The Battle of Los Angeles

Here are some research sites as well as some information that might be useful. The copied content comes from the Rense website as well as some from Wikipedia, and if you are not familiar with this case, please take some time to read it. Do some investigating and please share your thoughts and your information ~*~





The Wikipedia information:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Los_Angeles

"Though In 1983, the Office of Air Force History concluded that an analysis of the evidence points to meteorological balloons as the cause of the initial alarm - Another speculation was given by Representative Leland Ford of Santa Monica called for a Congressional investigation, saying, "...none of the explanations so far offered removed the episode from the category of 'complete mystification' ... this was either a practice raid, or a raid to throw a scare into 2,000,000 people, or a mistaken identity raid, or a raid to lay a political foundation to take away Southern California's war industries" "


From Rense.com

http://www.rense.com/ufo/battleofla.htm

"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.... "


This is a reprint is a print of the photograph produced from the original negative, followed by a photocopy of the same, taken from existing available microfilm of the archives of the newspaper.

"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. "

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"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. "

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"(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. "


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"60th Anniversary Of The Battle Of Los Angeles


From Frank Altomonte
alto@earthlink.net
2-18-2

Excerpt from 'UFOs and the National Security State'
By Richard M. Dolan Keyhole Publishing, 2000

"At least a million residents awoke to air raid sirens at 2:25am., and U.S. Army personnel fired 1,430 rounds of antiaircraft shells to bring down what they assumed were Japanese planes. But these were not Japanese planes. George Marshall wrote a memorandum to President Roosevelt about the incident, which remained classified until 1974. Marshall concluded that conventional aircraft were involved, probably "commercial sources, operated by enemy agents for purposes of spreading alarm, disclosing location of antiaircraft positions, and slowing production through blackout."

Despite the barrage of American antiaircraft fire, none of these "commercial" planes were brought down, although several homes and buildings were destroyed, and six civilian deaths were attributed to the barrage. Considering the carnage, the military's explanation was meager. U.S. Navy Secretary Knox even denied that any aircraft had been over the city; he called the incident a false alarm due to war nerves.

The local press, needless to say, did not take this very well. The Long Beach Independent noted that: "There is a mysterious reticence about the whole affair and it appears some form of censorship is trying to halt discussion of the matter." It is noteworthy that for thirty years until the release of the Marshall memorandum, the Department of Defense claimed to have no record of the event. Five years before Roswell, them military was already learning to clamp down on UFOs." "