Charles River Editors - The Battle of Los Angeles: The History of the Notorious False Alarm that Caused an Artillery Barrage over California during World War II

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The Battle of Los Angeles

Probably much of the confusion came from the fact that anti-aircraft shell bursts, caught by the searchlights, were themselves mistaken for enemy planes. In any case, the next three hours produced some of the most imaginative reporting of the war: "swarms" of planes (or, sometimes, balloons) of all possible sizes, numbering from one to several hundred, traveling at altitudes which ranged from a few thousand feet to more than 20,000 and flying at speeds which were said to have varied from "very slow" to over 200 miles per hour, were observed to parade across the skies. These mysterious forces dropped no bombs and, despite the fact that 1,440 rounds of anti-aircraft ammunition were directed against them, suffered no losses. An excerpt from the U.S. Office of Air Force History

All Americans are familiar with the day that will live in infamy. At 9:30 a.m. on Sunday, December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor, the advanced base of the United States Navys Pacific Fleet, was ablaze. It had been smashed by aircraft launched by the carriers of the Imperial Japanese Navy. All eight battleships had been sunk or badly damaged, 350 aircraft had been knocked out, and over 2,000 Americans lay dead. Indelible images of the USS Arizona exploding and the USS Oklahoma capsizing and floating upside down have been ingrained in the American conscience ever since. In less than an hour and a half the Japanese had almost wiped out Americas entire naval presence in the Pacific.

Roosevelt addressed Congress and the nation the following day, giving a stirring speech seeking a declaration of war against Japan. The beginning lines of the speech are instantly familiar, with Roosevelt forever marking Pearl Harbor in the national conscience as a date which will live in infamy. Congress voted overwhelmingly in support of an immediate declaration of war: 82-0 in the Senate and 388-1 in the House. Churchill had said that Britain would declare war within the hour if Japan attacked America. There was no way that the British were going to forget the support they had already received from Roosevelt. Britain was at war with Japan the same day. The other Axis powers quickly followed suit, with Germany and Italy declaring war on America and vice versa by December 11.

As a battle, the attack on Pearl Harbor has often been misunderstood. American pride took a big hit, and rightly so since the lack of adequate defensive preparations was lamentable. A lot of Americans paid with their lives for simple omissions like the absence of torpedo netting. But this has contributed to an exaggeration within the historiography - that Japans success was the result of brilliant planning and execution. That is far from the truth. Japans planning was confused, and tactical management of the battle was inept if not outright absent. The Japanese attack succeeded despite these failings due chiefly to the element of surprise, American unpreparedness, and a good deal of luck.

Today Pearl Harbor is remembered in several important ways. First, it is widely viewed as a turning point for World War II, and if Hitlers attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941 had not already sealed his fate, his declaration of war against America that December did. Beyond that, the day provided some important pointers for how the war would pan out in the Pacific. Japans conduct of battle was exposed as aggressive but inflexible, and its pilots proved brave but undisciplined. The Americans, derisively portrayed as decadent and weak, showed that they could and would fight.

In the immediate aftermath, Americans immediately rallied around the flag, invoking Pearl Harbor as the reason necessitating it, but people were understandably nervous in the first few months of 1942. Japan badly battered the American fleet and invaded the Philippines, leaving many to assume that an attack on the American mainland was inevitable. The heightened nerves led to one of the strangest events of the war on the night of February 24-25, 1942, when guns across Los Angeles lit up the sky in response to alarms about Japanese plans overhead.

Most people believe that it was a combination of illusion, miscommunication, and a dreadful domino effect that led to what is now remembered as the Battle of Los Angeles, but some continue to insist otherwise. The Battle of Los Angeles: The History of the Notorious False Alarm that Caused an Artillery Barrage over California during World War II explores the events leading up to the battle, the aftermath, and the ongoing scandals and conspiracy theories that continue to persist. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about the Battle of Los Angeles like never before.

Delusions or hallucinations are mystifying products of the mind in itself, but collective delusions add another layer to an intricate equation already difficult to grasp. Take the story of the 1917 miracle in Ftima, Portugal, for instance. In May of that year, three children scampered home to their parents and revealed to them that they had came upon the Blessed Virgin. Lucia, the eldest of the three, was the only one privileged enough to exchange words with the apparition. Lucia relayed the message that for the next six months, Mary would materialize on every 13 th day. Believers and skeptics alike showed up to these pilgrimages. Each and every time, the apparition appeared only to Lucia, who narrated the invisible developments, and still, the faithful remained entranced. On the 13 th of October, however, the day of Mary's parting performance, some of the 70,000 or so in attendance supposedly witnessed a miracle. Again, the apparition divulged itself only to Lucia, and following a prediction to the conclusion of the First World War, it pointed at the sky. At once, Lucia urged those around her to lift their eyes up to the sun. Mouths agape, they watched as a silvery disc floated out from behind the clouds.

That was the general consensus, anyway. As is usually the case with collective delusions, each one in the crowd was convinced that they had seen something, but they produced varying descriptions of the same object in question. Instead of a silver disc, some saw a glowing orb of the sun hurtling towards the planet, as if determined to consume all of Earth. Others saw the sun bounce around as if weightless across the skies. Then, there were those who reported swirling, pinwheel-like orbs in a rainbow of intense colors that dotted the sunlit skies.

Joe Nickell, author of Looking for a Miracle , suggests that the orb was most likely a sundog, or a mock sun, defined by Sky & Telescope as a concentrated patch of sunlight occasionally seen about 22 to the left or right of the sun...technically known as parhelia...they are often white but sometimes quite colorful, looking like detached pieces of rainbow... Plainly put, the expectant minds of the religious crowd manufactured an optical illusion of some sort that would fit their anticipation.