Battle of Midway [spoilers]

[Robin Landseadel]

More on E. Imperial Highway, El Segundo and the Military Industrial  
Complex in Southern California. It looks there is a west of Watts E.  
Imperial Highway on the northern boundary of the old Douglas Aircraft  
site.  This is all quite relevant by the time we get to chapter four.

	CHAPTER II: FACILITIES
	Headquarters
	When WDD was established on 1 July 1954, it set up temporary
	headquarters in a former parochial school and parish church at
	401-409 East Manchester Boulevard in Inglewood, California.
	The old schoolhouse was only a stopgap solution, however,
	and early in 1955, WDD moved into buildings on Arbor Vitae
	Street in southwest Los Angeles, near Los Angeles
	International Airport.  These offices housed not only Air Force
	and civil service personnel, but also personnel working for the
	Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation, which supported WDD's missile
	programs.

	In 1955, Ramo-Wooldridge purchased 40 acres on the
	southeast corner of Aviation and El Segundo Boulevards in El
	Segundo.  The site was three miles from the Arbor Vitae
	complex but was the closest site available.  Beginning in the
	middle of 1956, a complex of seven buildings was constructed
	on the site to provide offices and laboratories for Ramo-
	Wooldridge’s operations.  That complex, known as the
	Research and Development (R&D) Center, was completed in
	the fall of 1958, and employees of the Corporation’s Space
	Technology Laboratories moved into it.


http://www.losangeles.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-060912-022.pdf

So Doc's LSD investigations is barely north of Douglas Aircraft [Like  
Paul M. sez], a region all tied into TRW as well. N. Aviation Blvd. is  
the east, S. Supulveda the west,  W. El Segundo the south and E.  
Imperial the north boundaries, The bigger web of the region barely  
north of Manhattan Beach is the Los Angeles Air Force Base. What with  
all those wrong questions that Pynchon must have been asking in the  
sixties & seventies, the physical context—the location and the sort of  
work done in that region—of his life at the time must have had a large  
bearing on the content of Gravity's Rainbow. Very interesting.

http://www.losangeles.af.mil/