Concern, shelling, and battles along the West Coast

From The Army Air Forces in World War II, volume One. (1963)

Fears for the West Coast

“It was not anticipated that enemy forces could bring to bear any sustained attack on the continental area, but, as Pearl Harbor had so forcefully demonstrated, a single and well-directed blow could inflict serious injury. “

“That the chief focus of attention fell first on the Pacific rather than the Atlantic coast is explained by the former's peculiarly exposed position following the Pearl Harbor attack. Concentration of some of the largest aircraft plants in that region appeared to offer especially tempting bait for a Japanese raid.”

“Once the news of the Japanese attack [on Pearl Harbor] had been received on the mainland, the Fourth and Second Air Forces, which shared responsibility for defending the West Coast, readjusted their forces to provide maximum protection for the major cities. In co-operation with the Navy, offshore patrols were promptly instituted to provide warning against carriers and to combat submarines.”

“Amateur radio stations were ordered off the air, and unnecessary civilian flying was prohibited. the War Department ordered the immediate movement of reinforcements for the Pacific coast by air and fast trains.”

Blackout in San Francisco

“As these and other forces took up their defensive positions, coastal communities suffered from an 'invasion fever' which first showed itself with the calling of an alert in San Francisco on 8 December. In the afternoon of the 8th, rumors of an enemy carrier off the coast led to the closing of schools in Oakland.”

That night, there was a blackout of the Bay area (which apparently didn't work very smoothly.) “Reports reaching Washington of an attack on San Francisco were regarded as credible, but news dispatches soon characterized the affair as a test and announced that California had 'caught its breath again.' The Army, however, insisted that radar stations had tracked airplanes approaching the coast from a distance 100 miles at sea.”

De Witt's view

“Lt. Gen. John L. DeWitt of the Western Defense Command strongly denounced those who treated the alert lightly. In the San Francisco News of 10 December he was quoted as follows: 'Last night there were planes over this community. They were enemy planes! I mean Japanese planes! And they were tracked out to sea. You think it was a hoax? It is damned nonsense for sensible people to assume that the Army and Navy would practice such a hoax on San Francisco.' “

“Disturbing rumors of enemy threats continued to mount on 9 December. early that morning unidentified planes were reported off southern California, and the Eleventh Naval District ordered preparations made to repulse a raid by sea or air. Later the Navy related to the AAF a 'red hot tip' which announced that thirty-four enemy vessels were standing off the coast near Los Angeles, waiting for the fog to lift before starting an attack. Army planes were dispatched and found that the alarm had been occasioned by the presence of a group of American fishing boats. Later in the day a report told with convincing detail of a 'Japanese cruiser 20,000 yards off the west tip of Catalina Island.' Other witnesses insisted that a cruiser and three destroyers, flying Japanese flags, had been spotted off the coast. This of course was the period when whales were mistaken for enemy submarines...”

“...many of the reports of unidentified aircraft, leading to precautionary blackouts, resulted from mechanical difficulties with new radar equipment and from the understandable mistakes of inadequately trained personnel. Further, there is every evidence that Army commanders were genuinely convinced that the danger of attack, especially against the West Coast, was very real.”

“Along the Pacific coast in December 1941 there were, for example, only forty-five thoroughly modern fighter planes to defend a coast line which extended for 1,200 miles, and along which were located such important aircraft plants as those of Boeing in Seattle, Douglas and Lockheed in Los Angeles, and Consolidated in San Diego. “ There were only 10 heavy bombers in the area. There were only 75 medium bombers, and all the planes were “handicapped by an acute shortage of ammunition.”

Attack on Santa Barbara

“During the course of a fireside report to the nation delivered by President Roosevelt on 23 February 1942, a Japanese submarine rose out of the sea off Ellwood, a hamlet on the California coast north of Santa Barbara, and pumped thirteen shells into tidewater refinery installations ... The raider surfaced at 1905 (Pacific time), just five minutes after the President started his speech. For about twenty minutes the submarine kept a position 2,500 yards offshore to deliver the shots from its 5 ½ inch guns. The shells did minor damage to piers and oil wells, but missed the gasoline plant, which appears to have been the aiming point; the military effects of the raid were therefore nil. The first news of the attack led to the dispatch of pursuit planes to the area, and subsequently three bombers joined the attempt to destroy the raider, but without success.”

Japanese-American predictions

“Loyal Japanese-Americans who had predicted that a demonstration would be made in connection with the President's speech also prophesied that Los Angeles would be attacked on the next night.”

This is a part of the report that I find extremely strange. In nothing else I have read about Japanese-Americans have I ever found this reference. It raises some very serious concerns that the report doesn't discuss, mainly, if true, how did they predict the sub's attack? Further, since they were right about the Los Angeles “attack,” then was there more to that attack then is currently believed? The fact that they openly predicted the attack (again, if that is true at all), indicates that they were trying to help the U.S., not hurt it. None of this, of course, prevented them from being rounded up and shipped off to the internment camps later.

The Battle of Los Angeles

This is perhaps the best description of the Battle of Los Angeles that I have found so far.

“During the night of 14/15 February 1941, unidentified objects caused a succession of alerts in southern California. On the 14th, a warning issued by naval intelligence indicated that an attack could be expected within the next ten hours. (1) That evening a large number of flares and blinking lights were reported from the vicinity of defense plants. An alert called at 1918 was lifted at 1223, and the tenson 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. (2) 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 forces. 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 t hough the mysterious object tracked in from sea seems to have vanished. (3) 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 batteris of antiaircraft artillery opened fire, whereupon 'the air over Los Angels erupted like a volcano.” Form this point on reports were hopelessly at variance.”

“Probably much of the confusion came from the fact that antiaircraft shell burts, 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 10,000, 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 droped no bombs and, despite that fact that 1,440 rounds of antiaircraft ammuniton 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 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 out 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 antiaircraft 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 advancedby 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'' 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 fro, 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 antiaircraft 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 antiaircraft 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.” (4)

(1) This is the only reference I have seen to any foreknowledge on the part of the military about a possible attack. I wonder if this came from the Japanese-Americans or some other source? I think that's an extremely important point, and one which needs to be explored. If the source was considered reliable, then maybe there was some form of attack despite later Japanese denials that any attack had taken place.

(2) This is the only reference I've found to an actual target having been acquired. There is a small group of people that believe that this object that was seen and fired on was actually a UFO as is known today.

(3) Another trait of modern-day UFOs and their behavior.

(4) If the purpose was reconnaissance, they why was it done at night? Shouldn't reconnaissance be done during the daytime, when you can take pictures?

If the objects were weather balloons, then why was this the only time that there was such a “battle.” It's hard to believe that the only time in the entire war that weather balloons were launched at night in Los Angeles was on this one single night. Basically, there's not much of this “battle” that makes sense at all.

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