The battle over Las Angeles in 1942

[AL Pitman]

Does any of our respected forum members know of this incident and what took place ?

[Rusty2]

Hi Al , below is (apparently) original footage and an original broadcast .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m7736RMBEg

[Searcher]

The most amazing feature of this famous UFO encounter was the military firing over 1400 anti aircraft shells at this large and slow moving orange coloured object for over an hour.

There were many direct hits… and none had any effect! The only damage occurred on the ground where three civilians were killed by exploding shell fragments and another three suffered heart attacks during the hour long siege. It was reported hundreds of thousands witnessed this unknown and seemingly invincible aircraft.

The only thing for sure is the movie ‘Battle of Los Angeles’ has nothing at all in common with this 1942 wartime sighting except for the name.

[AL Pitman]

Hmmmm
No wonder we have never had an official contact with our space neighbours .
With a shoot first , ask questions later approach like that .
I get it was war time and everything was set to defcon 10 thousand but gee !
They're probably up at the Alien pub saying to their mates .
Don't be going near that bloody earth there all a bit nannoo nanooo down there
It must be all that oxygen they breathe .
I think they have a few metorites loose in the top paddock .

[bassplyr]

The battle of LA. I've walked around and seen one of the anti-aircraft batteries used in the incident. This group of batteries are in a pleasant but busy park frequented by tourists looking to see a very decorative and giant korean bell. The park is also popular with kite flying enthusiasts and wushu/kung fu athletes.

Anyways, the battle of LA has several conflicting conclusions by various witnesses and researchers.

The US Navy concludes it was a false alarm by jumpy battery crews. The night before 100 miles up the coast a japanese submarine did shell or at least try to shell a refinery in the city of Ellwood. Folks up and down the coast were on high alert and the enemy was presumed nearby given the shelling the night before. The Navy expected an imminent attack within ten hours of the initial shelling.


The night of the actual incident things heated up quickly.

Around 7pm there were several reports of flares and blinking lights out over the ocean prompting an alert, but by 10pm nothing had happened and the alert was called off.

Three hours later around 1am radar had detected an unidentified object 120 miles out to sea off California and the alert went back up again.

By 2:20am the object tracked by radar was only a few miles from the coast and still approaching. At that point the city was blacked out preparing for an attack at any minute and reports of aircraft came flooding in. The only problem was that radar was now showing nothing in the air at all and the military never launched aircraft of their own. So if people were seeing aircraft it wasn't the united states.

20 minutes later a artillery colonel claims to have spotted 25 aircraft over the city at 12,000 foot. Pretty low and easy to see if one were a trained spotter or observer. Elsewhere at the same time over long beach aircraft were reported flying. But radar still showed nothing.

20 minutes later at 3am what was described as a balloon carrying red flares was reported over santa monica (just a few miles away up the coast from long beach). At that time the anti aircraft batteries opened fire leading to a chain reaction of other nearby batteries doing likewise and pandemonium erupted throughout the city.

After that accounts are a mess.

Interestingly the US Army and the US War Department disahree with the Navy and believed there were at least 5 unidentified aircraft over the city that night. Leading one to think the battery crews were indeed shooting at something.

There are some conspiracies stating that japanese aircraft either balloons or fighters (theories range between the two) were what was being shot at and that four japanese fighters even came down in the city but was quickly hauled away and covered up to prevent panic with the citizens. However, although not impossible, concealing a crashed fighter aircraft inside a congested highly populated city would be pretty darned hard. There would be evidence.

One of the more prominent researchers figures it was greenhorn gunnery crews firing at weather balloons. Citing that the crews were still being taught how to operate the newly introduced radar targeting systems the guns had. Some crew members later interviewed said they weren't sure what they were actually shooting at, but that they were just following orders.

Its plausible, but the unidentified aircraft they were shooting at was pretty low and not one of the 1400 rounds took down a flimsy weather balloon. You'd think fragments and shrapnel from the exploding shells even if they missed would have punctured the balloon and brought it down.

Some Japanese submarines were capable of launching light aircraft for limited attack and more so for reconnaissance. They did actually do just that over Seattle. Maybe japanese subs were in the area and launching reconnaissance aircraft. But japan denies that.

One thing is the single photograph of the incident thats famous was touched up and that in the original untouched up image theres a lot less of what seems to be a solid object lit up in the centre. Maybe they were confused by the illuminated smoke and other explosions from artillery fire and kept shooting at that thinking they were seeing aircraft.

Its an interesting case. Hard to really decipher what actually happened but the general consensus is that it was a combination of false alarm and hysteria set off by weather balloons.

.... But what about the mysterious approaching radar contacts that vanished just before the incident occurred that operators were seeing all night?

[Searcher]

Excellent summation, bassplyr. Lots of detail there. Nice to have been to the actual location of some of the old anti aircraft artillery installations in LA.

As for the photograph mentioned, I found this short video quite interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukkTVH_3Grk