A Brief History
On February 24, 1942, less than 3 months after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the city of Los Angeles seemed to be under attack from a mysterious flying object.
Digging Deeper
Later claimed by the government to have been a false alarm, something had to have caused numerous air raid alerts to go off and give anti-aircraft gunners something to shoot at. Shoot they did, and a furious firefight ensued with .50 caliber machine guns and 3-inch artillery shells, about 1,400 rounds of which exploded over the city, showering it with metal fragments.
General Marshall later speculated that unknown persons had perhaps used commercial aircraft to rattle the public in a sort of psychological warfare, but this lame explanation seems unfounded. Even at the time, many found the government response to be somewhat sketchy, and many have theorized that the incident was a response to a UFO encounter. At least one congressman demanded a congressional inquiry, and newspapers noted the reluctance of the government to speak openly. It has even been claimed that the government or the military staged the incident to keep the public alert and on edge.
In 1983, the U.S. Air Force produced an investigative report that blamed a common suspect in UFO encounters, dreaded weather balloons. A photo that had appeared in the LA Times 2 days after the incident, however, is considered “proof” by UFO conspiracy theorists that the object being shot at was a UFO of alien origin.
Every year the event is celebrated as “The Great LA Air Raid of 1942” at the Fort MacArthur Museum located at the Los Angeles harbor. The 1979 film 1941, with Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi, is a comedy based loosely on this event. The 2011 film Battle: Los Angeles refers to this incident and the infamous newspaper photo, but does so with fictitious headlines purporting to be real historical fact.
Make of the “battle” what you will, but our advice is if you hear explosions going off above you, find cover quickly!
Question for students (and subscribers): What do you think really happened? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Sword, Terrenz. The Battle of Los Angeles, 1942: The Mystery Air Raid. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016.
<span class="dsq-postid" data-dsqidentifier="9699 https://www.historyandheadlines.com/?p=9699">15 Comments
Perhaps it was a UFO but this whole scenario seems unclear. Who really knows…
I am very skeptical about aliens. However, there is a large amount of people who do believe in them so I give them a higher consideration than big foot.
This scenario is a little to sketchy to be true aliens but I do think that aliens may exist.
I have never believed in aliens or UFO’s so I believe that this story is a hoax.
Clearly it was something other than UFOs. People of the time were just anxious from Pearl Harbor; as they rightly should have been.
That would have been an exciting night. That’s definitely one way to terrify a lot of people really quickly.
I really believe that this was just a result of miscommunication of a plane or radio failure and a mix of that this was in World War II. Also the questioning of the congressman and inaccurate media information lead to mass hysteria.
Not sure I believe aliens were involved in this incident, but I do still believe we are not the only intelligent life in the universe.
It is more unrealistic to believe that we are alone in this universe.
Even the news report stated that it was probably a publicity stunt to keep the public on their feet.
There has to be something other than us humans in the universe.
This is a bunch of malarky. While I have always been under the impression that our nearly infinite universe MUST be inhabited by something other than just humans, this attack was so close to Pearl Harbor that it had to be related. The fact that aliens would choose to present themselves mere days after a world-changing event seems highly unlikely.
I think it was just a photo doctered by the newspaper
I think that our US Air Force could have possibly been overreacting to the event due to the tragic events that had taken place just 3 months ago.
I definitely believe in UFO’s and aliens. I bet it actually was a UFO the government just didn’t know how to react to it. Yes it would have been scary from what had happened recently but they shouldn’t have played it off as nothing