On 7 November 1949, Los Alamitos received its first jet aircraft, an FJ-1 Fury. With all FGs replaced with F6F Hellcats, a reorganisation occurred on 1 December 1950 in which there was provided a wing staff with twenty-five squadrons. During the summer of 1950, 105 midshipmen from the United States Naval Academy reported for four days of an air cruise and 112 seamen reported for eight weeks of training duty. Meanwhile, there was a waiting list for pilots and ground officers. When the naval aviation cadet programme, which had opened on 1 July, closed on 25 October 1950, Los Alamitos had obtained a tenth of the cadets recruited in the entire nation. Meanwhile, in answer to President Truman's request for reservists to volunteer for duty during the Korean War, VG-781 requested mobilization as a complete unit, and was accepted – the first squadron in the nation to do so. Three Marine Corps Organized Reserve units were ordered to active duty, and so was VP-772. To speed up training, on 6 March and again on 16 May 1951 ninety-day trainees reported on board. The third group of trainees came on board for training 16 June and many of them and station personnel helped saved lives and property during heavy rains and floods that damaged the nearby town of Los Alamitos. On 15 January 1952, the first helicopter unit came to the base. Also in 1952, a reserve air intelligence unit came to the base.
On 16 July 1957, then-Major John H. Glenn, Jr., USMC, set the Transcontinental air speed record, flying a F8U-1 Crusader from NAS Los Alamitos to Floyd Bennett Field, New York, in 3 hours, 23 minutes, and 8.4 seconds. Project Bullet, as the mission was called, provided both the first transcontinental flight to average supersonic speed, and the first continuous transcontinental panoramic photograph of the United States. Glenn was awarded his fifth Distinguished Flying Cross for the mission.
For the next decade, operations at Los Alamitos were routine. In 1970, however, the Navy closed the station as a Naval Air Reserve training facility and let it serve merely as a Naval Air Station. In 1972, helicopter elements of both the California Army National Guard and United States Army Reserve moved from leased facilities at commercial airports to NAS Los Alamitos. Following approval of an environmental impact statement filed in August 1973, the base was designated an Armed Forces Reserve Center for which the Navy was designated host, and the California Army National Guard was charged with operating the airfield.
The senior command on post is the 40th Infantry Division (Mechanized), headquartered in the large, prominent building facing the flagpole and main entrance artery.
On 23 August 1977, 'ownership' of the base was transferred from the U.S. Navy to the U.S. Army. The U.S. Army 'licensed' the operation of the base to the California Army National Guard. The base was commanded by BG James Benson. Los Alamitos Army Airfield was commanded by LTC James C. Ghormley, III.
In July 2000, Los Alamitos Armed Force Reserve Center was renamed Los Alamitos Joint Forces Training Center.
This place served as the starting line for the 14th season of the hit CBS Reality TV Show "The Amazing Race". The base's status as an alternate landing area for Air Force One was mentioned in a West Wing episode.
Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility
Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (TJNAF), commonly called Jefferson Lab or JLab, is a U.S. national laboratory in Newport News, Virginia. It is near exit 256 of Interstate 64. Since June 1, 2006, it has been operated by Jefferson Science Associates, LLC, a joint venture between Southeastern Universities Research Association, Inc., and CSC Applied Technologies, LLC. Until 1996 it was known as the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF). This name is still used a lot for the main accelerator.
Founded in 1984, JLab employs over 675 people. Over 2,000 scientists from around the world have conducted research using the facility. Its mission is "to provide forefront scientific facilities, opportunities and leadership essential for discovering the fundamental structure of nuclear matter; to partner in industry to apply its advanced technology; and to serve the nation and its communities through education and public outreach."
The facility is being rebuilt to increase its energy from 6 GeV to 12 GeV. To do this, more powerful magnets and power supplies are added to the accelerator. Also, a new experimental hall will be added. The CEBAF is shut down from May to December 2011 for installation and construction will be completed by 2013. Full operations will begin in 2015.
The laboratory's main research facility is the CEBAF accelerator, which consists of a polarized electron source and injector and a pair of 7/8 mile (1400 m) long superconducting RF linear accelerators. The ends of the two linear accelerators are connected to each other by two arc sections with magnets that bend the electron beam in an arc. So, the beam path is a race-track shaped oval. (Most accelerators, such as CERN or Fermilab, have a circular path with many short chambers to speed up the electrons spread along the circle.) As the electron beam makes up to five successive orbits, its energy is increased up to a maximum of 6 GeV. Effectively, CEBAF is a linear accelerator (LINAC), like SLAC at Stanford, that has been folded up to a tenth of its normal length. It acts as if it were a 7.8 mile long linear accelerator.
The design of CEBAF allows the electron beam to be continuous rather than the pulsed beam typical of ring shaped accelerators. (There is some beam structure but the pulses are very much shorter and closer together.) The electron beam is directed onto three potential targets (see below). One of the distinguishing features of JLab is the continuous nature of the electron beam, with a bunch length of less than 1 picosecond. Another is JLab's use of superconducting RF (SRF) technology, which uses liquid helium to cool niobium to approximately 4 K (−452.5°F), removing electrical resistance and allowing the most efficient transfer of energy to an electron. To achieve this, JLab uses the world's largest liquid helium refrigerator, and was one of the first large-scale implementators of SRF technology. The accelerator is built 8 meters, or approximately 25 feet, below the Earth's surface, and the walls of the accelerator tunnels are 2 feet thick.
The beam ends in three experimental halls, called Hall A, Hall B, and Hall C. Each hall contains a unique spectrometer to record the results of collisions between the electron beam and a stationary target. This allows physicists to study the structure of the atomic nucleus, specifically the interaction of the quarks that make up protons and neutrons of the nucleus.
Each time around the loop, the beam passes through each of the two LINAC accelerators, but through a different set of bending magnets. (Each set is designed to handle a different beam speed.) The electrons make up to five passes through the LINAC accelerators.
When a nucleus in the target is hit by an electron from the beam, an "interaction", or "event", occurs, scattering particles into the hall. Each hall contains an array of particle detectors that track the physical properties of the particles produced by the event. The detectors generate electrical pulses that are converted into digital values by analog to digital converters (ADCs), time to digital converters (TDCs) and pulse counters (scalers).
This digital data must be gathered and stored so that the physicist can later analyze the data and reconstruct the physics that occurred. The system of electronics and computers that perform this task is called a data acquisition system.