"The Battle of Los Angeles" - *Audio of original news broadcast linked*

Ivan Seeking

http://www.sfmuseum.net/hist9/aaf2.html

Alternative interpretation [UFO] with newspaper accounts from the time.
http://www.rense.com/ufo/battleofLA.htm
http://www.rense.com/general28/histla.htm

motai

It seems plausible from the original article that it could have been Japanese balloon bombs.

http://web.umr.edu/~rogersda/forensi...ombs%20new.htm

The only problem is... according to the above article, the first balloons were launched by the Japanese on Nov. 3, 1944 (a full two years ahead of the "Battle of Los Angeles"). That is, unless the Japanese government were making military prototypes or sending out weather balloons in the general direction of America so as to record where they might land (prototypes can take up to years in advance). In which case, it brings up another question.

When the object was first sighted (2:15 AM), it was 120 miles away from shore. Then at 2:43 AM, the object was only a few miles away. Can balloons really travel that fast with the air current? I don't know enough about it to draw a conclusion.

Ivan Seeking

My dad was living in Long Beach when this happened. He doesn't remember much as he was still very young, so I tried to talk with my aunt about it. Even after all of these years, the memories are so upsetting that she wouldn't discuss it except to say that they had an ack-ack gun in her neighbor's back yard, my uncle was overseas, and she was alone in the dark with her kids.

Hdeasy

Yes, this is indeed a most impressive incident. A balloon of whatever form would surely have been burst by the shrapnel exploding the near or direct hits scored by the anti-aircraft shells in the over 30 minutes time they had to target the sitting duck. Even in the photo from the LA times it is apparent that in the several seconds needed for this photographic exposure, a number of near hits were scored. Thus over 30 minutes a Gaussian distribution would have built up, with peak probability at centre. Ergo, Q.E.D. - the object could not have been a flimsy balloon.

Ivan Seeking

Maccabee's Discussion of this
http://brumac.8k.com/BATTLEOFLA/BOLA1.html

With Ph.D. in optical physics, Bruce S. Maccabee works for the Naval Surface Warfare Center. He was the first to study the somewhat famous McMinnville [Oregon] UFO event.

Garth

Airships in the Second World War
I say it was an airship on a covert patrol, or training flight, from Sunnyvale at an altitude too high for AA.

Garth

Hdeasy

Nonsense! The photo clearly shows shells expolding ABOVE the object, and also around, under and on it, if in the latter case that isn't the cockpit of the flying saucer.
Also, the serchlights clearly triangulate the object. As Macabbee says, the beams are stopped by the object, implying high density. That burst the baloon of your argument! QED.

NateTG

Just out of curiosity, when did the UFO=alien space craft thing get started?

Garth

The shell bursts (if real) are in the foreground.

How far apart are the seachlights and at what altitude do they triangulate the object?

You get a different approach from THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II; DEFENSE OF THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE “The Battle of Los Angeles”Garth

Ivan Seeking

Garth, the picture is from the LA Times. Over 1400 rounds were fired. As a kid, my dad collected the spent shells lying around the neighborhood.

Also, the link posted is the same as the OP.

If you take a look at Maccabee's discussion, he tries to estimate the size of the apparent object at the convergence of the beams, but he can't say how reliable this estimate might be due to a lack of information and the number of variables.

Ivan Seeking

Do you mean wrt this event, or generally speaking?

Hdeasy

As stated above, Maccabbee makes those altitude estimates. Now, if the air defenses were accurate enough to triangulate their beams on the object, do you think the AA shell people would be so stupid as to fire into the foreground and not on target? Those people were working as a team in defense of their lovely city. Now as for quoting the army on this.. ahem... a bit like CNN last night interviewing only representatives of the nuclear power industry when asking if alternative power sources would be cleaner and better. But luckily ordinary citizens were not subject to the military muzzle, and said there were several direct hits on the object with no effect. Some quotes from http://www.rense.com/ufo/battleofla.htm -
"Few in the city were left asleep after the Coastal Defense gunners commenced firing hundreds and hundreds of rounds up toward the glowing ship which was apparently first sighted as it hovered above such west side landmarks as the MGM studios in Culver City. The thump of the batteries and the ignition of the aerial shells reverberated from one end of LA to the other as the gun crews easily landed scores of what many termed "direct hits"....all to no avail. Here now, is what the night skies of LA looked like at the height of the firing.... "
"With the city blacked out, Katie, and hundreds of thousands of others, were able to see the eerie visitor with spectacular clarity. "It was a lovely pale orange and about the most beautiful thing you've ever seen. I could see it perfectly because it was very close. It was big!"
The U.S. Army anti-aircraft searchlights by this time had the object completely covered. "They sent fighter planes up (the Army denied any of its fighters were in action) and I watched them in groups approach it and then turn away. There were shooting at it but it didn't seem to matter." Katie is insistent about the use of planes in the attack on the object. The planes were apparently called off after several minutes and then the ground cannon opened up. "It was like the Fourth of July but much louder. They were firing like crazy but they couldn't touch it." The attack on the object lasted over half an hour before the visitor eventually disappeared from sight. Many eyewitnesses talked of numerous "direct hits" on the big craft but no damage was seen done to it. "I'll never forget what a magnificent sight it was. Just marvelous. And what a georgeous color!", said Katie."
"Author Ralph Blum, who was a nine-year-old boy at the time, wrote that he thought "the Japanese were bombing Beverly Hills."
"There were sirens, searchlights, even antiaircraft guns blamming away into the skies over Los Angeles. My father had been a balloon observation man (in the AEF) in World War One, and he knew big guns when he heard them. He ordered my mother to take my baby sisters to the underground projection room--our house was heavily supplied with Hollywood paraphernalia--while he and I went out onto the upstairs balcony."
"What a scene! It was after three in the morning. Searchlights probed the western sky. Tracers streamed upward. The racket was terrific." Shooting at the aerial intruders were gunners of the 65th Coast Artillery (Anti-Aircraft) Regiment in Inglewood and the 205th Anti-Aircraft Regiment based in Santa Monica. The "white cigar-shaped object" took several direct hits but continued on its eastward flight"

Garth

Isn't it a little disappointing that all such 'close encounters' leave only very shadowy images behind?

Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.
Such stories get magnified in the telling.

Here is my opinion of what happened.

The West Coast was gittery, Pearl Harbor had happened and Britian had sustained the Blitz, with images of 'London burning' in people's minds. Was LA next?

A low level mist/smog lay over LA.

Radar in 1942 was very primitive. Some unknown, and possibly off course military aircraft, or a false echo (from waves/ weather etc), set off an initial alarm. Search lights focused on the aircraft, or unusal cloud formation and was quickly joined by other search light beams. Where the beams penetrated mist/smog they could be seen, at the top edge of the low level mist the beams became invisible hence explaining the strange 'cut-off' of the beams.

At this level the combined beams focusing on the upper mist layer gave the impression of a shadowy object and the AAA let rip.

Soon they were shooting up their own smoke."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."

It's called the fog of war.

Garth

Hdeasy

To continue firing for 30 minutes, 1400 shells at a puff of smoke would not be what I call the fog of war, but downright idiocy. Give the Americans credit for a somewhat higher IQ. As if on cue, a friend just sent this joke:

A man enters a bar and orders a drink. The bar has a robot bartender.

The robot serves him a perfectly prepared cocktail, and then asks him,
"What's your IQ?"*


The man replies "150" and the robot proceeds to make conversation about
global warming factors, quantum physics and spirituallity, biomimicry,
environmental interconnectedness, string theory, nano-technology, and sexual proclivities.*


The customer is very impressed and thinks, "This is really cool." He decides
to test the robot. He walks out of the bar, turns around, and comes back in for another drink. Again, the robot serves him the perfectlty prepared drink and asks him, "What's your IQ?"

The man responds, "about a 100."*

Immediately the robot starts talking, but this time, about football, NASCAR,
baseball, supermodels, favorite fast foods, guns, and women's breasts.

Really impressed, the man leaves the bar and decides to give the robot one more test. He heads out and returns, the robot serves him and asks, "What's your IQ?"*

The man replies, "Er, 50, I think."*

*And the robot says... real slowly,

"So............... ya gonna vote for Bush again?"

Garth

Garth

Ivan Seeking

That's not really true. The problem is that the best footage is almost never free on the net. I have some footage allegedly taken from the cockpit of a Mig that is staggering. If it is a fake, by far its one of if not the best I've ever seen. It was recorded from a documentary years ago but I have never seen it on the net. And this makes sense really. If a person gets great footage that they know WILL be on TV, why would they give it away?

One of my frustrations is the ability to link to videos. About the time that I find what I've seen from one source or another, the web site goes away; presumably because the video clips are pirated.

There is no doubt that 1400 rounds were fired at a UFO, or several UFOs. I have seen little to no claims of aliens, but the event is striking and does raise some interesting questions.

Ivan Seeking

Wow! This is the actual news broadcast reporting on the event.
WMP: http://mfile.akamai.com/5022/wma/coa...s_news_ufo.asx
Real Player: http://mfile.akamai.com/5022/rm/coas...s_news_ufo.ram

From the Coast to Coast AM main page [today]
http://www.coasttocoastam.com/