Los Angeles UFO Sighting: The still unexplained Battle of Los Angeles in 1942

The still unexplained UFO sighting, now known as ‘The Battle Of Los Angeles’, took place during the night between February 24-25, 1942, so right during World War II. 

Beginning shortly after 2 am on February 25, unidentified objects were reported over Los Angeles, prompting officials to alarm residents with sound air raid sirens and to order a total blackout.

At 3:16 am, the 37th Coast Artillery Brigade began firing 12.8-pound anti-aircraft shells – more than 1,400 over 58 minutes – as the unidentified flying objects moved south, from Santa Monica to Long Beach.

The photograph, published in the L.A. Time, highlights the presence of an ominous flying object drifting over the city.

UFO expert Bill Birnes explains: “The obvious thought was that these were Japanese bombers come to attack the United States. But it wasn’t. They were flying too high. And the astounding thing was, not one artillery shell could hit the craft. People outside that night swore that it was neither a plane nor a balloon – it was a UFO. It floated, it glided. And to this day, nobody can explain what that craft was, why our anti-aircraft guns couldn’t hit it – it’s a mystery that’s never been resolved.“

Descriptions of the Los Angeles’s UFOs

Descriptions of the UFOs varied widely:

1. General George C. Marshall: The “unidentified airplanes traveled at speeds ranging from ‘very slow’ to as much as 200 mph and from elevations of 9000 to 18,000 feet.”

2. The number of craft reported by observers ranged from 9 to 15 to 25.

Explanations of the Battle of Los Angeles UFO event

According to the Los Angeles Times (February 26, 1942), Frank Knox, the secretary of the Navy, dismissed the event as a “false alarm.” After a day of cover-up, the Secretary of War Henry L. Stimsont finally acknowledged that the craft and the battle were real.

Santa Monica’s US Representative, Leland Ford, was quoted in the Times on February 27 calling for a Congressional investigation into the incident, but this went nowhere.

Meanwhile, many different explanations raging from Japanese planes to German craft launched from secret bases in Mexico to unidentified aircraft to weather balloons to sky lanterns to blimps have been offered.

General Marshall even declared that the Army had recovered an unidentified aircraft off the coast of California. And that the “mystery airplanes are in fact not earthly and according to secret intelligence sources they are in all probability of interplanetary origin.“

Conspiracy theorists like Greg Bishop, Joe Oesterle, and Mike Marinacci proposed the incident as an extraterrestrial activity. During the documentation of the incident in 1949, the US Coast Artillery Association performed an examination on a meteorological balloon, which was released in the air at 1:00 am with an order of shooting it. The conclusion revealed that “once the firing started, imagination created all kinds of targets in the sky and everyone joined in.“

William C. Breuer described a bizarre story in his book “The Air-Raid Warden Was a Spy and other tales from home-front America in World War II.” According to him, President Roosevelt acknowledged during a conference the power of Japan for attacking the US mainland. Just six days after, a Japanese submarine surfaced near Santa Barbara.

The submarine fired 15 shells in an oil facility but didn’t create massive destruction. One of the main Japanese newspapers declared in their headline: “Our submarine destroyed a large US city.”

This attack was followed by a warning from the US Naval Intelligence about a new possible attack within just 10 hours. The warning turned people’s worst fear into a materialistic reality when signals were picked by the radar indicating the presence of UFO 120 miles away from the city.

Witnesses of the Battle of LA have reported seeing attacking planes. Was it a psychological stunt to terrify US residents and officials… We will probably never know… And the 1942 UFO sighting in Los Angeles will remain a mystery for ever…