The Battle of Los Angeles: Anti-Aircraft Guns Fire on an Unknown Object Over the City (1942)

Three Months After Pearl Harbor

On the night of February 24–25, 1942 — just 79 days after the Imperial Japanese Navy's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor — air raid sirens wailed across Los Angeles County at 2:25 a.m. A full blackout was ordered across the entire region, plunging the city into darkness. Thousands of air raid wardens were summoned to their posts. The 37th Coast Artillery Brigade was placed on full alert.

The Guns Open Fire

At 3:16 a.m., without confirmation of any actual incoming aircraft, the 37th Coast Artillery Brigade began firing .50-caliber machine guns and anti-aircraft artillery into the sky over the city. Over 1,400 shells were fired over the next hour. Searchlights crisscrossed the sky, and shell bursts were photographed by the Los Angeles Times. The barrage continued sporadically until 4:14 a.m. Witnesses across the region — including civilians, military personnel, and police — reported seeing a large, slow-moving object illuminated by searchlights over the city that the anti-aircraft fire appeared unable to hit.

The Human Cost

Five civilians died in the chaos: three were killed in car accidents in the blackout, and two suffered fatal heart attacks attributed to the stress and terror of the one-hour artillery barrage. Property was damaged by falling shrapnel from the shells, which rained down across the city.

The Official Explanations — and Their Contradictions

Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox held a press conference the following day and called the incident a "false alarm" caused by "war nerves." However, Secretary of War Henry Stimson offered a different account, stating that 15 unidentified aircraft had been seen moving over Los Angeles at speeds between 120 and 200 mph. In 1983, the U.S. Office of Air Force History revisited the event and attributed it to a case of "war nerves" likely triggered by a lost weather balloon and worsened by stray flares. After World War II ended, the Japanese military officially confirmed they had no aircraft or balloons over Los Angeles on that date. The U.S. Army's own after-action report left the nature of the target unresolved.

The Famous Photograph

The Los Angeles Times published a photograph on February 26, 1942, showing searchlight beams converging on what appeared to be a large, structured object in the sky over the city. The photo — which has since been cited in countless UFO investigations — was heavily retouched using standard darkroom techniques of the era to improve contrast, a fact that has made definitive analysis impossible. The image remains one of the most reproduced photographs in UFO history. Project Blue Book, the U.S. Air Force's official UFO investigation program, reviewed over 12,000 reports between 1952 and 1969 and was able to explain most sightings — but the 1942 Battle of Los Angeles was not among them. It remains listed as unresolved.

Legacy

The Battle of Los Angeles is considered one of the foundational cases in American UFO history. It predates the modern UFO era by five years and represents the only occasion in U.S. history when major American cities were blacked out and anti-aircraft guns fired on an unidentified aerial object over a civilian metropolitan area. The incident was referenced in declassified documents, Congressional records, and the FBI's own files, and was cited in the controversial 1987 Majestic 12 documents — later ruled fabrications by the FBI.