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Sandia National Laboratories/New Mexico History
In 1928, Albuquerque's first airport, known as Oxnard Field, was constructed on 140 acres of homestead land, near the present National Atomic Museum on KAFB. The airport was expanded in the mid-1930s to provide U.S. Army and U.S. Navy pilots with a transient refueling/maintenance stop and was used as a stop over for air crews ferrying California-built bomber aircraft to England in the late 1930s and early 1940s. In mid-1939, the City of Albuquerque opened a new municipal airport approximately four miles west of Oxnard Field. Later that year, the Army leased 2000 acres of land adjacent to Oxnard Field and a small Air Corps detachment soon arrived to service transient Army and Navy aircraft. On January 7, 1941, construction began on the Albuquerque Army Air Base. By late 1941, the Bombardier School-Army Advanced Flying School had opened at Albuquerque Army Air Base and in 1942, training was expanded to include B-24s and AT-11 aircraft. In February 1942, Albuquerque Army Air Base was renamed Kirtland Field for Colonel Roy S. Kirtland, one of the earliest military pilots in the Army. Later that year, the Army Air Forces acquired Oxnard Field (approximately 11,000 acres to the east of Kirtland Field), and construction began on the Albuquerque Air Depot Training Station, a training depot for aircraft mechanics. On April 24, 1943, 4667 acres of the Cibola National Forest adjacent to Kirtland Field were withdrawn from public use "for use in connection with the prosecution of the war." During World War II, Kirtland Field was used as a bombardier training school, flight training schools, an aviation mechanics school, a navigator school, and a ground school for glider pilots. Also, because Kirtland Field was the closest airport facility to Los Alamos, its runways and a bomb loading pit were used to support the Los Alamos program during 1944 and 1945. In mid-1944, part of the Kirtland Field became the Army Air Forces Convalescent Center, with barracks and support facilities for wounded pilots and crewmen who were recovering from surgery and other wartime injuries. The Convalescent Center was subsequently closed during April 1945, and the facility again became an Army Air Field. At the end of World War II (WWII), the air field began to receive war-weary and surplus military aircraft. Temporary tow roads and parking spaces were graded on the surrounding mesa land. Kirtland Field had not only become significant to the military community, but to the local community and economy as well. By the end of the war, Kirtland Field had 402 buildings, 82 of which were wartime housing units that had been transferred to Kirtland's jurisdiction in November of 1943. Some of the WWII-era buildings, including the non-commissioned officers' quarters, remain in use at KAFB, although they have been greatly modified and modernized. A few months prior to the successful completion of the Trinity Project (detonation of the first atomic bomb) and of the Alberta Project (delivery of the first airborne atomic weapon), J. Robert Oppenheimer, Director of LASL, and his technical advisor, Hartly Rowe, began looking for a new site convenient to Los Alamos for the continuation of weapons development, especially in its nonnuclear aspects. They felt that a separate division would be best to fulfill these functions. Los Alamos had used Kirtland to meet transportation needs for both the Trinity and Alberta projects. Thus, Oxnard Field was transferred from the jurisdiction of the Army Air Corps to the U.S. Army Service Forces Chief of Engineer District and thereafter assigned to the Manhattan Engineer District. In July of 1945, the forerunner of Sandia Laboratory, known as "Z" Division, was established at Oxnard Field to handle future weapons development, testing, and bomb assembly for the Manhattan Engineer District. The "Z" Division facilities, which originally housed the laboratory, consisted of wood sheds and buildings. Upon its arrival, the Manhattan Engineer District authorized construction of guard, storage, administrative, and laboratory facilities for "Sandia Base." The use of the term "Sandia Base" in this directive should be noted, as it is apparently the first official recognition of the name. To separate the "Z" Division facilities from ongoing aircraft storage and salvage operations, a fenced area for classified activities was required. This locale, which was bounded by "F", "H", Fifth, and Eighth streets, became Technical Area I of SNL. It included some of the older, wood-frame, tar-papered, temporary buildings dating from the Air Depot training days (1942-43) and additional wood-frame buildings that provided space for personnel and work functions. Technical Area I began operations in 1946, and temporary buildings were used until construction of more permanent buildings for an expanded facility began in 1948. Initial construction of a weapons storage area began in 1947. This storage area, located in the Manzanita Mountain foothills, is known locally as "Four Hills" and is near the southeastern boundary of what was then Sandia Base. The storage area, initially known as "Site Able", later became Manzano Base. Early manufacturing activities at Sandia Laboratory included the assembly of weapons. This resulted in the development of a separate area (Technical Area II), located about a half mile south of Technical Area I, for the handling and incorporation of explosives into the weapons. Construction of Technical Area II, which paralleled the Technical Area I development, was initiated in 1948. Resultant construction included two identical assembly buildings and a control building completed in 1949. Sandia Laboratory was operated by the University of California until 1949, when President Truman asked American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) to assume the operation as an "opportunity to render an exceptional service in the national interest". Also in 1949, Public Land Order (PLO) 595 increased the withdrawn lands of the Cibola National Forest to 13,948 acres, administered by the U.S. Department of the Navy. The increasing use of missiles as delivery vehicles led to the full-scale environmental testing of weapons with and without explosives. As a result, there was a need for complex equipment and specialized engineers to analyze the test results. A decision was made to centralize a group of test devices in Technical Areas III and V, located approximately 7 miles south of Technical Area I. Planning for this area began in 1952, and the first group of facilities, consisting of a centrifuge, a rocket-sled, a vibration testing facility, and an instrument control center, was completed in 1953. Most of the other Technical Area III and Technical Area V test facilities were constructed between 1954 and 1960. On May 26, 1952, PLO 4569 withdrew an additional 4595 acres from the Cibola National Forest for use by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) as a buffer zone. In 1954, PLO 995 consolidated previous PLOs and increased the area to 21,163 acres administered by the U.S. Department of the Army. In 1957, a nuclear reactor facility was proposed for Technical Area III. The site of the reactor was to become Technical Area V. Beginning in 1979, Technical Area V was developed as a test location for x-ray, gamma-ray, and particle-beam fusion accelerators. As the need for test sites grew beyond the capacity of Department-owned lands, use permits were acquired from KAFB to obtain land now known as the Coyote Canyon Test Field. As new weapons were developed, additional laboratory space became necessary, and as weapons evolved, new environmental testing facilities were required. The Sandia Laboratories building and facility construction continued at an average rate of about 50,000 square feet (sq ft) per year until 1963. In the 1960s, both KAFB and Sandia Base were primarily known as weapons testing and development facilities. The Air Force Weapons Laboratory (AFWL) was established at Kirtland in 1963 to undertake weapons research and to develop simulation techniques. The AFWL was one of the most important tenants of KAFB in the 1960s. During that time, facilities were constructed to simulate nuclear blast effects, including transient radiation, x-rays, and electromagnetic pulses. It became part of the United States Air Force (USAF) Phillips Laboratory in December 1990. In 1966, the airfield, taxiways, and attendant properties were sold to the City of Albuquerque to become the Albuquerque International Airport, and Kirtland initiated a lease arrangement with the City to conduct military flying operations. Manzano and Sandia bases merged with KAFB in July 1971. During the next decade, KAFB evolved into a research and development base, hosting other military organizations. Research and development activities were primarily in the areas of nuclear weapons blast effects, electronics, lasers, and explosives. The training activities were for para-rescue specialists, helicopter crews, and noncommissioned officers. On January 28, 1980, PLO 5692 reduced the acreage that had been consolidated and withdrawn by PLO 995 by 2400 acres, returning the land along the eastern boundary to the United States Forest Service (USFS) status for public use. Congress designated Sandia Laboratories as a national laboratory in 1979. AT&T continued to operate the labs for the Department on a non-profit, no-fee, no-cost basis until 1992. In that year SNL became a subsidiary of the Martin Marietta Corporation, which became the Lockheed Martin Corporation in March 1995. SNL continues to be one of the Department's most diverse laboratories and one of the nation's largest research and development facilities. SNL's main responsibility is national security programs in defense and energy, with emphasis on nuclear weapons research and development. The labs also conduct work for the DoD and other federal agencies on a non-interference basis. |
SNL/NM History
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