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Harlingen AAF had a Waller Gunnery Trainer for firing at "planes projected on a screen", [1]: 26 and B-29 Flexible Gunnery Training at Buckingham, Harlingen, and Las Vegas included the "manipulation trainer". The manipulation trainer used 12 towers at heights of 10–40 feet (3.0–12.2 m) and arranged like a B-29 formation.
Army Air Forces Gunnery School/Army Air Forces Flexible Gunnery School; 4 August 1942–30 June 1945 460th Base Headquarters and Air Base Squadron; 26 December 1942–30 April 1944 3018th Army Air Forces Base Unit; 1 May 1944–30 June 1945 Now: Kingman Airport and Industrial Park (IATA: IGM, ICAO: KIGM)
Buckingham Field was one of eventually seven Flexible Gunnery Schools. There were no dedicated flexible gunnery training schools prior to World War II, and as combat aircraft production was ramping up around the country, there was a desperate need for qualified defensive gunners to man the B-17s, B-24s, B-26s and other aircraft. Also, flexible ...
Flexible Gunnery School was a six-week program that taught the cadet how to man a flexible-mount machinegun or a powered turret. All aircrew had to attend gunnery school in case of emergencies and had to qualify before they could join an aircrew. Flight Engineers manned the top powered turret as one of their jobs.
It is a 54-foot (16 m) tall "Airdrome Traffic Control" (ATC) tower that was built to control air traffic at the Kingman Army Air Forces (KAAF) Flexible Gunnery School. It has a 14-by-14-foot (4.3 m × 4.3 m) "cab" with a hip roof. In 1988, the cab was empty and the tower was surrounded by fencing.
As the men graduated from flexible gunnery school, they were assigned to combat crews either forming in the United States or as replacements to overseas combat units. [1] The school at Buckingham was the central school for training instructors for flexible gunnery until June 1944, when it moved to Laredo Army Air Field. [2]
At the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Army Air Corps still did not have a specialized school for flexible gunnery. Three schools opened in December 1941, and the program grew rapidly. In July 1943 flexible gunnery schools had possessed few tactical aircraft with which to train, mainly 55 twin-engine B-34 Lexingtons (Lockheed Venturas).
Over 48,000 soldiers were trained until the school, one of three such types in the country, closed in 1945. [2] It was initially assigned to the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) Gulf Coast Training Center as a flexible gunnery school, with the 78th Service Group being designated as the first host organization at the new airfield. [3]