The Night the US Military Fired 1,400 Rounds at a UFO | The Battle of Los Angeles

When America’s Largest City Became a War Zone Against an Unknown Enemy

At precisely 3:16 AM on February 25, 1942, the tranquil darkness over Los Angeles exploded into a symphony of war. Searchlights pierced the night sky like luminous spears, converging on a mysterious object hovering above the city. The thunderous roar of anti-aircraft guns shattered the silence as the 37th Coast Artillery Brigade unleashed a devastating barrage. Orange bursts of flak bloomed like deadly flowers against the moonlit sky while .50-caliber machine guns added their staccato rhythm to the orchestrated chaos.

Below, two million terrified residents watched from darkened windows as their city transformed into a battlefield. Children cowered in their parents’ arms while searchlight beams danced across the heavens, hunting for an enemy that seemed to absorb direct hits without flinching. For over an hour, 1,400 rounds of ammunition thundered skyward in what would become the only sustained military action over a major American city during World War II.

When dawn broke over Los Angeles, the guns fell silent. The mysterious object had vanished, leaving behind only spent shell casings, damaged buildings, and a profound mystery that would endure for decades. No enemy aircraft lay crashed in the streets. No bombs had fallen. No invasion force materialized. Yet thousands of witnesses—military personnel, police officers, air raid wardens, and ordinary citizens—swore they had seen something extraordinary in the skies above their city that night.

This was the Battle of Los Angeles, an event so surreal that even at the time, observers compared it to a Hollywood production. But unlike the manufactured drama of the nearby film studios, this spectacular display of military might was all too real—and its target remains unexplained to this day.

A Nation on Edge: The Context of Fear

Pearl Harbor’s Lingering Shadow

By February 1942, America had been at war for less than three months, but the psychological wounds of Pearl Harbor still bled raw. The “date which will live in infamy” had shattered the illusion of American invulnerability, proving that the homeland itself could be attacked. The Pacific Ocean, once viewed as a protective moat, now seemed like a highway for enemy forces approaching the West Coast.

In the months following the Imperial Japanese Navy’s attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 7, 1941, and the United States’ entry into World War II the next day, public outrage and paranoia intensified across the country and especially on the West Coast, where proximity to Japan made invasion fears seem terrifyingly plausible.

The Reality of West Coast Attacks

These fears weren’t entirely unfounded. Contributing to the paranoia was the fact that many American merchant ships were indeed attacked by Japanese submarines in waters off the West Coast, with vessels like the SS Larry Doheny and SS Montebello actually sunk by enemy torpedoes. The war had already come to American waters.

Then, on February 23, 1942—just one day before the Los Angeles incident—reality exceeded fear. A Japanese submarine surfaced off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, and hurled over a dozen artillery shells at an oil field and refinery. While damage was minimal and no casualties resulted, the psychological impact was enormous. The mainland United States had been directly attacked for the first time since the War of 1812.

A City Prepared for War

Los Angeles in 1942 had transformed itself into a fortress city. Anti-aircraft guns bristled from hilltops and beach positions. Blackout drills were routine. Air raid wardens patrolled neighborhoods, ensuring compliance with light restrictions. The massive Douglas Aircraft plant and other defense facilities made the city a logical target for enemy action.

U.S. Secretary of War Henry Stimson warned that American cities should be prepared to accept “occasional blows” from enemy forces. This official acknowledgment that the homeland could be attacked heightened public anxiety and primed military forces for immediate action against any perceived threat.

The Gathering Storm: February 24, 1942

Intelligence Warnings

The stage for the night’s events was set when on 24 February 1942, the Office of Naval Intelligence issued a warning that an attack on mainland California could be expected within the next ten hours. This warning, coming just hours after the Santa Barbara shelling, put all West Coast defense forces on highest alert.

Mysterious Lights and False Alarms

That evening, many flares and blinking lights were reported from the vicinity of defense plants. An alert was called at 7:18 pm, and was lifted at 10:23 pm. These initial sightings, though ultimately deemed false alarms, kept nerves on edge and reinforced the expectation that attack was imminent.

The city settled into an uneasy quiet after the evening alert ended. Most residents went to bed expecting another ordinary night. Military personnel remained vigilant, but the immediate threat seemed to have passed. Unknown to the sleeping city, the most extraordinary night in Los Angeles history was about to begin.

The Battle Begins: 2:25 AM, February 25, 1942

Radar Contact

The first indication of trouble came from the radar operators at coastal defense installations. Shortly after 2 a.m. on February 25, military radar picked up what appeared to be an enemy contact some 120 miles west of Los Angeles. The blip on the screen appeared to be aircraft approaching from the Pacific—exactly what everyone had been dreading.

Air Raid Sirens

Air raid sirens sounded at 2:25 am throughout Los Angeles County. A total blackout was ordered and thousands of air raid wardens were summoned to their positions. Across the sprawling metropolitan area, millions of residents were jolted awake by the wailing sirens that meant only one thing: enemy attack was imminent.

The City Goes Dark

Within minutes, Los Angeles transformed from a city of lights into a darkened landscape. Windows were covered, street lights extinguished, and automobile headlights shielded. The only illumination came from searchlights sweeping the sky, hunting for the approaching threat.

Air raid sirens sounded and a citywide blackout was put into effect. Within minutes, troops had manned anti-aircraft guns and begun sweeping the skies with searchlights. The city held its breath, waiting for bombs to fall or enemy aircraft to strafe the streets.

The Artillery Barrage: 3:16 AM

The First Shots

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. The battle had begun in earnest.

The initial shots came from anti-aircraft batteries positioned around Santa Monica, where spotters reported seeing enemy aircraft. Following reports of an unidentified object in the skies, troops in Santa Monica unleashed a barrage of anti-aircraft and .50 caliber machine gun fire.

A Volcanic Eruption

At 3:06 am a balloon carrying a red flare was seen over Santa Monica and four batteries of anti-aircraft artillery opened fire, whereupon ‘the air over Los Angeles erupted like a volcano’. The phrase perfectly captured the spectacular and terrifying nature of what followed.

From military installations scattered across the Los Angeles basin, anti-aircraft guns joined the barrage. The night sky lit up with the orange blossoms of exploding shells while searchlights created a web of intersecting beams. The sound was deafening—a continuous thunder that shook buildings and rattled windows across the city.

Mass Confusion

Over 1400 shells are fired from guns ranging from .50 caliber machine guns to 12.8-pound anti-aircraft guns. Given a lack of actual targets, the firing quickly dies down but spent shell fragments rain down on the city, damaging buildings, vehicles, and everything else.

What made the situation even more chaotic was that pilots of the 4th Interceptor Command were alerted but their aircraft remained grounded. Military commanders chose to keep fighter planes on the ground rather than risk them in the confusion of the anti-aircraft barrage.

Eyewitness Accounts: What People Saw

Military Personnel Reports

Military observers provided some of the most detailed accounts of the night’s events. A coast artillery colonel spotted ‘about 25 planes at 12,000 feet’ over Los Angeles. These weren’t inexperienced civilians making wild claims—these were trained military personnel whose job was aircraft identification.

“I could barely see the planes, but they were up there all right,” a coastal artilleryman named Charles Patrick later wrote in a letter. The conviction in such accounts is striking, especially given that no evidence of enemy aircraft was ever found.

Civilian Witnesses

Thousands of civilians witnessed the spectacle from their darkened homes and neighborhoods. As smoke from exploding shells began collecting in the sky, both civilians and army gunners reported sightings of enemy aircraft, falling bombs and Japanese paratroopers.

Reports flooded in from across the metropolitan area. A report claimed that a Japanese aircraft had crashed in Hollywood. Other witnesses described seeing formation flights of aircraft, individual planes moving at various speeds and altitudes, and objects that seemed to hover motionlessly despite the intense anti-aircraft fire.

The Variety of Descriptions

According to an editorial in the New York Times, some eyewitnesses had spied “a big floating object resembling a balloon,” while others had spotted anywhere from one plane to several dozen. The diversity of accounts only added to the mystery.

Reports were hopelessly at variance. The next three hours produced some of the most imaginative reporting of the war: “swarms” of planes (or, sometimes, balloons) 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.

The Human Cost: Tragedy Amid the Chaos

Civilian Deaths

Five civilians die – three from traffic accidents spawned by the chaos and two from heart attacks. The battle may have been against an invisible enemy, but its human cost was all too real.

Frightened drivers, speeding through darkened streets, collided with one another, resulting in three traffic fatalities. As many as three other persons were reported to have died from fatal heart attacks. The terror of believing one’s city was under attack proved deadly for those with weak hearts or poor night vision.

Property Damage

Anti-aircraft shrapnel rained down across the city, shattering windows and ripping through buildings. The friendly fire that was supposed to protect Los Angeles instead damaged the very city it was meant to defend.

Spent shell fragments fell like metallic rain across neighborhoods from Santa Monica to downtown Los Angeles. Roofs were punctured, car windshields shattered, and some buildings sustained significant structural damage. The irony was inescapable: the only destruction that night came from American weapons firing at phantom targets.

The Morning After: Dawn and Disillusionment

The Cease-Fire

The artillery fire continued sporadically until 4:14 am. As dawn approached and no enemy attack materialized, military commanders finally ordered a cease-fire. The “all clear” sounds at 04:14 and the blackout order is lifted at 07:21.

The Search for Evidence

When daylight came, military personnel scoured the area for evidence of the night’s battle. They found spent ammunition, damaged buildings, and debris from their own anti-aircraft shells. What they didn’t find was equally significant: no crashed enemy aircraft, no bomb craters, no evidence that any hostile force had been present.

By daylight, however, no Japanese ships lay off the coast, no downed enemy aircraft were found and no enemy bomb damage was reported. The absence of physical evidence would become a central element in the mystery.

Media Coverage

The Los Angeles Times published a now-famous photograph showing searchlights converging on an object in the sky. The image would later become central to UFO conspiracy theories, though the photo was heavily modified by photo retouching prior to publication, a routine practice in graphic arts of the time intended to improve contrast in black and white photos.

Newspaper headlines across the country trumpeted the “Battle of Los Angeles,” with accounts varying wildly in their descriptions of what had occurred. According to the Los Angeles Herald Examiner a witness puts the number of planes at 50. Three are shot down over the ocean. A battery near Vermont Ave. takes out another.

Official Explanations: Discord at the Highest Levels

Navy vs. Army: Conflicting Stories

The official response to the Battle of Los Angeles revealed significant disagreement within the military establishment. Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox called the purported attack a “false alarm”, dismissing the entire incident as a case of wartime jitters.

The Army, however, told a different story. A day later, the War Department, presenting the Army’s side of the story, claimed at least one and possibly five unidentified aircraft were over the city that night. This contradiction between the Navy’s dismissal and the Army’s insistence that something had been present only deepened the mystery.

Secretary Stimson’s Claims

Secretary of War Henry Stimson initially supported the Army’s position, claiming that unidentified aircraft had indeed been over Los Angeles. Secretary of War Henry Stimson says 15 unidentified aircraft were over Los Angeles — possibly commercial aircraft operated by the enemy from secret fields in California or Mexico or light planes launched from Japanese submarines.

However, Stimson later backed away from these dramatic claims. Stimson later backpedaled his claims, but there was still the matter of the thousands of military personnel and civilians who claimed to have seen aircraft in the skies over L.A.

The Japanese Denial

After the war ended, investigators sought answers from former enemy forces. The Japanese military later claimed it had never flown aircraft over the city during World War II. This post-war admission definitively ruled out the original explanation for the incident—that Japanese forces had conducted a reconnaissance or psychological warfare mission over Los Angeles.

Scientific Analysis: The Weather Balloon Theory

The 1983 Air Force Investigation

Decades after the event, military historians attempted to solve the mystery. 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.

The official conclusion suggested that meteorological balloons 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”.

The Chain Reaction Effect

The Air Force analysis proposed a logical sequence of events: meteorological balloons had been released prior to the barrage to help determine wind conditions. Their lights and silver color could have been what first triggered the alerts. Once the shooting began, the disorienting combination of searchlights, smoke and anti-aircraft flak might have led gunners to believe they were firing on enemy planes even though none were actually present.

This explanation accounted for the escalating nature of the incident—initial reports of one or two objects multiplying into dozens as shell bursts were mistaken for aircraft and searchlight beams created false targets in the smoky sky.

Psychological Factors

Modern psychological analysis has added another dimension to understanding the events. Eyewitness testimony is frequently inaccurate, especially under stressful conditions. An excellent example of this phenomenon is found in the World War II “Battle of Los Angeles”.

The psychological state of the population played a crucial role. Californians had blacked out their windows, to prevent Japanese bombers from zeroing in. Eyewitnesses to the attack were simply wrong, and this wasn’t the first time that interpretive eyewitness processes had produced similar effects.

The UFO Connection: Birth of a Modern Mystery

The Famous Photograph

The Los Angeles Times photograph of searchlights converging on an object in the sky became central to later UFO theories. The conspiracy theorists used doctored photos released by the L.A. Times at that time as proof of UFOs. They even went on to explain that this floating object was able to withstand gunfire as it was immune to all these.

However, research later revealed the photo’s limitations as evidence. The famous photograph of the object over LA has been discovered to be doctored and possibly retouched. One can see the searchlights converging on something in the sky that is shaped like a saucer or football. However, the photo was enhanced and possibly retouched.

The Majestic 12 Documents

Conspiracy theories escalated in 1987 with the release of Majestic 12 documents. The documents are now discredited, but one of them is shown to be an official document of the government. It turns out to be a “Marshall/Roosevelt Memo” dated March 5, 1942, where it claims two alien aircraft were retained from the battle of Los Angeles.

Although these documents were later proven to be fabricated, they fueled decades of speculation about government cover-ups and alien visitation.

Modern UFO Interest

The Battle Of Los Angeles Daniel Leger And The Aviatrix: The Strange Encounter represents an ongoing fascination with the incident among UFO researchers. The Battle of Los Angeles sparked numerous alternative theories, with some suggesting an extraterrestrial origin for the object.

The incident has become a touchstone for UFO enthusiasts who point to the military’s intense response, the number of credible witnesses, and the object’s apparent immunity to anti-aircraft fire as evidence of technology beyond terrestrial capabilities.

Eyewitness Testimonies: Voices from That Night

C. Scott Littleton’s Account

One of the most detailed eyewitness accounts comes from C. Scott Littleton, who was a child during the incident but later became a respected academic who investigated the event throughout his life. Scotty Littleton awoke to his parents’ whispers in the hall. He peeked out and saw his father’s pale face. As an air raid warden for his beachfront neighborhood, Scotty’s dad had to leave his family and enforce the blackout outside.

Littleton’s account provides a personal dimension to the night’s events, showing how ordinary families experienced the terror and confusion of believing their city was under attack.

Military Personnel Perspectives

“I’ve probably talked to about 10 guys who were there, and they range from searchlight operators to gunners to radar guys. And the basic gist is that they did what they were told to do,” Nelson said. These accounts from Fort MacArthur Museum director Stephen Nelson, who has interviewed numerous veterans of the incident, provide insight into the military experience that night.

“Imagination could have easily disclosed many shapes in the sky in the midst of that weird symphony of noise and color,” Coastal Artillery Corps Colonel John G. Murphy later wrote. “But cold detachment disclosed no planes of any type in the sky—friendly or enemy”.

The Variety of Experiences

The diversity of witness accounts reflects the chaotic nature of the events. Some observers saw formations of aircraft, others spotted individual objects, and still others noticed balloon-like shapes. Eyewitnesses described a large, glowing object that moved slowly, resembling an aircraft.

The consistency across multiple independent witnesses regarding certain details—particularly the presence of something in the sky that attracted and withstood intense anti-aircraft fire—remains one of the most compelling aspects of the case.

Historical Impact: Consequences Beyond the Night

Impact on Japanese American Internment

Regardless of the cause, the effect of the hair-raising events of February 23-25, 1942 was to hasten implementation of President Franklin Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, signed just days earlier. The order authorized the incarceration and internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans living on the West Coast.

The Battle of Los Angeles, along with the Santa Barbara shelling, created an atmosphere of paranoia that facilitated one of the most shameful episodes in American history. Confused and embarrassed authorities, with no explanation for the morning’s events, focused instead on arresting 20 Japanese-Americans for allegedly trying to signal the mysterious enemy aircraft.

Changes in Military Procedures

The incident led to significant changes in West Coast air defense procedures. The confusion between different military commands, the lack of coordination between radar operators and artillery units, and the decision to keep fighter aircraft grounded all came under scrutiny.

Future air defense protocols would emphasize better communication, clearer chains of command, and more rigorous target identification procedures before opening fire.

Cultural Legacy

Even at the time, many journalists noted that it was fitting that the incident had taken place in the home of the film industry. In an article from March 1942, the New York Times wrote that as the “world’s preeminent fabricator of make-believe,” Hollywood appeared to have played host to a battle that was “just another illusion”.

The incident has been referenced in numerous films, books, and television shows. Prior to the UFO theories, the pop culture touchstone for the raid came in the form of “1941,” a 1979 comedy portraying a fictional attack on a panicked Los Angeles following Pearl Harbor.

Alternative Theories: What Really Happened?

Military Experiment Theory

Some researchers have suggested that the object might have been an experimental American aircraft or weapon system. One theory proposed that the object was a classified military experiment, such as a new aircraft or weapon prototype.

This theory would explain the military’s confused response and the later contradictory official statements. If the object was an American experimental craft, it might also explain why it appeared impervious to anti-aircraft fire—it might have been designed to test defense systems or evaluate new technologies.

Psychological Warfare Theory

Another possibility is that enemy forces did conduct a psychological warfare operation, but not in the way initially imagined. Rather than attacking with conventional aircraft, Japanese forces might have used balloons, flares, or other devices designed to trigger exactly the kind of massive overreaction that occurred.

Secretary of War Henry Stimson says 15 unidentified aircraft were over Los Angeles — possibly commercial aircraft operated by the enemy from secret fields in California or Mexico or light planes launched from Japanese submarines. Their goal is to determine the location of anti-aircraft defense or damage civilian morale.

The Mass Hysteria Explanation

The most widely accepted explanation among historians is that the incident represented a classic case of mass hysteria triggered by wartime fears. In 1983, the US Office of Air Force History reviewed the case and concluded that the Battle of Los Angeles was likely sparked when pre-existing “war jitters” collided with weather balloons.

This theory suggests that once the first shots were fired at what was probably a weather balloon, the combination of searchlights, smoke, shell bursts, and high anxiety created a feedback loop where observers began seeing threats everywhere in the sky.

The Mystery Endures: Modern Perspectives

Continuing Investigation

The director of the Fort MacArthur Museum in San Pedro, who is writing a book on the encounter based on research and eyewitness accounts from those firing the anti-aircraft guns, dismisses that conclusion. Modern researchers continue to investigate the incident, interviewing surviving veterans and analyzing historical records.

Every February, the Fort MacArthur Museum, located at the entrance to Los Angeles Harbor, hosts an entertainment event called “The Great LA Air Raid of 1942”. These annual commemorations keep the story alive and provide forums for ongoing discussion and research.

Unsolved Questions

Despite decades of investigation, key questions remain unanswered:

• Why did experienced military personnel continue to report aircraft sightings throughout the incident?
• What caused the initial radar contact that triggered the alert?
• How could weather balloons have moved in formation or remained stationary against prevailing winds?
• Why did shell bursts appear to converge on specific objects rather than dispersing randomly?

The Broader Context

Despite the passage of over eight decades, the Battle of Los Angeles remains an unsolved mystery. Official explanations, eyewitness testimonies, and subsequent investigations have failed to provide a definitive understanding of the incident.

The incident serves as a fascinating case study in how wartime stress, technological limitations, human psychology, and genuine anomalous events can combine to create enduring mysteries.

Lessons from the Battle: What We Learn

The Power of Fear

The Battle of Los Angeles demonstrates how fear can transform perception and trigger massive overreactions. The powerful invasion-oriented cognitive framework of the Battle of Los Angeles could turn an aerial phenomenon, dimly-observed illuminated balloons in the dark, into the aerial menace of an armada of enemy aircraft.

The incident shows how pre-existing beliefs and expectations can shape what people see and how they interpret ambiguous stimuli. When everyone expected Japanese attack, anything unusual in the sky could be perceived as confirmation of that threat.

Technology and Human Factors

The incident occurred during a transitional period in military technology. Complicating the matter was the recent addition of radar to the anti-aircraft defense system — the new technology was just months past initial field testing.

This combination of new, unreliable technology with inexperienced operators under extreme stress created conditions ripe for misinterpretation and escalation.

The Nature of Evidence

The Battle of Los Angeles raises important questions about the nature of evidence and testimony. Thousands of witnesses, including trained military personnel, reported seeing aircraft that official investigations concluded were not there. This disconnect between experience and explanation highlights the complexity of determining truth in ambiguous situations.

Conclusion: The Night That Changed Everything

The Battle of Los Angeles stands as one of the most extraordinary events in American military history—a night when the largest city on the West Coast became a battlefield against an enemy that may never have existed. For over an hour, 1,400 rounds of anti-aircraft ammunition thundered skyward while millions of civilians watched in terror from their darkened homes.

What began as a response to radar contacts and enemy aircraft reports became something far more complex: a demonstration of how fear, technology, and human perception can combine to create events that transcend simple explanation. Whether the targets were weather balloons, experimental aircraft, enemy psychological warfare devices, or something else entirely, the response was undeniably real—and deadly.

The five civilian deaths that night were not caused by enemy bombs or bullets, but by the panic and chaos of a city that believed it was under attack. The property damage came not from Japanese artillery but from American anti-aircraft shells falling back to earth. The only confirmed hostile action was the friendly fire that rained down on Los Angeles itself.

In the decades since, the Battle of Los Angeles has become a touchstone for discussions about UFOs, government cover-ups, and the reliability of eyewitness testimony. The famous photograph of searchlights converging on an object in the sky continues to fuel debates about what was really seen that night. Some view it as evidence of extraterrestrial visitation; others see it as a product of photo retouching and wartime hysteria.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the Battle of Los Angeles is not what was in the sky that night, but what the incident reveals about human nature under extreme stress. When faced with the unknown during a time of national crisis, thousands of people—from experienced military officers to ordinary civilians—saw what they expected to see: enemy aircraft threatening their city.

The battle also demonstrates the power of collective experience to create lasting mystery. Despite official explanations, despite post-war investigations, despite decades of analysis, the events of February 25, 1942, continue to resist definitive explanation. The disconnect between official conclusions and witness testimony ensures that the Battle of Los Angeles remains an active area of research and debate.

Modern Los Angeles bears little resemblance to the wartime city of 1942. The defense installations are mostly gone, the anti-aircraft guns have been replaced by missile systems, and the skyline has grown beyond recognition. But the memory of that extraordinary night persists, kept alive by museums, researchers, and witnesses who insist that something remarkable occurred in the skies above their city.

Whether the Battle of Los Angeles represents a case of mass hysteria, a genuine encounter with unknown technology, or something in between, it stands as a powerful reminder that reality can sometimes be stranger than fiction. In a city built on creating illusions, the most spectacular show was not produced in a Hollywood studio but in the skies above Los Angeles—a real-life drama that continues to captivate and mystify more than eight decades later.

The searchlights have long been extinguished, the guns have fallen silent, and most of the witnesses have passed away. But the questions raised that night continue to illuminate our understanding of how humans respond to the unknown, how institutions handle inexplicable events, and how enduring mysteries can emerge from moments of crisis.

As Los Angeles continues to grow and change, the Battle of Los Angeles remains frozen in time—a single night when the City of Angels became a stage for one of the most dramatic and puzzling events in American military history. The truth of what happened may never be fully known, but the story itself has become part of the city’s identity, a reminder that even in the most mundane times, extraordinary events can transform our understanding of what is possible.