish a flexible gunnery school. Conferences were held with Stringfellow and Fitzsimmons. Within three days, contracts were signed for 6,500 acres at Buckingham.

These Fort Myers and Lee County officials purchased the site and leased it to the U. S. Government for $1 per year for the duration of the war with the stipulation that the Government would return the land and the improvements.

According to the U. S. Army Air Force history of Buckingham Gunnery School, "On May 5, 1942, Major Richard W. Duggan, then a captain, arrived in Fort Myers and set up his offices in the Collier Arcade...Furniture for the office was borrowed from local business men. Edward Allen, accountant, lent a typewriter and desk and Harry McWhorter and Harry Wood, real estate men, both gave a desk. Police Chief Charles Moore arranged parking space for the office, and the city and county officials gave numerous mops and other office equipment to help the new gunnery school."

Four days later, Col. Delmar T. Spivey arrived from Maxwell Field where he had been serving as project officer for the field for some time.

Colonel Spivey described the area as what "may be the ugliest field in the entire nation." He tempered his remark with the added words, "but it is the best Army post that I know of."

Construction of the field would ultimately cost $10 million. On March 29, 1942, according to Grismer, "an advance detail of 650 men of the 323rd Air Base Group and 348 Materiel Group arrived with General Walter H. Franck, commander of the 3rd Air Force, in charge."

Work began May 25 and the buildings were divided into two types--tar paper buildings, built in 75 days, or the more permanent buildings built in 110 days. At the peak of the work, 3,000 to 3,500 men were employed on the post, and a majority of the buildings were in serviceable condition when troops began to arrive.

Accommodations were less than desirable, with outdoor privies, little drinking water, and a tar paper covered lunch stand.

The post was formally activated on July 5. Three weeks later, the first cadre of men arrived from Tyndall Field.

The runways were completed and training began September 5. Within seven months, Buckingham airfield was turning out gunners who were able to fire on enemy targets from the domed turrets and small windows of the giant bombers. Veterans who had fought off Zeros and Messerschmitts were sent to Buckingham Field to train others in the ways of enemy warfare. With six runways, each a mile long, paved and suitable for all types of weather, the sky over the Caloosahatchee River was filled with B-17 and B-24 bombers.

In December of 1942, the Central Instructors School was established and all the instructors in the nation's six aerial gunnery schools were required to go through the training course at Buckingham.

At its peak, the 6,500 acre base housed 16,000 men. By the time Buckingham was shut down in September 1945, 50,000 soldiers had been trained there as air crew gunners.

After the war, the barracks at Buckingham were used as the Edison College, which closed down in the summer of 1948.

Even though the mosquitoes were a menace, the soil sandy, the summers miserably hot and the fields laced with palmettoes, many of the men who trained here found something of value for they returned after the War. They made their homes here and many became community leaders.

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