Townsend in Wonderland

Long-time Townsend Brown inquirer Jan Lundquist – aka 'Rose' in The Before Times – has her own substantial archive to share with readers and visitors to this site. This forum is dedicated to the wealth of material she has compiled: her research, her findings, and her speculations.
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Jan Lundquist
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Townsend in Wonderland

Post by Jan Lundquist »

Townsend "left" the Navy and the East Coast toward the end of 1942 and, supposedly, took a job with Vega (Lockheed) Aircraft in Burbank. But his first residence on Wonderland Avenue places him quite near a large, mysterious complex at the end of the street on Lookout Mountain Dr. Even Wikipedia can't say when it was built, nor for what purposes.

Either
The 100,000 sq ft (9,300 m²) facility was built on 2.5 acres in 1941 as a World War II air defense center to coordinate Los Angeles area radar installations
OR
The facility had been constructed on two acres of land in 1943 at a cost of $132,000 to house the Los Angeles Flight Control Center.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lookout_M ... ce_Station


Wonderland and Lookout Mountain are in the Laurel Canyon area of the Temple Hill neighborhood,

Temple Hill Neighbohood, Los Angeles.png

where Townsend also intended to build a grand lab:

TempleHillPlans.png
TempleHillPlans.png (129.81 KiB) Viewed 1893 times

For the full announcement, see the Temple Hill Lab Thread. The photo there shows Townsend in his Naval uniform, though the announcement does not claim affiliation. I am not sure what to make of that. Actually, I am not sure what purpose this announcement was meant to serve.

Linda has related that Jo had settled nicely into the Wonderland neighborhood, when Townsend suddenly and abruptly told her find a new family home far away, and drop her new friends completely. Which one might naturally do to protect ones family from being connected to classified work. But then why draw attention to is all over again?

Was this a prairie chicken feint: "just some disgraced navy guy down in Laguna Beach, claiming that he's financing this big operation" Or was it truth in plain site? The question is who funded the foundation?
natecull
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Re: Townsend in Wonderland

Post by natecull »

That's a very interesting catch about Wonderland Drive being in Temple Hill. Hmm.
Either

The 100,000 sq ft (9,300 m²) facility was built on 2.5 acres in 1941 as a World War II air defense center to coordinate Los Angeles area radar installations

OR

The facility had been constructed on two acres of land in 1943 at a cost of $132,000 to house the Los Angeles Flight Control Center.
A slight discrepancy there in source documents, sure. Flight Control and Air Defense seem like the same function to me: coordinating the information from radar, which would have been coming in from telephones (no SAGE yet to do any real-time electronic displays). 1941 feels a little early, with the war not having been declared yet, but I suppose it could have been a bare-bones military installation. By 1943 I imagine the declared shooting war, with the enemy in the Pacific, would have kicked the site into full gear and given it full funding.

Sometime after the war, I believe we've previously established that the Wonderland facility was repurposed as a site for processing of nuclear weapon test photography, but when Townsend was living there I would imagine it was still just an active radar information center.

With Townsend presumably doing something radar-related for Vega, I guess it might make sense for him to live near a place where there might be other people in the radar business?
The question is who funded the foundation?
"Of Columbus" presumably meaning Columbus, Ohio? Do we know any Townsend friends there?

Nate
Going on a journey, somewhere far out east
We'll find the time to show you, wonders never cease
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