The Most Incredible Mass Sighting Of All?
The Battle Of Los Angeles
Wednesday, February 25, 1942
By Jeff Rense

Five years before Roswell, five years before pilot Kenneth Arnold's landmark sightings 
of "flying saucers" in the Pacific Northwest, 3 years before the Battle of the Bulge, two
years before D-Day, and years before the so-called "modern UFO era" had officially 
begun, there was the Battle of Los Angeles, arguably the most sensational, dramatic 
UFO mass encounter on record. 

Have you ever heard of the Battle of Los Angeles? Few have. Imagine a visiting 
spacecraft from another world, or dimension, hovering over a panicked and blacked-out
LA in the middle of the night just weeks after Pearl Harbor at the height of WWII fear 
and paranoia. Imagine how this huge ship, assumed to be some unknown Japanese 
aircraft, was then attacked as it hung, nearly stationary, over Culver City and Santa 
Monica by dozens of Army anti-aircraft batteries firing nearly 2,000 rounds of 12 
pound, high explosive shells in full view of hundreds of thousands of residents. Imagine 
all of that and you have an idea of what was the Battle of Los Angeles. 

The sudden appearance of the enormous round object triggered all of LA and most 
of Southern California into an immediate wartime blackout with thousands of Air Raid 
Wardens scurrying all over the darkened city while the drama unfolded in the skies 
above... a drama which would result in the deaths of six people and the raining of 
shell fragments on homes, streets, and buildings for miles around. 

Dozens of gun crews and searchlights of the Army's 37th Coast Artillery Brigade easily 
targeted the huge ship which hung like a surreal magic lantern in the clear, dark winter 
sky over the City of the Angels. Few in the city were left asleep after the Coastal 
Defense gunners commenced firing hundreds and hundreds of rounds up toward the 
glowing ship which was apparently first sighted as it hovered above such west side 
landmarks as the MGM studios in Culver City. The thump of the batteries and the ignition 
of the aerial shells reverberated from one end of LA to the other as the gun crews easily 
landed scores of what many termed "direct hits"....all to no avail. Here now, is what the 
night skies of LA looked like at the height of the firing.... 


Pay close attention to the convergence of the searchlights and you will clearly see the 
shape of the visitor within the illuminated target area. It's a BIG item and seemed 
completely oblivious to the hundreds of AA shells bursting on and adjacent to it which 
caused it no evident dismay. There were casualties, however...on the ground. At least 
6 people died as a direct result of the Army's attack on the UFO which slowly and 
leisurely made its way down to and then over Long Beach before finally moving off and 
disappearing. 

==============================================>>

In February, 1942, Katie was a young, beautiful, and highly-successful interior decorator
and artist who worked with many of Hollywood's most glamorous celebrities and film 
industry luminaries. She lived on the west side of Los Angeles, not far from Santa Monica. 
With the outbreak of the war with Japan and the rising fear of a Japanese air attack, or 
even invasion of the West Coast, thousands of residents volunteered for wartime duties 
on the home front. Katie volunteered to become an Air Raid Warden as did 12,000 other 
residents in the sprawling city of Los Angeles and surrounding communities. 

In the early morning hours of February 25th, Katie's phone rang. It was the Air Raid 
supervisor in her district notifying her of an alert and asking if she had seen the object 
in the sky very close to her home. She immediately walked to a window and looked 
up. "It was huge! It was just enormous! And it was practically right over my house. 
I had never seen anything like it in my life!" she said. "It was just hovering there in the 
sky and hardly moving at all." With the city blacked out, Katie, and hundreds of thousands 
of others, were able to see the eerie visitor with spectacular clarity. "It was a lovely pale 
orange and about the most beautiful thing you've ever seen. I could see it perfectly 
because it was very close. It was big!" 

The U.S. Army anti-aircraft searchlights by this time had the object completely covered. 
"They sent fighter planes up (the Army denied any of its fighters were in action) and I 
watched them in groups approach it and then turn away. There were shooting at it but 
it didn't seem to matter." Katie is insistent about the use of planes in the attack on the 
object. The planes were apparently called off after several minutes and then the ground 
cannon opened up. "It was like the Fourth of July but much louder. They were firing like 
crazy but they couldn't touch it." The attack on the object lasted over half an hour before 
the visitor eventually disappeared from sight. Many eyewitnesses talked of numerous 
"direct hits" on the big craft but no damage was seen done to it. "I'll never forget what a 
magnificent sight it was. Just marvelous. And what a gorgeous color!", said Katie.


The ONLY description in the LA Times of the UFO,
and a sense of the energy and emotion of that night,
was found in this small sidebar article written by
Times staff writer the day after the event:


Chilly Throng Watches
Shells Bursting In Sky
By Marvin Miles

Explosions stabbing the darkness like tiny bursting stars... Searchlight beams poking
long crisscross fingers across the night sky...Yells of wardens and the whistles of police
and deputy sheriffs...The brief on-and-off flick of lights, telephone calls, snatches of
conversation: 'Get the dirty...' That was Los Angeles under the rumble of gunfire
yesterday.


RESIDENTS AWAKENED

Sleepy householders awoke to the dull thud of explosions... "Thunder? Can't be!"
Then: "Air Raid! Come here quick! Look over there...those searchlights. They've got something...they
are blasting in with anti-aircraft!" Father, mother, children all gathered
on the front porch, congregated in small clusters in the blacked out streets -- against
orders. Babies cried, dogs barked, doors slammed. But the object in the sky slowly
moved on, caught in the center of the lights like the hub of a bicycle wheel surrounded
by gleaming spokes.

SPECULATION RIFE

Speculation fell like rain. "It's a whole squadron." "No, it's a blimp. It must be because
it's moving so slowly." "I hear planes." "No you don't. That's a truck up the street."
"Where are the planes then?" "Dunno. They must be up there though." "Wonder why
they picked such a clear night for a raid?" "They're probably from a carrier." "Naw, I'll
bet they are from a secret air base down south somewhere." Still the firing continued.
Like lethal firecrackers, the anti-aircraft rounds blasted above, below, seemingly right
on the target fixed in the tenacious beams. Other shots fell short, exploding halfway
up the long climb. Tracers sparked upward like roman candles. Metal fell. It fell in chunks,
large and small; not enemy metal, but the whistling fragments of bursting ack-ack shells.
The menacing thud and clank on streets and roof tops drove many spectators to shelter.

WARDENS DO GOOD JOB

Wardens were on the job, doing a good job of it. "Turn off your lights, please. Pull over
to the curb and stop. Don't use your telephone. Take shelter. Take shelter." On every
street brief glares of hooded flashlights cut the darkness, warning creeping drivers to
stop. Police watched at main intersections. Sirens wailed enroute to and from blackout
accidents. There came lulls in the firing. The search lights went out. (To allow the fighter
planes to attack?). Angelinos breathed deeply and said, "I guess it's all over." But before
they could tell their neighbors good night, the guns were blasting again, sighting up the
long blue beams of the lights.

WATCHERS SHIVER

The fire seemed to burst in rings all around the target. But the eager watchers, shivering
in the early morning cold, weren't rewarded by the sight of a falling plane. Nor were there
any bombs dropped. "Maybe it's just a test," someone remarked. "Test, hell!" was the
answer. "You don't throw that much metal in the air unless you're fixing on knocking
something down." Still the firing continued, muttering angrily off toward the west like a
distant thunderstorm. The targeted object inched along high, flanked by the cherry red
explosions. And the householders shivered in their robes, their faces set, watching the
awesome scene.

The Most Incredible Mass Sighting Of All