With all the reported sightings from both military and civilian sources, it is difficult to believe that there was nothing in the sky over Los Angeles that night. There is little doubt that thousands of people believed they had seen enemy aircraft. In the years since the raid, however, only two things have been definitely determined about the alleged enemy aircraft that evening: First, if there were any planes, they were not Japanese; and second, no one in the 60 years since the raid has come forward and said, "Yes, there were planes up there that night, and I ought to know because I was flying one of them."
If there were no Japanese aircraft overhead that evening, the question remains as to what caused such an extreme reaction by citizens and soldiers. The answer can probably be found in the Army's statement that the suspicious aircraft "flew very slowly while going from 9,000 to 18,000 feet when it disappeared," and that it might have been a blimp.
Compounding the confusion were meteorological balloons sent up that night by the 203rd Coast Artillery Regiment. This National Guard anti-aircraft unit from Missouri had been activated in September 1940. Seventeen days after Pearl Harbor, the 203rd arrived in California and was assigned to guard the Douglas Aircraft plant in Santa Monica against anticipated enemy air attacks.
With 3-inch guns ranging as high as 25,000 feet, it was necessary to keep anti-aircraft gunners up to date on current wind conditions in order to make any adjustments before any shooting started. This information was gathered periodically by releasing meteorological balloons and then tracking them with a theodolite, an instrument designed to compute the velocity and direction of the wind. The 4-foot-diameter balloons were released by each of the dozen or so anti-aircraft regiments around the Los Angeles area every six hours.
At 3 a.m. on the morning of the raid, the 203rd launched two balloons, one from its headquarters on the Sawtelle Veterans Hospital grounds in Westwood and the other from Battery D, located on the Douglas Aircraft plant site in Santa Monica. So that the balloons could be tracked at night, a candle placed inside a simple highball glass was suspended under each balloon, whose silver color would reflect the light enough to be tracked to heights usually well above 25,000 feet. Lieutenant Melvin Timm, officer in charge of Battery D's meteorological operations, ordered his balloon launched and had notified the filter room—also known as the Flower Street Control Center, where all planes, identified or otherwise, were tracked on a giant, flat table map—of its departure, when "all hell broke loose."
By the time Timm released his balloon, the city had been under red-alert conditions for more than half an hour; searchlights were on and probing the sky; and anti-aircraft gunners, fingers on their triggers, were nervously following the searchlight beams in hopes of spotting the anticipated enemy planes. It was at this time that Sergeant George Holmes, who had launched Battery D's balloon, called Timm, saying he was no longer able to track it, that someone was shooting at it.
"I went over and couldn't follow it either," said Timm. "A shell would explode near it and it would blow far enough so it wasn't visible on the scope."
At regimental headquarters they were having the same problem. The officer in charge of the meteorological operations at Sawtelle, Lieutenant John E. Moore, recalled: "As soon as [their] balloon attained altitude and was carried up the coast by the wind, searchlights came on, picked up the balloon and shortly thereafter, 3-inch anti-aircraft guns began firing. Corporal John O'Connell, in charge of tracking the balloon, ran to me and reported, ‘Lieutenant, they're firing at my balloon!' I went to the theodolite to verify his report and, sure enough, bursts of AA fire were exploding all around it causing it to bounce and dance all over the sky. I immediately reported to our regimental commanding officer, Colonel Ray Watson, that the guns were firing at our balloon and that there were no aircraft in sight."
Watson sent out the order that none of the 203rd's 3-inch guns were to fire, then notified the Flower Street Control Room of what was happening. Astonishingly, the order came back from Flower Street to shoot down the balloon.
According to Moore, "Our balloon continued up the coast, and the guns continued firing into the night. The next day the newspapers proclaimed ‘Japs Bomb Los Angeles.'"
The fact that the 203rd, sitting directly in the flight path of the "enemy" planes as they crossed the coast, did not fire a shot upset IV Interceptor Command officers. Timm remembered a staff officer from the Fourth coming in and jumping all over Battery D's commander for not firing. "When Captain Harris gave him my story," said Timm, "I was summoned. I was told to keep my mouth shut, and that there had been seven Japanese planes up there. I was also told that if I repeated my story about shooting at a balloon and not enemy planes, I would be put behind bars."
For Watson, it was a lot worse. He was called on the carpet for ordering the entire regiment to "hold their fire because he said he knew a meteorological balloon when he saw one, and they weren't going to shoot." Sergeant Orville Hayward, who accompanied Watson to headquarters that day, remembered, "Ray was simply relieved of command, with two options: be reassigned to a desk with some other outfit, or retire. He chose to retire."
Regardless of what was or was not overhead, once the shooting started nobody seemed to care. Whenever and wherever searchlights stopped probing and focused on something, orange-colored bursts of exploding anti-aircraft shells quickly filled the sky around it. At least one unit, the 211th Coast Artillery Regiment, admitted that although its members did not see any planes, they shot anyway.
First Sergeant Leon Earnest from the 203rd observed that as the searchlights followed the targets down the coast and the big guns opened up, "the smaller ones, unable to stand the strain, also opened up." Sergeant John Ziesler, with the 122nd Coast Artillery in Downey, said that as soon as his battery went into action everyone went crazy: "Guys were seen firing .45 pistols, rifles, submachine guns; even the 37mm guns from the roof of the aircraft plant were firing. You could hear the expended ordnance landing all around."
An air-raid siren is tested in Los Angeles -- early 1942
Even the Navy got involved. At the Consolidated shipyard in San Pedro, the 3-inch anti-aircraft guns from a dry-docked destroyer also sent up several hundred pounds of steel into the skies over Los Angeles.
Although nobody from the Fourth ever came forward to admit that, possibly, the "raid" was more the result of overreaction by its men than marauding Japanese aircraft, it is almost certain that the excitement that evening stemmed from a misread radar contact that placed the city on a red alert, and underexperienced and overanxious anti-aircraft gunners who chose to shoot first and ask questions later when the balloons began floating over the city. It is fortunate indeed that casualties from the subsequent shower of steel falling on the city were so light.
While it is easy to look back and laugh at the excitability of Los Angeles' defenders, their reaction to the possibility of an enemy air attack reflects the anxiety that gripped much of the West Coast in the months after Pearl Harbor.
Additional Sources:
www.beneathla.com
ufocasebook.com
www.rense.com
www.militarymuseum.org
www.stelzriede.com
www.cosmicparadigm.com
www.ftmac.org
www.microworks.net
www.czimages.com
www.capeelizabeth.com
