During World War II, nearly 50,000 soldiers earned their wings as aerial gunners at the Buckingham Army Air Field’s Flexible Gunnery School, one of only six gunnery schools in the United States, which operated from 1942 until the end of the war in 1945. At the ranges once located near here, south of State Road 82, trainees learned the skills needed to protect American bomber planes from enemy attack. They first learned to shoot at moving targets from a moving platform, firing machine guns from a spinning turret mounted to a truck at unmanned jeeps carrying large white cloth targets along a track inside the range. After ground training, they practiced firing from aircraft at targets towed by other aircraft. This training gave them the skills and knowledge needed to man the many turret and window machine guns on B-17 and B-24 bombers and defend those bombers in both Europe and the Pacific, making these gunnery ranges an important part of Buckingham Army Air Field and Florida’s role in training military personnel who served protecting the nation.