Buckingham Field

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Buckingham Field


6 January 1999
IATA: none – ICAO: none – FAA: FL59
Summary
Airport type Privately-owned
Owner Lee County Mosquito Control District
Location Fort Myers, Florida
Elevation AMSL 23 ft / 7 m
Coordinates 26°38′36″N 081°42′37″W / 26.64333, -81.71028
Runways
Direction Length Surface
ft m
14/32 4,046 1,233 Concrete
6/24 2,726 831 Concrete
Source: Federal Aviation Administration[1]
Buckingham Army Airfield, 14 April 1945
Buckingham Army Airfield, 14 April 1945
A formation of four planes wing their way along the Caloosahatchee River above east Fort Myers to the Buckingham Flexible Gunnery School's range over the Gulf of Mexico (ca 1945). The plane on the right carries the tow target. The gunners shoot from the rear seat of the planes.
A formation of four planes wing their way along the Caloosahatchee River above east Fort Myers to the Buckingham Flexible Gunnery School's range over the Gulf of Mexico (ca 1945). The plane on the right carries the tow target. The gunners shoot from the rear seat of the planes.

Buckingham Field[2] (FAA LID: FL59) is a private-use airport located seven nautical miles (13 km) east of the central business district of Fort Myers, in Lee County, Florida, United States. It is privately owned by the Lee County Mosquito Control District.[1]

Contents

[edit] History

[edit] Wartime Use

Buckingham Army Airfield has its origins as an aircraft gunner 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 (28 km²) of swamp land, which had to be drained with an extensive system of newly constructed canals.

The airfield originally had three 5,000' runways, with 2 oval tracks of the Ground Moving Target Range, located to the west of the airfield, as well as nearby skeet ranges & trap ranges. 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 the moving target ranges & a number of gunnery simulators.

Most of the B-24's that flew the oil refinery raids over Ploesti, Romania came from Buckingham. When the mission idea came down, they took most of the crews from Buckingham as they were experienced. They were in the middle of their frangible bullet training there. That was where they had a P-39 & a couple of other aircraft with an extra layer of skin and they fired the bullets right at the aircraft instead of a tow target.

At its peak the base housed 16,000 men.

By the end of World War II the airfield consisted of a total of six concrete runways (the largest was 5,800' long), along with a large concrete ramp area. The airfield and its target ranges were comprised of a total of 65,723 acres (265.97 km²), and had approximately 700 buildings.

Buckingham closed in 1945, after graduating almost 48,000 aerial gunners.[3]

[edit] Postwar Civil Use

After the war, the barracks at Buckingham were briefly used as the Edison College, but this closed in 1948. Most of the buildings of the original base were subsequently removed over time.

A street grid for a planned housing development named Lehigh Acres was eventually built over the area formerly occupied by Buckingham's runways in the 1950s. By the mid-1970s, the runways were gone except for the concrete ends. The 1978 Miami Sectional Chart depicted three paved portions of Buckingham's former ramp as the runways of the Lehigh Acres West private airfield. The longest runway was depicted as 3,000'.

The street grid built over the location of the former runways remained undeveloped for some period of time, before eventually being partially filled in with houses, it remains, however, about 90% unoccupied.

By 2000, the northern portion of the ramp was to used as a runway, being operated as a private field, Buckingham Field Airport, by the Lee County Mosquito/Hyacinth Control District, which operates a fleet of 23 aircraft & helicopters (including C-47s & several rare C-117 Super Dakotas).

Portions of the ramp area are also used for automobile racing.

[edit] Facilities

Buckingham Field has two concrete paved runways: 14/32 measuring 4,046 x 400 ft (1,233 x 122 m) and 6/24 measuring 2,726 x 400 ft (831 x 122 m).[1]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c FAA Airport Master Record for FL59 (Form 5010 PDF), effective 2008-04-10
  2. ^ Buckingham Army Airfield / Lehigh West Airfield / Buckingham Field (FL59) at Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields
  3. ^ Thole, Lou (1999), Forgotten Fields of America : World War II Bases and Training, Then and Now - Vol. 2. Publisher: Pictorial Histories Pub, ISBN 1575100517

[edit] External links