EXCERPT:
The
Battle of Los Angeles, also known as the
Great Los Angeles Air Raid, is the name given by contemporary sources to a rumored
attack on the continental United States by
Imperial Japan and the subsequent
anti-aircraft artillery barrage which took place from late 24 February to early 25 February 1942, over
Los Angeles, California.
[1][2][3] The incident occurred less than three months after the U.S. entered
World War II in response to the
Imperial Japanese Navy's
surprise attack on
Pearl Harbor, and one day after the
bombardment of Ellwood near
Santa Barbara on 23 February. Initially, the target of the aerial barrage was thought to be an attacking force from Japan, but speaking at a press conference shortly afterward,
Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox called the purported attack a "false alarm". Newspapers of the time published a number of reports and speculations of a cover-up to conceal an actual invasion by enemy airplanes.
When documenting the incident in 1949, the United States Coast Artillery Association identified a
meteorological balloon sent aloft at 1:00 am as having "started all the shooting" and concluded that "once the firing started, imagination created all kinds of targets in the sky and everyone joined in".
[4] In 1983, the
U.S. Office of Air Force History attributed the event to a case of "war nerves" triggered by a lost weather balloon and exacerbated by stray flares and shell bursts from adjoining batteries. As an example of incompetence, the incident was derisively referred to as the "Battle of Los Angeles" or the "Great Los Angeles Air Raid".
[5]
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Some have also speculated that UFO(s)/UAV(s) may have been involved.