The Most Incredible Mass Sighting Of All?
The Battle Of Los Angeles PART 2 

The following are excerpts from the primary front page story of the LA Times
on February 26th. Note that there is not a SINGLE description of the object
even though is was clearly locked in the focus of dozens of searchlights for
well over half an hour and seen by hundreds of thousands of people:

Army Says Alarm Real
Roaring Guns Mark Blackout

Identity of Aircraft Veiled in Mystery; No Bombs Dropped and
No Enemy Craft Hit; Civilians Reports Seeing Planes and Balloon


Overshadowing a nation-wide maelstrom of rumors and conflicting reports, the
Army's Western Defense Command insisted that Los Angeles' early morning blackout
and anti-aircraft action were the result of unidentified aircraft sighted over the beach
area. In two official statements, issued while Secretary of the Navy Knox in Washington
was attributing the activity to a false alarm and "jittery nerves," the command in San
Francisco confirmed and reconfirmed the presence over the Southland of unidentified
planes. Relayed by the Southern California sector office in Pasadena, the second
statement read: "The aircraft which caused the blackout in the Los Angeles area for
several hours this a.m. have not been identified." Insistence from official quarters that
the alarm was real came as hundreds of thousands of citizens who heard and saw the
activity spread countless varying stories of the episode. The spectacular anti-aircraft
barrage came after the 14th Interceptor Command ordered the blackout when strange
craft were reported over the coastline. Powerful searchlights from countless stations
stabbed the sky with brilliant probing fingers while anti-aircraft batteries dotted the
heavens with beautiful, if sinister, orange bursts of shrapnel.

City Blacked Out For Hours

The city was blacked out from 2:25 to 7:21 am after an earlier yellow alert at 7:18 pm
was called off at 10:23 pm. The blackout was in effect from here to the Mexican border
and inland to the San Joaquin Valley. No bombs were dropped and no airplanes shot down
and, miraculously in terms of the tons of missiles hurled aloft, only two persons were
reported wounded by falling shell fragments. Countless thousands of Southland residents,
many of whom were late to work because of the traffic tie-up during the blackout, rubbed
their eyes sleepily yesterday and agreed that regardless of the question of how "real" the
air raid alarm may have been, it was "a great show" and "well worth losing a few hours'
sleep." The blackout was not without its casualties, however. A State Guardsman died of
a heart attack while driving an ammunition truck, heart failure also accounted for the death
of an air raid warden on duty, a woman was killed in a car-truck collision in Arcadia, and a
Long Beach policeman was killed in a traffic crash enroute to duty. Much of the firing
appeared to come from the vicinity of aircraft plants along the coastal area of Santa Monica,
Inglewood, Southwest Los Angeles, and Long Beach.

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

In its front page editorial, the Times said: "In view of the considerable public excitement
and confusion caused by yesterday morning's supposed enemy air raid over this area
and its spectacular official accompaniments, it seems to The Times that more specific
public information should be forthcoming from government sources on the subject, if
only to clarify their own conflicting statements about it."

"According to the Associated Press, Secretary Knox intimated that reports of enemy air
activity in the Pacific Coastal Region might be due largely to 'jittery nerves.' Whose
nerves, Mr. Knox? The public's or the Army's?"

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

The following is an excerpt of an article appearing in Fate Magazine.
Our special thanks to Bill Oliver of UFO*BC for transcribing and
bringing it to our attention.

WORLD WAR II UFO SCARE
By Paul T. Collins
Fate Magazine July, 1987


On Wednesday, February 25, 1942, as war raged in Europe and Asia, at least a million
Southern Californians awoke to the scream of air-raid sirens as Los Angeles County
cities blacked out at 2:25 AM. Many dozed off again while 12,000 air raid wardens
reported faithfully to their posts, most of them expecting nothing more than a dress
rehearsal for a possible future event - an invasion of the United States by Japan. At 3:36,
however, they were shocked and their slumbering families rudely roused again, this time
by sounds unfamiliar to most Americans outside the military services.

The roar of the 37th Coast Artillery Brigade's antiaircraft batteries jolted them out of
bed and before they could get to the windows the flashing 12.8 pound shells were
detonating with a heavy, ominous boomp - boomp - boomp and the steel was already
raining down. All radio stations had been ordered off the air at 3:08. But the news was
being written with fingers of light three miles high on a clear star-studded blackboard 30
miles long.

The firing continued intermittently until 4:14. Unexploded shells destroyed pavement,
homes and public buildings, three persons were killed and three died of heart attacks
directly attributable to the one hour barrage. Several persons were injured by shrapnel.
A dairy herd was hit but only a few cows were casualties.

The blackout was lifted and sirens screamed all clear at 7:21. The shooting stopped but
the shouting had hardly begun. Military men who never flinched at the roar of rifles now
shook at the prospect of facing the press. While they probably could not be blamed for
what had happened, they did have some reason for distress. The thing they had been
shooting at could not be identified.

Caught by the searchlights and captured in photographs, was an object big enough to
dwarf an apartment house. Experienced lighter-than-air (dirigible) specialists doubted
it could be a Japanese blimp because the Japanese had no known source of helium,
and hydrogen was much too dangerous to use under combat conditions.

Whatever it was, it was a sitting duck for the guns of the 37th. Photographs showed
shells bursting all around it. A Los Angeles Herald Express staffer said he was sure many
shells hit it directly. He was amazed it had not been shot down.

The object that triggered the air raid alarm had drawn 1430 rounds of ammunition from
the coast artillery, to no effect. When it moved at all, the object had proceeded at a
leisurely pace over the coastal cities between Santa Monica and Long Beach, taking
about 30 minutes of actual flight time to move 20 miles; then it disappeared from view.

You can well imagine with what chagrin public information officers answered press
queries. The Pasadena Office of the Southern California Sector of the Army Western
Defense Command simply announced that no enemy aircraft had been identified; no
craft was shot down; no bombs were dropped; none of our interceptors left the ground
to pursue the intruder.

Soon thereafter US Navy Secretary Frank Knox announced that no planes had been
sighted. The coastal firing had been triggered, he said, by a false alarm and jittery nerves.
He also suggested that some war industries along the coast might have to be moved
inland to points invulnerable to attacks from enemy submarines and carrier-based planes.

The press responded with scathing editorials, many on page one, calling attention to
the loss of life and denouncing the use of the coast artillery to fire at phantoms. The
Los Angeles Times demanded a full explanation from Washington. The Long Beach
Telegram complained that government officials who all along had wanted to move the
industries were manipulating the affair for propaganda purposes. And the Long Beach
Independent charged: "There is a mysterious reticence about the whole affair and it
appears some form of censorship is trying to halt discussion of the matter. Although it
was red-hot news not one national radio commentator gave it more than passing
mention. This is the kind of reticence that is making the American people gravely suspect
the motives and the competence of those whom they have charged with the conduct
of the war."

The Independent had good reason to question the competence of some of the personnel
responsible for our coastal defense operations as well as the integrity and motives of
our highest government officials. Only 36 hours before the Long Beach air raid, a gigantic
Japanese submarine had surfaced close to shore 12 miles north of Santa Barbara and in
25 minutes of unchallenged firing lobbed 25 five-inch shells at the petroleum refinery in
the Ellwood oil field. The Fourth Interceptor Command, although aware of the sub's attack,
ordered a blackout from Ventura to Goleta but sent no planes out to sink it. Not one shot
was fired at the sub.

After the Ellwood incident had alerted all the West Coast defense posts to possible repeat
attacks, these units were sensitive to anticipated invasion attempts. By Wednesday
morning in the Los Angeles area they were ready to open fire on a boy's kite if it in any
way resembled a plane or a balloon. Secretary of War Henry Stimson praised the 37th
Cost Artillery for this attitude. It is better to be a little too alert than not alert enough, he
said. At the same time he delicately suggested that it might have been a good idea to send
some of our planes up to identify the invading aircraft before shooting at them.

Planes of the Fourth Interceptor Command were, in fact, warming up on the runways
waiting for orders to go up and interview the unknown intruders. Why, everybody was
asking, were they not ordered to go into action during the 51-minute period between
the first air-raid alert at 2:25 AM and the first artillery firing at 3:16?

Against this background of embarrassing indecision and confusion, Army Western Defense
Command obviously had to say something fast. Spokesmen told reporters that from one
to 50 planes had been sighted, thus giving themselves ample latitude in which to adjust
future stories to fit whatever propaganda requirements might arise in the next few days.

When eyewitness reports from thousands searching the skies with binoculars under the
bright lights of the coast artillery verified the presence of one enormous, unidentifiable,
indestructible object - but not the presence of large numbers of planes - the press
releases were gradually scaled downward. A week later Gen. Mark Clark acknowledged
that army listening posts had detected what they thought were five light planes
approaching the coast on the night of the air raid. No interceptors, he said, had been sent
out to engage them because there had been no mass attack.

Believing an aerial bombardment was in progress, some people thought they saw
formations of warplanes, dogfights between enemy craft and our fighter planes and
other things that they assumed were evidence of such an attack. Obviously there were
no dogfights because none of our interceptors were in the air. Tracer bullets were fired
from military ground stations and some people mistook the fire pattern made by these
projectiles for aerial combat. Other observers reported lighted objects which were
variously described as red-and-white flares in groups of three red and three white, fired
alternately, or chainlike strings of red lights looking something like an illuminated kite.

People suggested that some of these lights were caused by Japanese-Americans signaling approaching
Japanese aircraft with flares to guide them to selected targets, but because
no bombs were dropped, the theory was quickly abandoned. In any case, such charges
fitted in perfectly with a hysterical press campaign to round up all citizens of Japanese
descent and put them in concentration camps.

During the week of the Japanese submarine attack on the Ellwood oil field and the air
raid on Los Angeles County, the press took full advantage of the made-to-order situation.
Arrests of suspects were quickly made and the FBI was called in, but the Long Beach
Press Telegram stated all investigations indicated nobody was signaling the enemy from
the ground.



Santa Barbara's Ellwood 
Oil Field Submarine Attack

Just a few days before the "Battle of LA" a Japanese submarine had surfaced at 
night and fired its deck gun into the Ellwood oil field located 12 miles northwest 
of Santa Barbara. The LA Times: 

"From Santa Barbara, area of the submarine attack Monday night, District Attorney 
Percy Heckendorf said he would appeal to Lt. Gen. John L. DeWitt, commanding 
officer of the Western Defense Command, to make Santa Barbara County a restricted 
area for enemy nationals and American-born Japanese as well. "There is convincing 
proof," Heckendorf asserted, "that there were shore signals flashed to the enemy." 
Heckendorf said the people will hold Gen. DeWitt responsible if he failed to act. Army 
ordinance officers, meanwhile, were studying more than 200 pounds of shell fragments 
from missiles fired by the submarine, which caused only $500 damage in the Ellwood 
oil field near Santa Barbara." 

It is said by some locals that the skipper or one of the officers on the Japanese sub 
had worked in the Ellwood oil field some years prior to the outbreak of the war. The 
story claims that the man had been mistreated by some of his co-workers during that 
time, had returned to Japan before the war began, and had then subsequently helped 
lead the submarine back to the area to make it's attack.