Long before the 89th Fighter Squadron ever saw the Assam Valley, the men who would become the Burma Banshees were learning their trade on home soil — at Mitchell Field, New York.
The footage below captures a piece of that training: pilots working on wing shooting, using shotguns on clay targets to sharpen the same skills of lead and deflection they’d need firing .50 calibers at moving aircraft. It’s a small detail, but it says a lot about how the Army Air Forces built fighter pilots — teaching the eye and the hand to track a moving target long before a man ever climbed into a P-40’s cockpit.
This is also where the bonds were formed. Pilots like E.R. McMillin, W.F. Duke, and P.R. Adair trained side by side here, months before they’d fly together over Burma. The friendships — and the trust — that carried them through combat missions like Operations Order 32 started on this field.
Take a look at the footage above