What happened
Less than three months after Pearl Harbor and a day after a Japanese submarine shelled an oil field near Santa Barbara, Southern California was on a hair trigger. In the early hours of 25 February 1942, radar picked up an unidentified target about 120 miles west of Los Angeles heading for the coast. Anti-aircraft batteries were alerted, sirens sounded at 2:25 a.m. and a total blackout was ordered. Reports of enemy planes poured in, and a coast artillery colonel described about 25 aircraft at 12,000 feet. Around 3:06 a.m. a balloon carrying a red flare was seen over Santa Monica and the guns opened up; searchlights converged and more than 1,400 rounds were fired over the next hour. Watchers on rooftops reported swarms of planes, or one slow object caught in the lights. No bombs fell and nothing was shot down. Shell fragments damaged property and five people died in accidents and heart attacks. The Navy called it a false alarm; the Army said one to five planes had been there.
The original account
Radars tracked the approaching target to within a few miles of the coast, and at 0221 the regional controller ordered a blackout. Thereafter the information center was flooded with reports of 'enemy planes,' even though the mysterious object tracked in from sea seems to have vanished... These mysterious forces dropped no bombs and, despite the fact that 1,440 rounds of antiaircraft ammunition were directed against them, suffered no losses.
W. F. Craven and J. L. Cate (eds.), The Army Air Forces in World War II, vol. 1, ch. 8 (Office of Air Force History; US government work, public domain)
The official explanation
Navy Secretary Frank Knox called the raid a false alarm at a press conference on 25 February. The Army Air Forces official history, edited by Craven and Cate, concluded that meteorological balloons known to have been released over Los Angeles probably caused the initial alarm, that anti-aircraft bursts caught in searchlights were then mistaken for planes, and that batteries were later criticised for firing at targets too slow to be aircraft. In 1949 the Coast Artillery Association also blamed a weather balloon. After the war Japan stated it had sent no aircraft over Los Angeles. The famous Los Angeles Times photograph of converging searchlights was heavily retouched before publication.
The anomalous case
The episode began with a radar track, not a rumour: coastal radar followed an unidentified target in from 120 miles at sea, and two more sites confirmed it before it vanished near the coast. Secretary of War Henry Stimson then announced, after the Army examined witnesses, that from one to five unidentified aircraft had been over the city, flatly contradicting the Navy. The acting commander of the anti-aircraft brigade testified that he first believed he saw fifteen planes. Representative Leland Ford demanded a congressional inquiry, saying no explanation removed the episode from 'complete mystification'. Witnesses described an object that sat in the searchlights while more than 1,400 shells burst around it, and the Army's own history admits the targets moved too slowly to be planes, yet no balloon fragments or wreckage were ever reported. To ufologists that makes it the first mass military engagement with an unidentified aerial object.
The strongest argument that this was something genuinely unknown or classified, with each claim attributed to the person who made it.
Documents
- The Army Air Forces in World War II, vol. 1, chapter 8 (HyperWar transcription) report, ibiblio.org
- Los Angeles Times, 26 February 1942, page B (via Wikimedia Commons) newspaper, commons.wikimedia.org
Sources
- The Army Air Forces in World War II, Vol. I: Plans and Early Operations, ch. 8 HyperWar / ibiblio (Office of Air Force History text)
- The 'Great Los Angeles Air Raid' Terrified Citizens, Even Though No Bombs Were Dropped Smithsonian Magazine
- Battle of Los Angeles Wikipedia
Witness reports elsewhere
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