Battle of Midway [spoilers]

[Mark Kohut]

Kudos to you, and more for your relentless findings. I don't know even how to start looking up the local geography.............

--- On Sat, 8/29/09, Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:

> From: Robin Landseadel <robinlandsKudoseadel at comcast.net>
> Subject: Re: Battle of Midway [spoilers]
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Saturday, August 29, 2009, 1:20 PM
> 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/
>