Post by w***@hotmail.comPost by Don KirkmanBy comparison, the similar "air raid" on Los Angeles
shortly after the
start of the war was widely reported even at the time and is still
discussed or described regularly in the LA area media.
Yes, it was quite a fireworks show over L.A., when apparently
unidentified a/c were reported over the city and AA batteries opened up
on the a/c. My parents witnessed that show with great interest, and
recall hearing about it from them. ISTR it was a USAAF training flight
that had failed to file a flight plan; thus, the falling shrapnel over
L.A. which, ISTR, injured some people on the ground. Also seem to
recall this was the basis for the movie "1941" with John Belushi.
Here's a little history on the subject
The Battle of Los Angeles-1942
During the night of 24/25 February 1942, unidentified objects caused a
succession of alerts in southern California. On the 24th, a warning issued
by naval intelligence indicated that an attack could be expected within
the next ten hours. That evening a large number of flares and blinking
lights were reported from the vicinity of defense plants. An alert called
at 1918 [7:18 p.m., Pacific time] was lifted at 2223, and the tension
temporarily relaxed. But early in the morning of the 25th renewed activity
began. Radars picked up an unidentified target 120 miles west of Los
Angeles. Antiaircraft batteries were alerted at 0215 and were put on Green
Alert-ready to fire-a few minutes later. The AAF kept its pursuit planes
on the ground, preferring to await indications 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. Thereafter the information center
was flooded with reports of "enemy planes, " even though the mysterious
object tracked in from sea seems 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, whereupon "the air over
Los Angeles erupted like a volcano." From this point on reports were
hopelessly at variance.
Probably much of the confusion came from the fact that anti-aircraft shell
bursts, caught by the searchlights, were themselves mistaken for enemy
planes. In any case, 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, were observed to parade across the
skies. These mysterious forces dropped no bombs and, despite the fact that
1,440 rounds of anti-aircraft ammunition were directed against them,
suffered no losses. There were reports, to be sure, that four enemy planes
had been shot down, and one was supposed to have landed in flames at a
Hollywood intersection. Residents in a forty-mile arc along the coast
watched from hills or rooftops as the play of guns and searchlights
provided the first real drama of the war for citizens of the mainland. The
dawn, which ended the shooting and the fantasy, also proved that the only
damage which resulted to the city was such as had been caused by the
excitement (there was at least one death from heart failure), by traffic
accidents in the blacked-out streets, or by shell fragments from the
artillery barrage.
Attempts to arrive at an explanation of the incident quickly became as
involved and mysterious as the "battle" itself. The Navy immediately
insisted that there was no evidence of the presence of enemy planes, and
Secretary [of the Navy, Frank] Knox announced at a press conference on 25
February that the raid was just a false alarm. At the same conference he
admitted that attacks were always possible and indicated that vital
industries located along the coast ought to be moved inland. The Army had
a hard time making up its mind on the cause of the alert. A report to
Washington, made by the Western Defense Command shortly after the raid had
ended, indicated that the credibility of reports of an attack had begun to
be shaken before the blackout was lifted. This message predicted that
developments would prove "that most previous reports had been greatly
exaggerated." The Fourth Air Force had indicated its belief that there
were no planes over Los Angeles. But the Army did not publish these
initial conclusions. Instead, it waited a day, until after a thorough
examination of witnesses had been finished. On the basis of these
hearings, local commanders altered their verdict and indicated a 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. In either case, the enemy's purpose
must have been to locate anti-aircraft defenses in the area or to deliver
a blow at civilian morale.
The divergence of views between the War and Navy departments, and the
unsatisfying conjectures advanced by the Army to explain the affair,
touched off a vigorous public discussion. The Los Angeles Times, in a
first-page editorial on 26 February, announced that "the considerable
public excitement and confusion" caused by the alert, as well as its
"spectacular official accompaniments, " demanded a careful explanation.
Fears were expressed lest a few phony raids undermine the confidence of
civilian volunteers in the aircraft warning service. In 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 26 February,
assured Californians on the basis of his experiences in England that when
a real air raid began "you won't have to argue about it-you'll just know."
He conceded that military authorities had been correct in calling a
precautionary alert but deplored the lack of agreement between the Army
and Navy. A strong editorial in the Washington Post on 27 February called
the handling of the Los Angeles episode a "recipe for jitters," and
censured the military authorities for what it called "stubborn silence" in
the face of widespread uncertainty. The editorial suggested that the
Army's theory that commercial planes might have caused the alert "explains
everything except where the planes came from, whither they were going, and
why no American planes were sent in pursuit of them." The New York Times
on 28 February expressed a belief that the more the incident was studied,
the more incredible it became: "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?" These questions were appropriate, but for the War Department to
have answered them in full frankness would have involved an even more
complete revelation of the weakness of our air defenses.
At the end of the war, the Japanese stated that they did not send planes
over the area at the time of this alert, although submarine-launched
aircraft were subsequently used over Seattle. A careful study of the
evidence suggests that meteorological balloons-known to have been released
over Los Angeles -may well have caused the initial alarm. This theory is
supported by the fact that anti-aircraft artillery units were officially
criticized for having wasted ammunition on targets which moved too slowly
to have been airplanes. After the firing started, careful observation was
difficult because of drifting smoke from shell bursts. The acting
commander of the anti-aircraft artillery brigade in the area testified
that he had first been convinced that he had seen fifteen planes in the
air, but had quickly decided that he was seeing smoke. Competent
correspondents like Ernie Pyle and Bill Henry witnessed the shooting and
wrote that they were never able to make out an airplane. It is hard to
see, in any event, what enemy purpose would have been served by an attack
in which no bombs were dropped, unless perhaps, as Mr. Stimson suggested,
the purpose had been reconnaissance.
In: The Army Air Forces in World War II, prepared under the editorship of
Wesley Frank Craven, James Lea Cate. v.1, pp. 277-286, Washington, D.C. :
Office of Air Force History : For sale by the Supt. of Docs., U.S. G.P.O.,
1983.
See "http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist9/aaf2.html"
I lived in the LA basin at the time
Jim Carew
Post by w***@hotmail.comPost by Don KirkmanMinor factual correction: San Pedro is a section of Los Angeles City
(but I'm not sure whether that was true during WW II), but the other
four cities on the Palos Verdes Peninsula are independent, and only
Rolling Hills Estates, on the Pacific side of the peninsula away from
San Pedro/LA Harbor, existed before WW II.
San Pedro during WW II was part of Los Angeles City. Rolling Hills
Estates, as an incorporated city, did not exist during WW II. The city
was incorporated in September of 1957 and, prior to that date, was
unincorporated territory of Los Angeles County.