This Day in History: Great Los Angeles Air Raid

Pilots,

Today, we want to revive an old format that we tested over a year ago called ‘This Day in History’. In this series, we will aim to tell you interesting and little-known facts about particularly memorable events as they happened throughout WWII history.

To start off, we’ve picked the ‘Great Los Angeles Air Raid’ – an event so unlikely that it’s hard to believe it actually happened. Last year, we covered this amazing incident briefly when we made it the occasion for one of our weekend specials. This year, we’re back with more material on the subject to tell you the amazing story behind this ambiguous occurrence.

The Great Los Angeles Air Raid

Soon after the outbreak of WWII in 1939, air raids became a common part of daily life for people living in Europe on all sides of the conflict. The threat of bombings were constant, and people grew used to the sirens warning of an impending attack. In Great Britain, children were evacuated to the countryside, and everywhere air raid shelters were constructed in an attempt to save lives.

However, in the United States, air raids were unheard of. Indeed, until the Pearl Harbor attack in December 1941, the U.S. had never been attacked by a foreign power in its own territory. 

Pearl Harbor had come as a complete surprise so it was understandable that, at the time, the Americans started to become a lot more anxious about possible further attacks (or even invasions). In 1942, on the evening of 24 February until the following morning, their fears seemed to become realised in the skies above the city of Los Angeles.

Photo from the Los Angeles Times showing spotlights picking out one of the unidentified objects on the evening of 24 February 1942.

Unidentified flying objects were spotted in the night sky. Believing them to be Japanese planes, immediately a full blackout of the city was ordered and US Army planes took to off into the darkness to hunt down the intruders. In the meantime, another unidentified object was believed to be approaching by sea. Naturally, for the U.S. military command, this could only be a surfacing Japanese submarine. Feverishly trying to get the situation under control, it was decided to ‘shoot first, ask questions later’. Without really knowing what they were shooting at, every available AA-gun in the vicinity was mobilised and ordered to rain down a massive barrage on the blinking lights in the distance. Around 1,500 shots were fired that night by the U.S. planes in the air and anti-aircraft guns on the ground before the lights disappeared and the ‘all-clear’ was finally declared a few hours later.

Afterwards, no evidence of invading aircraft or vessels was ever found, and Japan denied knowledge of any of it. It seems that the entire event had been a false alarm. However, just for that one night, the residents of Los Angeles experienced the fear of an air raid.

The event made the front page of many newspapers.
Headline reads: Air Battle Rages Over Los Angeles (all except EN)

To date, the mystery has never been solved. It is speculated that the most likely explanation for the spotted mysterious objects is that they were actually meteorological balloons. (An explanation that became popular in years past whenever other ‘alien conspiracies’ were debunked.) The small fast-moving objects observed later on could have been debris from the anti-aircraft shells that were being fired at the same balloons. However, conspiracies and theories about Japanese spy drones or even extra-terrestrial spacecraft are still popular over 70 years later.

Share with the community in the forum if you’ve heard of other unusual WWII events!