Today, on July 4th, people will pull out their lawn chairs and gaze into the sky to watch the beauty of fireworks and take in all the details of the celebration. Yet, on the evening of February 24, 1942, it was a different story.
In the early hours, less than three months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, sirens screamed across the Los Angeles basin. Searchlights crisscrossed the night sky. Then came the thunder: anti-aircraft guns opened fire relentlessly. People ran outside and watched as the sky filled with lights, explosions, and war planes.
By morning, more than 1,400 shells had been launched into the darkness. Fires smoldered. Buildings were damaged. Civilians were injured. And yet—no enemy aircraft had been brought down. No aircraft had been recovered at all.
So, what exactly happened that night?
At 2:25 a.m., a radar detected an unidentified object approaching the California coast. The city was put on high alert. A blackout order was issued, and troops were deployed to defensive positions. At 3:16 a.m., the anti-aircraft batteries opened fire on what many claimed was a slow-moving object hovering over the city.
Eyewitnesses reported seeing something large, glowing, and oddly beautiful.
“It was huge! It was just enormous!” recalled one witness. “And it was practically right over my house…a lovely pale orange and about the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen… They were firing like crazy, but they couldn’t touch it.” Searchlights locked onto the object for over an hour. Military personnel reported the same thing.
Sgt. B.M. Krogh of the 78th Coast Artillery wrote in a letter to his family, “The fact still remains that some 15,000 soldiers…witnessed the flight of the planes above us… and will all vouch to that effect.”
If 15,000 shells were fired, and no evidence appears on the ground from the barrage of ammunition, what was the military shooting at?
Research will show that the witnesses of that night and the Government report conflicting stories.
“Shells burst directly on the object. It didn’t fall—it just kept moving.”— L.A. Herald Reporter.
Fighter planes approached the target. They couldn’t stop it.”— Civilian from Long Beach.
The Government officially chalked up the event as a false alarm, triggered by war scars and a drifting weather balloon.
Why is it always an air balloon?
In the years that followed, the weather balloon excuse would appear again and again in incidents that remain shrouded in mystery. In 1947, five years after the Battle for L.A., the military in Roswell, New Mexico, claimed weather balloons landed in the desert. Despite a rancher’s findings and other key witnesses, the episode will become the most iconic UFO mystery in history.
A year later, in 1948, an Air National Guard pilot, Thomas Mantell, crashed while chasing a fast-moving, silver object at high altitude. Mantell would die of Hypoxia, a condition caused by a lack of oxygen to the body. Even so, the Government would label the object as a weather balloon.
Furthermore, in 1952, another UFO sighting occurred over the capital in Washington, D.C., with multiple radar contacts. Pilots confirm visual sightings of glowing objects. Once again, the Air Force explained it as a radar echo from temperature inversions and balloons.
Even so, something unknown caused a blip in the military’s scanner hours before the warnings sounded. Trained personnel were eyewitnesses to the object and then determined that evasive action was warranted.
In the aftermath of the Battle for Los Angeles, no firm explanation has ever satisfied historians, veterans, or civilians who witnessed the event. Some still believe it was a case of collective hysteria. Others are not so sure.
And for those of us drawn to the unexplained, it remains one of the most dramatic and baffling nights in American history.
Have you heard of the Battle for Los Angeles? Why do you think the Government always uses the weather balloon excuse to cover mysterious phenomena?
Until next time,
Harper
HARPER GALE BOOKS 