Presidential X-Files: FDR and the Battle of Los Angeles
The first months of 1942 were tense for those Americans who were the West Coast. The unanticipated attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 had resulted in the deaths of 2,403 Americans, causing President Franklin Delano Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war and join the Allied Powers. At that time, the city of Los Angeles ranked first in the nation in production of aircraft, and the city’s San Pedro Bay housed an enormous naval armada. By October 1941, the shipbuilding industry in the city had jumped to 22,000 employees, up from 1,000 only two years earlier. With its vulnerable location on the Pacific Ocean, and noticeably growing manufacturing centers, the city was believed to be a likely candidate as the next target for Japanese fleets. Although no fleets made their way to the California coastal waters, the Japanese did send submarines to the region and on December 23, 1941, those submarines sank the oil tanker Montebello off California’s coast. They also attacked the lumber ship SS Absaroka on Christmas eve, causing minor damage, but killing one crew member.
It was in this climate that another strange event occurred, one which became known as the Battle of Los Angeles. It was at this time that rumors that a Japanese aircraft carrier was cruising off the coast of the San Francisco Bay Area began to spread, resulted in the city of Oakland closing its schools and issuing a blackout. Civil defense sirens were mounted on patrol cars from the Oakland Police Department and radio silence was ordered. 500 United States Army troops moved into the Walt Disney Studios lot in Burbank, California, to defend Hollywood against enemy sabotage or air attacks.
The U.S. began mobilizing for the war, and anti-aircraft guns were installed, bunkers were built, and air raid drills became common. On February 23, 1942, at 7:15 pm, at the same time when President Franklin D. Roosevelt was having one of his famous fireside chats, Japanese submarine I-17 surfaced near Santa Barbara, California, and shelled Ellwood Oil field in Goleta. Damage was minimal, but the attack increased public concerns about Japanese troops storming California beaches. (Later that year in June, Japanese forces actually did bomb Dutch Harbor in Unalaska, Alaska, and landed troops in the Aleutian Islands of Kiska and Attu).
On February 24, 1942, the Office of Naval Intelligence issued a warning that an attack on mainland California could be expected within the next ten hours. That evening, many flares and blinking lights were reported from the vicinity of defense plants. An alert was called at 7:18 pm, with renewed activity early in the morning of February 25. Air raid sirens sounded at 2:25 am throughout Los Angeles County and at 3:16 am, the 37th Coast Artillery Brigade began firing .50-caliber machine guns and 12.8-pound (5.8 kg) anti-aircraft shells into the air at reported aircraft. Over 1,400 shells were eventually fired. Pilots of the 4th Interceptor Command were alerted but their aircraft remained grounded. The artillery fire continued sporadically until 4:14 am.
Several buildings and vehicles were damaged by shell fragments, and five civilians died as the indirect result of the anti-aircraft fire: three were killed in car accidents in the chaos that prevailed and two persons died of heart attacks attributed to the stress of the incident.
Within hours of the end of the air raid, President Roosevelt had been briefed on the incident and Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox held a press conference, saying the entire incident had been a false alarm due to anxiety and "war nerves". Knox's comments were followed by statements from the Army the next day. General George C. Marshall speculated that the incident was caused by enemy agents using commercial airplanes in a psychological warfare campaign to generate mass panic.]
The incident spawned a number of accusations of a cover-up of the truth. Theories began to spread that the Japanese had a secret base in northern Mexico as well as Japanese submarines stationed offshore with the capability of carrying planes. Others speculated that the incident was either staged or exaggerated to give coastal defense industries an excuse to move further inland.
An official navy report speculated that the submarine attack on February 23rd was intentionally timed to draw attention from Roosevelt's fireside chat, in order to injure morale and spread fear. In the address, Roosevelt had made the statement that "the broad oceans which have been heralded in the past as our protection from attack have become endless battlefields on which we are constantly being challenged by our enemies." The attack which was supposed to demonstrate the enemy's defiance, timed to coincide with Roosevelt's address to the nation. The raider surfaced at 7:05 p.m. (Pacific time), just five minutes after the President started his speech. The timing of the attack had led many to believe that Los Angeles would be attacked the next night. The Army, too, was convinced that some further action was coming.
The navy report simply describes the cause of the anti-aircraft fire during the night of February 24/25 as "unidentified objects" which had caused a succession of alerts in southern California. Early in the morning of the 25th, radar picked up an unidentified target 120 miles west of Los Angeles. Antiaircraft batteries were alerted at 2:15 a.m. and were put on Green Alert—ready to fire—a few minutes later. Military planes were kept on the ground, preferring to await further information of the scale and direction of any attack before committing its limited fighter force. Radars tracked the approaching target to within a few miles of the coast, and at 0221 the regional controller ordered a blackout. The information center was flooded with reports of "enemy planes, " even though the mysterious object tracked in from sea appeared to have vanished. At 0243, planes were reported near Long Beach, and a few minutes later a coast artillery colonel spotted "about 25 planes at 12,000 feet" over Los Angeles. At 0306 a balloon carrying a red flare was seen over Santa Monica and four batteries of anti-aircraft artillery opened fire.
The incident resulted in multiple confusing reports. Anti-aircraft shell bursts, caught by searchlights, were themselves mistaken for enemy planes. The next three hours produced a number of incredible reports of "swarms" of planes 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. But none of these alleged planes dropped any bombs and 1,440 rounds of anti-aircraft ammunition failed to hit any flying objects. There were reports that four enemy planes had been shot down, and one was supposed to have landed in flames at a Hollywood intersection. These reports proved false. Residents along the California coast watched from hills or rooftops as searchlights and anti-aircraft firing gave the impression that the city was under attack.
Attempts to arrive at an explanation of the incident quickly became as involved and mysterious as the "battle" itself. The Navy immediately announced that there was no evidence of the presence of any enemy planes. Secretary Knox announced at a press conference on February 25 that the raid was the result of a false alarm. The Fourth Air Force had also expressed its opinion that there were no enemy planes over Los Angeles. The Army waited a day, conducting a thorough examination of witnesses, and local commanders indicated their belief that from one to five unidentified airplanes had been over Los Angeles. Secretary Stimson announced this conclusion as the War Department version of the incident, and he advanced two theories to account for the mysterious craft: either they were commercial planes operated by an enemy from secret fields in California or Mexico, or they were light planes launched from Japanese submarines.
The divergence of views between these branches of the military led to a vigorous public debate. The Los Angeles Times, in a first-page editorial on February 26, wrote: "the considerable public excitement and confusion" caused by the alert, as well as its "spectacular official accompaniments," required a careful explanation. Concern was expressed that these phony raids could undermine the confidence of civilian volunteers in the aircraft warning service. In the United States Congress, Representative Leland Ford wanted to know whether the incident was "a practice raid, or a raid to throw a scare into 2,000,000 people, or a mistaken identity raid, or a raid to take away Southern California’s war industries." Wendell Willkie, speaking in Los Angeles on February 26, told Californians that, from his experiences in England, "when a real air raid begins, you won’t have to argue about it—you’ll just know." An editorial in the Washington Post on February 27 called the handling of the Los Angeles episode a "recipe for jitters." The editorial was critical of the military authorities for what it called "stubborn silence" in the face of widespread uncertainty. A New York Times editorial on February 28, said that that the more the incident was studied, the more incredible it became. The Times wrote:
"If the batteries were firing on nothing at all, as Secretary Knox implies, it is a sign of expensive incompetence and jitters. If the batteries were firing on real planes, some of them as low as 9,000 feet, as Secretary Stimson declares, why were they completely ineffective? Why did no American planes go up to engage them, or even to identify them? What would have happened if this had been a real air raid?"
At the end of the war, the Japanese maintained that they did not send planes over the area at the time of this alert. One further development arose as the result of a photo published in the Los Angeles Times on February 26, 1942. This photo has formed the basis for UFO conspiracy theories that there was an extraterrestrial visitation behind the incident. These theorists assert that the photo clearly shows searchlights focused on an alien spaceship.
It was in this climate that another strange event occurred, one which became known as the Battle of Los Angeles. It was at this time that rumors that a Japanese aircraft carrier was cruising off the coast of the San Francisco Bay Area began to spread, resulted in the city of Oakland closing its schools and issuing a blackout. Civil defense sirens were mounted on patrol cars from the Oakland Police Department and radio silence was ordered. 500 United States Army troops moved into the Walt Disney Studios lot in Burbank, California, to defend Hollywood against enemy sabotage or air attacks.
The U.S. began mobilizing for the war, and anti-aircraft guns were installed, bunkers were built, and air raid drills became common. On February 23, 1942, at 7:15 pm, at the same time when President Franklin D. Roosevelt was having one of his famous fireside chats, Japanese submarine I-17 surfaced near Santa Barbara, California, and shelled Ellwood Oil field in Goleta. Damage was minimal, but the attack increased public concerns about Japanese troops storming California beaches. (Later that year in June, Japanese forces actually did bomb Dutch Harbor in Unalaska, Alaska, and landed troops in the Aleutian Islands of Kiska and Attu).
On February 24, 1942, the Office of Naval Intelligence issued a warning that an attack on mainland California could be expected within the next ten hours. That evening, many flares and blinking lights were reported from the vicinity of defense plants. An alert was called at 7:18 pm, with renewed activity early in the morning of February 25. Air raid sirens sounded at 2:25 am throughout Los Angeles County and at 3:16 am, the 37th Coast Artillery Brigade began firing .50-caliber machine guns and 12.8-pound (5.8 kg) anti-aircraft shells into the air at reported aircraft. Over 1,400 shells were eventually fired. Pilots of the 4th Interceptor Command were alerted but their aircraft remained grounded. The artillery fire continued sporadically until 4:14 am.
Several buildings and vehicles were damaged by shell fragments, and five civilians died as the indirect result of the anti-aircraft fire: three were killed in car accidents in the chaos that prevailed and two persons died of heart attacks attributed to the stress of the incident.
Within hours of the end of the air raid, President Roosevelt had been briefed on the incident and Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox held a press conference, saying the entire incident had been a false alarm due to anxiety and "war nerves". Knox's comments were followed by statements from the Army the next day. General George C. Marshall speculated that the incident was caused by enemy agents using commercial airplanes in a psychological warfare campaign to generate mass panic.]
The incident spawned a number of accusations of a cover-up of the truth. Theories began to spread that the Japanese had a secret base in northern Mexico as well as Japanese submarines stationed offshore with the capability of carrying planes. Others speculated that the incident was either staged or exaggerated to give coastal defense industries an excuse to move further inland.
An official navy report speculated that the submarine attack on February 23rd was intentionally timed to draw attention from Roosevelt's fireside chat, in order to injure morale and spread fear. In the address, Roosevelt had made the statement that "the broad oceans which have been heralded in the past as our protection from attack have become endless battlefields on which we are constantly being challenged by our enemies." The attack which was supposed to demonstrate the enemy's defiance, timed to coincide with Roosevelt's address to the nation. The raider surfaced at 7:05 p.m. (Pacific time), just five minutes after the President started his speech. The timing of the attack had led many to believe that Los Angeles would be attacked the next night. The Army, too, was convinced that some further action was coming.
The navy report simply describes the cause of the anti-aircraft fire during the night of February 24/25 as "unidentified objects" which had caused a succession of alerts in southern California. Early in the morning of the 25th, radar picked up an unidentified target 120 miles west of Los Angeles. Antiaircraft batteries were alerted at 2:15 a.m. and were put on Green Alert—ready to fire—a few minutes later. Military planes were kept on the ground, preferring to await further information of the scale and direction of any attack before committing its limited fighter force. Radars tracked the approaching target to within a few miles of the coast, and at 0221 the regional controller ordered a blackout. The information center was flooded with reports of "enemy planes, " even though the mysterious object tracked in from sea appeared to have vanished. At 0243, planes were reported near Long Beach, and a few minutes later a coast artillery colonel spotted "about 25 planes at 12,000 feet" over Los Angeles. At 0306 a balloon carrying a red flare was seen over Santa Monica and four batteries of anti-aircraft artillery opened fire.
The incident resulted in multiple confusing reports. Anti-aircraft shell bursts, caught by searchlights, were themselves mistaken for enemy planes. The next three hours produced a number of incredible reports of "swarms" of planes 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. But none of these alleged planes dropped any bombs and 1,440 rounds of anti-aircraft ammunition failed to hit any flying objects. There were reports that four enemy planes had been shot down, and one was supposed to have landed in flames at a Hollywood intersection. These reports proved false. Residents along the California coast watched from hills or rooftops as searchlights and anti-aircraft firing gave the impression that the city was under attack.
Attempts to arrive at an explanation of the incident quickly became as involved and mysterious as the "battle" itself. The Navy immediately announced that there was no evidence of the presence of any enemy planes. Secretary Knox announced at a press conference on February 25 that the raid was the result of a false alarm. The Fourth Air Force had also expressed its opinion that there were no enemy planes over Los Angeles. The Army waited a day, conducting a thorough examination of witnesses, and local commanders indicated their belief that from one to five unidentified airplanes had been over Los Angeles. Secretary Stimson announced this conclusion as the War Department version of the incident, and he advanced two theories to account for the mysterious craft: either they were commercial planes operated by an enemy from secret fields in California or Mexico, or they were light planes launched from Japanese submarines.
The divergence of views between these branches of the military led to a vigorous public debate. The Los Angeles Times, in a first-page editorial on February 26, wrote: "the considerable public excitement and confusion" caused by the alert, as well as its "spectacular official accompaniments," required a careful explanation. Concern was expressed that these phony raids could undermine the confidence of civilian volunteers in the aircraft warning service. In the United States Congress, Representative Leland Ford wanted to know whether the incident was "a practice raid, or a raid to throw a scare into 2,000,000 people, or a mistaken identity raid, or a raid to take away Southern California’s war industries." Wendell Willkie, speaking in Los Angeles on February 26, told Californians that, from his experiences in England, "when a real air raid begins, you won’t have to argue about it—you’ll just know." An editorial in the Washington Post on February 27 called the handling of the Los Angeles episode a "recipe for jitters." The editorial was critical of the military authorities for what it called "stubborn silence" in the face of widespread uncertainty. A New York Times editorial on February 28, said that that the more the incident was studied, the more incredible it became. The Times wrote:
"If the batteries were firing on nothing at all, as Secretary Knox implies, it is a sign of expensive incompetence and jitters. If the batteries were firing on real planes, some of them as low as 9,000 feet, as Secretary Stimson declares, why were they completely ineffective? Why did no American planes go up to engage them, or even to identify them? What would have happened if this had been a real air raid?"
At the end of the war, the Japanese maintained that they did not send planes over the area at the time of this alert. One further development arose as the result of a photo published in the Los Angeles Times on February 26, 1942. This photo has formed the basis for UFO conspiracy theories that there was an extraterrestrial visitation behind the incident. These theorists assert that the photo clearly shows searchlights focused on an alien spaceship.