The Battle of Los Angeles
February 23, 2017 • Los Angeles
Every few years the local media regurgitates the story of the Battle of Los Angeles, and with the 75th anniversary happening this week, we were bound to be informed once again by the mainstream media. The incident happened February 26, 1942, when silent ships were seen drifting southeast over the basin. The war had just begun, and a Japanese submarine actually had shelled an oil facility in Santa Barbara not long before, so the assumption was that Los Angeles was under air attack by the Japanese. Reaction was extreme, with air-raid sirens blaring and anti-aircraft shelling through the night. No planes or blimps were brought down, but cars and garages were blown up by artillery shells that fell back to earth. So if it wasn’t Japanese aircraft, what was it that was seen in the sky, floating over at a stately pace and impervious to World War II munitions?
At the 2017 International UFO Congress, David Marler gave an in-depth talk about what happened that night, and outlined how he and other researchers had tracked down the unretouched original of the famous photo, and how they’d figured out who the photographer likely was. Of course the self-congratulatory LA Times has their own alternative facts about the photo’s provenance and retouching when they dredged up the story yet again this year.
More interesting is an event happening this weekend at Fort MacArthur in San Pedro celebrating the Battle of Los Angeles, titled The Great Los Angeles Air Raid. Fort MacArthur was home to some of the defenses set up to protect the West Coast, and it participated in the battle. Saturday promises to be a fun commemoration.
