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UFO OVER L.A.: THE BATTLE OF LOS ANGELES
THE SO-CALLED BATTLE OF L.A.--800 FOOT ZEPPELIN-SIZE UFO
CAUGHT IN SEARCHLIGHT BEAMS OVER LOS ANGELES IN 1942
CHAPTER 1
WHERE DID IT COME FROM?
Invariably when the topic of a conversation turns toward unidentified flying objects someone almost always makes some sort of a reference to, and most rightly so, the Roswell UFO. The Roswell UFO was a mysterious object of an unknown nature and unknown origin that reportedly began shedding bits and pieces of metal and foil out over the desert flatlands of New Mexico close to midnight of July 4, 1947, only to end up slamming into lower north slope of the Capitan Mountains some fifty miles west of Roswell.The event at Roswell, although perhaps one of the most famous and most talked about of the UFO incidents, was only one of many that have happened over the years. Five years before the Roswell Incident the U.S. was in the early throes of a world war. Except for the relatively unknown at the time Foo Fighters, any mention of unidentified flying objects usually took on a different tone --- with most people thinking about enemy aircraft such as fighter planes and bombers. However, on the night of February 25, 1942, over the skies of Los Angeles with the so-called Battle of Los Angeles, the tone was more like Roswell.Before a total of three months had even elapsed following the attack on Pearl Harbor, beginning at 7:15 PM on February 23, 1942, a Japanese submarine shelled the Ellwood oil fields near the town of Goleta, 12 miles north of Santa Barbara, California. According to accounts, anywhere from sixteen to twenty-nine shells were fired, with three striking the Bankline Oil Refinery, the apparent target of the attack. About a half mile inland a refinery oil well along with rigging and pumping equipment were reported hit. Storage tanks next to the well and others close by, which, if they would have been hit could have caused major damage, went unscathed. Another shell exploded without damage on on the Tecolote ranch some three miles inland while another shell landed on the property of the nearby Staniff ranch, digging a hole five feet deep, but failing to explode. The remaining shells fell harmlessly into the Pacific.Less than thirty-two hours later, in the early morning hours of February 25, suddenly appearing out of nowhere, but most likely doing so only after dropping out of the night sky initially from a steep angle out over the Pacific on a curving south to east trajectory, a huge object of unknown origin, possibly with protective detection devices on, at a lower altitude levels off. The object continues on a trajectory east toward the city of Los Angeles at ultra high speed barely skimming the water just above the surface. At 120 miles out, the object most likely picks up electronic probes from the Army long range listening apparatus or rudimentary early radar and retracts it's entry shields, reducing it's speed to a near crawl some 50 miles out, turning inland somewhere near Point Dume.Scattered eyewittness accounts from years later pick up the object apparently dropping down into the radar shadow by hugging the mostly unpopulated ridge-line along the north side of the Santa Monica mountains in an easterly direction.[1] It then turned south in the gap in the mountains around Sepulveda Boulevard and Mullholland Drive coming in BEHIND the aimed direction of the majority of the anti-aircraft guns and any possible radar or long range listening devices. In a continuing steeply angled climb out of the Santa Monica mountains the object curved slightly to the east around and well above the 511 foot altitude of Baldwin Hills in what appeared to be a concerted effort to stay away from all the potential aircraft and armament associated with Mines Field (now LAX). The object turned westward toward the ocean coming out over the aircraft manufacturing plants near the El Segundo tank farm, then, dropping altitude, south along the coast.
MINES FIELD, NOW LAX, AS SEEN DURING WW II
OBJECT- WENT AROUND IT PURPOSELY IN 1942Earlier, as the unidentified target continued on it's apparent approach toward the Los Angeles area only to disappear behind the mountains inland west along the coast, the air raid warning system regional controller, still jittery from the oil refinery attack in the same general area only a few hours before, ordered the newly installed antiaircraft batteries to go to Green Alert --- "ready to fire." At 2:15 AM, with the object's position unknown with any amount of certainty, for the first time since the start of the war, the controller ordered the whole warning system into operation, with an area-wide blackout that effected the region from Los Angeles to the Mexican border and as far inland as the San Joaquin Valley.In 1983 the U.S. Government Printing Office released a multi-volume set titled The Army Air Forces in World War II, edited by Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate. In Volume I, Chapter III, Section 8, page 283, there is found what is nothing short of an official confirmation to the above scenario. The volume specifically cites the USE of radar, which many people insist was NOT functionally operational in 1942 --- although the government seems to beg to differ in the document --- as well as the fact that the object simply disappeared or vanished over the ocean during it's inflight path toward Los Angeles. To wit:"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."The radar system that was reported to have "picked up" the object first has been officially confirmed as a SCR-268. SCR-268s only had an operational range of 22 miles, yet initial contact was reported as being 120 miles west of the city of Los Angeles. For more on that and the disappearing act of "the mysterious object tracked in from sea seems to have vanished" as mentioned in the above quote, please see:THE BATTLE OF LOS ANGELES: The Radar Dilemma
At 3:06 AM, for reasons unclear, at least four Santa Monica area anti-aircraft batteries turn inland and start firing out over the city and Baldwin Hills, and suddenly "the air over Los Angeles erupted like a volcano." For the next three hours it was nothing but confusion with "swarms" of planes of all possible sizes reported, numbering from one to several hundred, traveling at altitudes from a few thousand feet to more than 20,000, and flying at speeds from very slow to hundreds of miles per hour.
THE BOTTOM OF THE L.A. UFO HAD THE CONCAVE CURVATURE
OF AN UPSIDE DOWN SHOVEL. SOME SAW A GIANT BUTTERFLYAfter it passed over us standing in the street, but before my dad left chasing after it, everybody, including my whole family, either ran toward their backyards or into the dirt alley behind the houses and watched it cross out of view over the oil fields. I could easily see the back of the thing against the sky. The rear or stern was thick and rectangle in shape, rounded on the corners, flat or slightly concave on the bottom, flat on top toward the rear curving gently or falling off to the sides near the front as it narrowed, thinning more so toward the front, although not aerodynamically so. In that it was tipped upward gaining altitude in what appeared to be a concerted effort by the craft to gain as much distance between itself and the top of the 200 foot tall oil derricks that spiked up all over the field behind the house I was unable to see if there were any cockpits, protrusions or cabins on the top --- mainly because of the angle of the climb would not allow them to be silhoutted against the sky. Since, however, I had a perfectly clear view of the back of the craft in the dark that night people often want to know if the rear had any exhaust ports or rocket-like thrust openings. The answer is no, at least none that I remember. However, my dad said when he tried to catch it, coming almost abroadside although well below and somewhat behind, he could see what looked like three distinct, possibly four, narrow red-orange slit-like openings on the side toward the back, describing them as "looking like shark gills only glowing." I saw nothing like that. Matter of fact I am not sure what the motive power for the object was. I do know, even though its size was likened to a Zeppelin it didn't act like one. Zeppelins are lighter than air machines and there is a certain physical and psychological buoyancy to them, both in reality and perception. This object seemed more like a battleship. There was something heavy about it. The thing is, is that it made absolutely no sound. Totally silent, which is odd because almost everything I ever saw that moved and was that big --- locomotives, airplanes, ships --- all made lots of noise. The only other thing that stood out about the object was that it left a very slight but distinct odor trailing off behind it. If any of you have ever owned an electric train like a Lionel for example, and noticed the smell the transformer gives off during a lengthy period of use, after the object passed overhead, in it's wake, the air reeked with an odor very similar to that same smell. For me however, what I remember the most, even to this day, was how sad the thing seemed. It was like a lost baby elephant just searching for its mommy, and everywhere it went it got chased away or shot at.Some minutes after it passed over Redondo Beach and my dad lost track of it by not being able to keep up with it, the object was out over the agriculture fields that existed in those days a few miles inland east and south of the beach cities. That same night Albert Nozaki was helping guard a friend's field from vandals that had been ruining crops. Below describes what Nozaki saw that night in the early morning hours:"(A)pproaching him well above the fields from the west, silhouetted against the slightly lighter night sky, was a fairly huge dark airborne object coming straight toward him at a fairly quick pace. At first it seemed as though it would take a path off to the right of where he was standing, but before it reached him it just barely began turning flatly toward the south, almost as in a controlled drift. By then he was just under the edge of the object as it went over him with the center off to his left, continuing its turn and eventually disappearing in the southern night sky while all the time gaining altitude. It was huge, dark, very long and wide with no lights or signs of windows. Although it did not have protruding wings like an airplane, the object's outside edges ominously curved down. As well, other than feeling a slight vibrational "hum" in his chest as it passed over, the object made no sound."Nozaki, who later went on to be an Oscar nominated art director, apparently drawing upon his his experiences in the field that night in 1942, designed the terrifying Martian flying machines seen in the 1953 movie War of the Worlds.In an interesting twist of fate, five years later, unrelated to any of the above as far as I was concerned, my Uncle, after a quick heads up from his friend the famed meteorite hunter Dr. Lincoln La Paz, took me along with him to the suspected crash site at Roswell, my uncle walking much of the then nearly fresh debris field wanting to see if there was any truth behind the so called hieroglyphic writing reported by many to have been found on some of the metal scraps. For more on walking the fresh debris field by getting through the supposedly heavily miltarized, well-guarded, and cordoned off the Roswell crash site see: Frank EdwardsWHAT A YOUNG BOY REMEMBERS --- OR NOT
Over and over the question comes up, in that I was such a little kid at the time of the "Battle of L.A.," how is it possible that I remember so much?I get into some of my suspicions as to a potential answer a bit more thoroughly in a footnote at the very bottom of the page. However, even though what I have presented covers a lot of material, most of what is presented comes not just from my memory, as a kid or otherwise, but plain out-and-out research, including at least two highly exclusive eyewitness interviews --- research and interviews that I have shoe-horned around what I DO remember. For example, the date and time of the oil field shelling near Santa Barbara: 7:15 PM February 23, 1942. I didn't know that as a kid. Matter of fact, I didn't even know there had been an oil field shelling. I discovered it in my research and connected it with the fact that the shellings by Japanese submarines just up the coast from Los Angeles only hours before the L. A. fly over most likely made a lot of folks jumpy or trigger happy.Same with the following. I don't "remember" it from my childhood. I have extrapolated what appears in the paragraph from research:"Less than thirty-two hours later, in the early morning hours of February 25, suddenly appearing out of nowhere, but most likely doing so only after dropping out of the night sky initially from a steep angle out over the Pacific on a north to east trajectory, a huge object of unknown origin, possibly with protective detection devices on, at a lower altitude levels off. The object continues on a trajectory east toward the city of Los Angeles at ultra high speed barely skimming the water just above the surface. At 120 miles out, the object most likely picks up electronic probes from the Army long range listening apparatus or rudimentary early radar and retracts it's entry shields, reducing it's speed to a near crawl some 50 miles out, turning inland somewhere near Point Dume."The Government Printing Office multi-volume set reported that radar picked up an unidentified target 120 miles west of Los Angeles and because of same, at 0215, anti-aircraft batteries were alerted. The report goes on to say they tracked the target to within a few miles of the coast, and at 0221 a blackout was ordered even though the object "tracked from the sea" seemed to have vanished.So, at 2:15 AM the object is out over the open ocean west of Los Angeles. Then, six minutes later, at 2:21 AM although it should have been right on top of the coast and still in radar contact it disappeared --- of which I write "reducing it's speed to a near crawl some 50 miles out, turning inland somewhere near Point Dume." Radar picked up an unidentified target 120 miles out, the last half of which it must have slowed to a crawl. How do I know? Now, I don't remember that as a kid, I have extrapolated it from the research, that is what I found in the government multi-volume set and other sources. The report says the object "vanished." It must have dropped altitude and crossed into the mountains behind the radar shadow, thus appearing to disappear. My eyewittness says at the exact same time something crossed overhead above him in the mountains near Agoura, "a huge gigantic flying thing not much higher than the tops of the trees --- and not making a sound, but all the while blocking out a good portion of the night sky and most of the stars --- slowly crossed overhead curving toward the east after coming out of a more south southwesterly direction." He says the object SLOWLY crossed overhead --- which means it reduced it's speed to a crawl. To have crossed overhead where the eyewittness saw it, it would had to have turned inland somewhere around Point Dume, again my speculation from the facts so presented. The giant object skirted the north side of the Santa Monica mountains toward the east along Ventura Boulevard only to turn south in a gap in the mountains about midway along the southwestern edge of the San Fernando Valley. After turning south the object crossed over Baldwin Hills and turned westward toward the ocean coming out over the aircraft plants near the El Segundo tank farm. From there it went south along the coast turning back inland somewhere past the Edison plant in Redondo Beach. The anti-aircraft guns opened up at 3:06 AM --- 45 minutes after it disappeared --- that is, when it showed up again, not on radar, but visually and BEHIND the sea facing anti-aircraft guns. Smart. The thing is, none of that has anything to do with what I remember or don't remember. It only supports what I remember.What do I remember? Well, that whatever it was it crossed right over the top of my house in Redondo Beach in the middle of the night. That it didn't look like a blimp like some people say, but more like an upside down shovel. Why would I remember that? Because in those days, like so many others, we had a Victory Garden in the backyard and I used to help my grandfather and mother maintain it. For that we had a number of garden tools, of which some were shovels. One of the shovels had a broken handle and my father removed what was left of the handle out of the sleeve portion that held it. The metal spade part looked so much like the object to me I used to run around holding it like a kid might do with a model airplane, mimicking the flight of the craft --- and when I did, the other kids that didn't see it that night, made fun of me. They had wood and cardboard toy P-40s to do pretend battles with Zeros. I used an upside down shovel.What else do I remember? That it was NOT round in the front like a blimp is round face-on. Like I say, my father worked in the shipyards in Terminal Island I remember seeing barrage balloons floating in the sky tethered to the ground all around the shipyard area. To me they were "blimps" and face-on they were round. I remember it clearing the oilwells behind the house, that the rear of it, unlike a shovel, was rectangle in shape across the back, thick where you put your foot to push a shovel into the ground. Also there was a distinct odor in the air like a Lionel electric train transformer gives off following in it's wake. Almost everybody remembers smells, and the smell of a Lionel train transformer is one of them for me. Like burnt electricity. So too, as found in the A Quick Personal Note link below, I also drew information not JUST from memory, but, for example, a whole page of notes that contained nothing but comments from my dad's own eyewitness account --- a dad who was not just a kid at the time of the incident like me --- but a grown man 37 years old. Hence, my ability to add to and present more specifically such things as my father and neighbors taking off down old Sepulveda, the Lomita air strip, shark gills, etc. I could go on and on, but by now I am sure you get the point. Besides, a good portion of those who question my "young age" and any ability to remember because of that young age do so with some bone to pick. They are looking to discredit or weaken what has been presented, which inturn would blanket the whole presentation as being inaccurate. However, again, a whole host of what has been presented is from facts and sources from other than my "kid" memory --- I have just shoehorned them around what I remember.It is quite clear that C. Scott Littleton, usually acknowledged as the foremost authority on the 'Battle of L.A.,' mentioned above, apparently likes my eyewitness accounts of the event, if not a great deal, at least within reason. I say so because they are the only ones he ever seems to include over-and-over in what he presents. However, even though he includes them, he has a strong tendency to always qualify what I have said as calling them, for example, "shaky," --- or as in the case below where he says my recollections of the object are "atypical" and "and perhaps skewed" --- albeit all the while using them:"(D)espite the Redondo Beach man's atypical --- and perhaps skewed ---recollection ..."He then goes on to say:"(W)hat we (Littleton) saw, together with the majority of the descriptions Frank (i.e., Frank Warren, Littleton's collaborator on the subject) and I have collected, as well as the object caught in the Times reporter’s photograph, all jibe closely with literally tens of thousands of eyewitness accounts of UFOs in this country and elsewhere that have come to light in the course of the last six decades."Littleton was talking about the stereotypical percolator coffee pot lid disc-like objects of the day with little glass humps on top, of which the L.A. Times photograph seems to show. However, the UFO over L.A. was far from typical. If anything it was highly atypical of the UFOs of the era. It was huge for one thing. More people reported it was Zeppelin-size than anything else. Even Warren himself, as cited in the main text above, figured the object was at a minimum at least 800 feet long. Very few of the "literally tens of thousands of eyewitness accounts of UFOs in this country and elsewhere that have come to light in the course of the last six decades" have claimed to have seen UFOs anywhere near that size.[3]LITTLETON VS THE WANDERLING:
Battle of Los Angeles or UFO Over L.A.?Now that you know all about the 1942 "Battle of Los Angeles" and the UFO over L. A., if you want to know how a huge, giant, nearly Zeppelin size object seen by thousands could simply vanish into the night sky without a trace, please visit CHAPTER 2, below, as it contains some rather interesting additional information, including speculation as to where it went to and what actually happened to the object.CHAPTER 2
FIRST THERE WAS THE BATTLE OF LOS ANGELES, THEN THE GIANT OBJECT DISAPPEARED
WHAT HAPPENED TO IT?
In an article published in Nexus Magazine, Volume 5, Number 3 (April - May 1998) titled Inside Revelations on the UFO Cover-Up and written byDr. Richard Boylan --- a magazine and article that contains a tad bit more in the way of way out UFO stuff than typically suits my own personal tastes --- a man by the name of Dr. Michael Wolf (died September 16, 2000), who is an author of his own book Catchers of Heaven (1996) and claimed to have been either a member of or a consultant to a secret National Security Council Special Studies Group known as OPERATION MAJESTIC-12 (sometimes MJ-12) that oversees ET type affairs in the United States, offers:Dr. Wolf provided a revisionist history about the beginning of the modern UFO era. "The first UFO came down in 1941 into the ocean west of San Diego, and was retrieved by the Navy." The Navy has held a leadership position in UFO matters ever since.Interestingly enough, for our purposes here, another time given for that UFO retrieval --- without altering the fact that the object came down in the ocean west of San Diego --- comes in a letter Dr. Boylan received from the son of a Colonel William Brophy, now deceased. In the letter, written in response to the Nexus article, the son relates his father told him in conversation on more than one occasion that the date for the UFO retrieval wasNOT the more general 1941 as Dr. Wolf extrapolated from his sources, but actually the following year on the more specific date of February 25, 1942 (i.e., "Air Force Colonel's Son Reveals 1940s U.S.-UFO/Star Visitor Encounters," UFOfacts, July 21, 2003, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/UFOFacts/message/10345).-- Dr. Boylan makes it clear, however, that there is no independent corroboration for the February 1942 date other than details provided by Brophy's son through his father, which have otherwise been proven to be consistent with little known facts Dr. Boylan is privy to that are known to be accurate and harmonious to the event --- the event being the recovery of the UFO by the Navy. Even though the date/year may not have independent corroboration the EVENT itself, that is, the recovery of the UFO by the Navy off San Diego, most certainly does, as it is backed up in the March 5, 1942, memo from the Army Chief of Staff to the President of the United States cited below. Personally, I find the March 5, 1942 memo date, considering the timing and sum of its contents, to be much more consistant with a February 1942 down date than a whole one-year-before 1941 date. However, personal conjectures aside, neither Dr. Boylan nor the colonel's son are necessarily putting the date of February 25, 1942 into the perspective it deserves nor together with anything else.The date IS, of course, totally consistant to our thesis here, as February 25, 1942, is the EXACT same date that the object was seen by hundreds if not thousands of people to have crossed somewhere between Palos Verdes on the west and Signal Hill on the east before coming out over Long Beach and heading south along the California coast before it just disappeared --- with the same direction of travel being, if continued, San Diego. If you remember from Chapter 1 above, when it crossed over my house in Redondo Beach, because the object was so low, my dad actually thought it was coming in for a landing --- as if the craft may have been damaged or something. Since nobody seems to know what happened to the thing, the possibility exists that it could have gone down in the Pacific somewhere off San Diego.If it did go down off San Diego and was recovered by the Navy it is certainly not a widely known fact even amongst those who are familiar with most of UFO lore --- hence Dr. Boylan's interjection of the revisionist history tag line. However, a LOT of people, and I'm talking regular old sailors here, deckhands, cooks, and able-body seamen --- probably ALL without security clearances --- would have to had been involved in any type of deep water recovery of something said to be so big. I had a confidential clearance working on the U-2 as a civilian, and because of the nature of the work I did, bumped to a top secret security clearance upon entering the military --- and I know from experience it would be very, very difficult to keep a lid on such an operation over any period of time under similar circumstances. All of the beach towns south from Santa Monica to Redondo Beach reported seeing the object. None of the beach towns from Long Beach south --- except possibly Seal Beach --- reported it. In my opinion I think some distance off the coast west of Seal Beach or Sunset Beach, or possibly even Huntington Beach, the object turned more west southwest and headed out to sea toward the basically uninhabited island of San Clemente. Coming down the coast from the north, San Clemente is the last and most southern of the Channel Islands, located probably less than fifty miles off the California mainland and about halfway between Long Beach and San Diego. The craft landed for damage assessment or maybe to administer some sort of repairs, then took off before anybody could act.
THE GALVESTON DAILY NEWS, FEB. 26, 1942
(please click)In February of 1942 there was a barely used if not practically abandoned, wide open Naval Auxiliary Air Station located right in the middle of the island. In 1938 the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and a contractor had built two runways, one 2,000 feet the other 3,000 feet over an old airstrip. The construction was completed by 1941, but for all practical purposes it really wasn't being used. It is not that the object needed a runway to set down, only an unobstructed, wide open area --- without a major population to contend with. The San Clemente strip was the only viable landing area for a wounded or disabled craft for thousands of miles around that met such criteria. No coast defense guns, no shore batteries, no searchlights, no prying eyes to speak of. It was only sometime AFTER the incident that any real sort of military presence showed up on the island, first with a Marine scouting squadron that suddenly began operations from the airfield with 19 Vought SB2U Vindicators sometime in 1942, then the Army installing and activating TWO fully equipped radar stations. In other words, at the time the object exited over the Pacific south of Long Beach heading toward the general direction of San Diego, the island had so few people on it, it was basically unihabited.If the object successfully slipped away to wherever UFOs go, took off and fell into the ocean only to be retrieved later, or is laying at the bottom of some deep sea canyon rotting away I can't say. It could have even been captured on the ground on San Clemente, negating any use of "lots of able-body seamen without clearances" or anybody else for that matter.Please note in the purported letter or memo of communication below, between then U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the U.S. Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall, dated February 27, 1942, two days after the UFO over Los Angeles, where FDR refers to "atomic secrets learned from study of celestial devices." The date, being just two days following the February Los Angeles event, is most likely coincidental as nothing if anything --- except perhaps speculation --- could have been garnered of any substance or significance over such a short period of time. The gist of the memo does, however, set the tone for a more receptive atmosphere of such events by powers that be. The Dr. Bush refered to in the memo by the way is Dr. Vannevar Bush, the chairman of FDRs National Defense Resource Committee (NDRC), which looked into the invention and development of atomic weapons for the war effort.AND NOW THIS:
It should be noted for the reader that since this article was put online several years ago, many people have taken my original idea of the L.A. object landing on San Clemente Island and ran with it --- and done so nearly always without citing sources or giving credit. However, the possibility for the potential landing at San Clemente was extrapolated directly from MY uncle through personal conversations with Dr. La Paz.Now while it is true La Paz never paid much attention to me personally, basically because I would guess, I was "just" a kid, he did becomefascinated with my story of the L.A. object because I said it was "thick." If you remember from the above:According to my uncle, after La Paz had his own experience near Fort Sumner he became fascinated with my account of the Los Angeles object because, not unlike the one he saw, it was huge --- most such phenomenon reported falling into the somewhat smaller disc-like or saucer-shaped object category. La Paz especially liked the fact I had said the rear or stern was rectangle in shape, rounded on the corners, flat on the bottom and top and fairly thick. He liked the thick part, because he determined the object he saw to be a 100 feet thick --- an unusual statistic at the time.Any of you who have read my online material have more than likely come across the fact that at onetime I owned an immaculately restored 1940s wooden Ford station wagon (see). One day I parked the woodie outside a small restaurant when a man came running in yelling at the top of his voice asking if anybody in the restaurant owned the wooden station wagon out front. Instantly seeing in my mind's eye tiny little bits and pieces of wood flying into the air and scattered all over the parking lot thinking he or somebody else had smashed into it breaking it to smithereens, I jumped from my seat, brushing the man aside, and ran out the door.The woodie was not touched. Matter of fact it was just as I left it.The man doing all the yelling was a skipper of a privately owned marlin boat and he just wanted to know who owned the wagon out front and who the person was that was responsible for maintaining the wood on it. Showing a huge sigh of relief that the car was not demolished beyond repair in some fashion I told him the person responsible for keeping the wood in such great shape was me. The skipper asked if I would be interested in doing, as he called it, the brightwork, on his boat --- meaning, basically, sand, scrape, and spar varnish all the natural-color wood on the boat over and over for the rest of my life. My answer was no, but it did lead me, out of curiosity, to go to where the boat was moored and look it over.It just so happened the day I was there a young woman was walking along the dock with several small children in tow when one of them, a very little girl who I guess could not swim, missed her footing somehow and slipped off the edge of the dock into the water. For all practical purposes she was drowning. The mother started yelling like crazy and since I was probably the only person really within earshot close enough to respond, I leaped off the boat onto the dock and into the water. While still in the water I handed the little girl up to the skipper, who had been running all the way along the dock only a few steps behind me. In the process, due to all the commotion, a small crowd gathered.Amongst the crowd was a woman that recognized me, a former Rose Marie Reid swim suit model that I knew as Sullivan, but since married to the son of a renowned ocean explorer.(see) They had a boat in the harbor and since we had not seen each other for ten years or so, after everybody was sure the girl was OK, she asked me to join her for drinks on her yacht, get into some dry clothes and get caught up. As I was leaving later in afternoon Sullivan asked if I would be willing to go to a party she was throwing in a couple of weeks. As I slowly strolled away down the dock I halfheartedly turned back and nodded in agreement that I would attend.I duly showed up at the designated time and duly circulated and engaged in small talk. Unexpectedly, during the chit-chat sessions two things related to the L.A. UFO came up --- both from the same person, a diver by the name of "Jack" --- who would one day become a highly respected, albeit non-academically affiliated, marine archaeologist. At the point in time we are talking about here however, he was a low level player in the field working his way up the ladder and on his degree. Even so, he was still well known up and down the California coast for his diving expertise and underwater archaeology skills.We got to talking and one thing led to the next, eventually the conversation turning to the L.A. object. He told me although he was too young to have participated in any original dive related to the object --- actually he had not even been born yet --- he had met a couple of old timers, hard hat guys, who had. They told him they participated in a retrieval effort of a highly secret nature off San Clemente Island a few months after the start of the war --- not between the coast and the island proper, but on the deep, open ocean side. They told Jack, to their knowledge nothing ever came of it and nothing of any size was found or located, although over the years they heard rumors to the contrary. For one thing, apparently whatever they were looking for sonar was not able to detect it. So too, they had been diving during the day which was fairly typical. However, the regular daytime teams were pulled out and sent back while a so-called specially trained night diving crew was brought in. What they found, if anything, was not known.Secondly, Jack told me even though San Clemente Island was run and controlled by the Navy and off limits HE could, if I was so interested, get me on the island. Which needless to say, I took him up on. So, even though some may talk about San Clemente using my ideas, unlike most, I have actualy been there and looked the place over to see if any of it was remotely possible. To this day I cannot say for sure, only that I saw the object that night as a young boy, it was huge, as big as a Zeppelin, and that La Paz told my uncle it went down off the coast.CHAPTER 3
THE BATTLE OF L.A. OBJECT HAD 1440 ROUNDS OF ANTI-AIRCRAFT ROUNDS THROWN AGAINST IT, YET IT STILL GOT AWAY.
HOW DID IT ESCAPE?
In the above main text I write:
"(F)or unknown reasons just as it passed south of the Edison electric generating plant in Redondo, rather than continue south around or past Palos Verdes peninsula, it turned diagonally inland headed in a south southeast direction."
In the text I use the term "for unknown reasons." The term is used here by me because other than my own suspcions or speculations, the REASON for the object's change in direction is not known. How could the object and/or any intelligent or artificial intelligent operating systems thereof, have reached the conclusion, i.e., "known," that continuing along the coast in the same direction that it would encounter anything any different than what it already had encountered? That is to say, if the potential possibilities of what it faced was so much different than what it already faced that it would necessitate a change of direction at that specific place and time just past the Edison steam plant, as far as the object was concerned, what could that difference be --- and how would it have known? I do not know how it would have known, but there was a difference, and because of that difference, a very good reason for a change in direction.
It has to do with air and coast defenses.People have a tendency to think that the defenses deployed around the Los Angeles area generally and the aircraft factories specifically in February of 1942 was adequate to good when in reality they were less than adequate to hardly good at all. Matter of fact, in December of 1941, only 60 days before the Battle of L.A., it had been reported that there were only 12 guns on hand to protect all the defense plants in the area. FromThe Army Air Forces in World War II Volume VI :"Similarly, the antiaircraft (AA) units, trained and administered by the Coast Artillery but assigned to the interceptor commands for operational control in 1941, were too few and their equipment too scarce. There were so many vital installations in relation to available AA strength that dispositions had to be based on a system of priorities--which meant in reality that responsible officers did the best they could to guess where attacks were most likely to be made. Typical of the gulf between needs and resources was the situation in southern California. The first plans of 1941 were so ambitious as to be dubbed, later, the "Santa Claus Plans." By late August 1941 a moderate schedule to cover immediate emergencies had been framed. This minimum plan called for 120 three-inch guns for Los Angeles and its immediate environs, but in December there were only 12 guns on hand to protect all the defense plants of that area. For San Diego the Army had no mobile AA strength at all to assign. The planners related later that they had done everything they could for San Diego--they had prayed that no attack would come."It was anti-aircraft guns from the IV Interceptor Command that opened fire against the giant unidentified airborne object. The unit involved under the aegis of the Command was the 37th Coast Artillery Brigade (AA) under of which the 65th Coast Artillery Regiment (AA) located in Inglewood and the 205th Coast Artillery Regiment (AA) located in Santa Monica were the initial active participants. At the time both regiments armament consisted of 3-inch and 37mm anti-aircraft guns and it was a combination of those guns and those from surrounding batteries that expended thenearly 10 tons of ammunition that rained down all over Los Angeles and the surrounding cities during the supposed raid.(see) At higher elevations the 3-inch guns and the 1.5 inch shells of the 37mm guns made no visible impact. As the object turned south along the surf line near El Segundo and headed toward Redondo Beach it lowered its altitude to parallel the beach just above the ocean with still no ill effect. Just after passing the Edison plant it turned diagonally inland toward the south southeast crossing almost directly over the Happy Hour Cafe at 400 Strand and owned by the infamous Fifie Malouf, barely staying above the low lying hills that crested along Garnet Street, dropping to the south side of the hill along Torrance Boulevard and crossing over the 300 block of Lucia Street. Then, gaining altitude, it headed out over the oil fields and agriculture lands beyond.It is my suspicion the diagonal turn inland just past the Edison plant was a designed move and done so because of what was forging out in the ocean just a short distance south of the generating plant. The Redondo Beach pier. According to World War II Comes To Redondo installed on the end of the pier were two 155mm guns. Not wussy 3-inch or 37mm guns, but huge big babys that fired full 6-inch in diameter projectiles. The object seems to have had the ability to withstand the anti-aircraft rounds without incident, but the 155mm rounds at such a close range from both guns in tamden, maybe not so well.
ONE OF TWO 155mm GUNS PLACED ON THE END OF
REDONDO BEACH'S PIER, DECEMBER 1941 TO 1943The object turned inland toward the low coastal hills, hugging first the top then cresting over toward the bottom as they ran eastward along Torrance Boulevard. The guns on the pier did not have full 360 degree turning ability, and even if they could swing around they would not have been able to level their barrels on the object because it could not be seen. Plus, firing with such large bore rounds so close to the ground would have torn to shreds any civilian structures in its path.The same is true when the object first turned south along the surf line near El Segundo and headed toward Redondo Beach and lowered its altitude. The reason it skirted just above the surf line at a fairly low elevation was because sitting between El Segundo and Redondo Beach in the city of Manhattan Beach were two of the most formidable weapons it would have encountered along its path. Even more so than the two 155mm guns on the Redondo Beach pier.In the center of Manhattan Beach just a few blocks inland were TWO huge 8-inch railway guns mounted on specially built flatcars sitting on a spur track laid just for the guns. Both guns were hidden inside false-sided buildings built in such a way to resemble two oversized farmhouses inorder to disguise the guns from enemy agents, aircraft, or submarines.The guns could easily fire their five-hundred pound projectiles for up to twenty miles. So to, unlike the Redondo guns, they were able to rotate all the way around in a full 360 degrees. They just were not able to fire at an object so close in just above the beach --- and, even if they did, everything in their path between the end of their gun muzzle and the beach would have been pulverized. Instead the object just slipped on by.Of course making the diagonal turn across the flatlands in behind the sea-facing 16 in coast defense guns emplaced at Fort MacArthur was not such a bad choice either. A single hit by one of their 2,240 pound projectiles within a range of 26 miles and most likely it would have been goodbye object.In conjunction with the above, two other Redondo Beach residents other than just myself have come forward over time and expressed their experiences regarding the Battle of Los Angeles, in turn inadvertently confirming the actual flight path of the object as it traveled over Redondo that night after it turned inland just past the Edison plant.In high school, before I got my first car, and long before I ever thought of writing anything about the Battle of Los Angeles, my buddies and I used to stop at a mom and pop market for cokes and penny candy on the way home from school. The market was not really "mom and pop" per se' as it was actually owned and run by a father and son team named Edwards who had lived in the neighborhood for years. My brother and I used to cut the grass of many homes in the area on weekends and during the summer, and school or not, we always stopped by the little market to get snacks and drinks. They would even let us run a tab if we were short of cash.The senior Edwards, who collected coins and had a complete set of Lincoln pennies himself, encouraged all the kids who came into the market on a regular basis to start a penny collection, which my brother and I did. Since Edwards had access to lots of change he used to save piles of pennies for any kid starting a collection to sort through for any they might need or wanted to upgrade to. All of us, of course, were always hoping to find a 1909 S-VDB or a 1943 copper penny. The younger Edwards, overhearing us kids talking about the lack of 1943 copper pennies one day enlightened us with wartime shortages and such. A couple of local men who came into the store joined in and soon the topic turned to the Battle of Los Angeles.The younger Edwards was around 20 years younger than his dad, and was himself a grown man, married with a family. He grew up in Redondo Beach and lived in a house on Juanita Avenue two or three houses past my Merchant Marine Friend, almost on the top of the crest of the Garnet Street hill. He was probably in his early 30s or so in 1942 when the object crossed right over his house. As he told it he was awakened in the darkened pre-dawn hours by what he thought was the sound of gunfire. Then the house began to rattle, then shutter, causing a few things to fall off the shelves as though a bulldozer or a freight train had gone by right out front of the house on the sidewalk or something. He ran outside just barely catching a glimpse of what he said looked like the dark black hull of a "flying ship" cresting over and going down the hill toward Torrance Boulevard. He raced inside, threw on a pair of shoes and a jacket over his pajamas and ran out to the top of the hill thinking all along that whatever it was crashed into the houses on Lucia Street or into the oil fields beyond. When he got to the top of the hill none of the houses were destroyed, nothing was on fire, and there was no sign of the object.I recently received a credible email from a reader of my works who now lives in Arkansas or Oklahoma who lived in Redondo Beach as a young boy at the time of the Battle of Los Angeles. He lived with his mom on the 200 block of South Guadalupe Avenue near where it crosses Garnet Street --- only a few blocks down the hill due west from where the younger Edwards lived. If you remember, Edwards was awakened by what he thought was gunfire. The mom of my emailer woke him up and got him out of the house because rounds of gunfire were whizzing right across their front yard, tracking toward some airborne object just north of them that was coming up from the beach. His mother had gone outside to see what all the commotion was and saw the object darkly shadowed on and off from behind apparently by distant searchlights trying to find it. By the time the emailer got outside the shooting had stopped and whatever they were trying to hit had already crested east of him over the hill so he never saw it.The interesting part is that years and years before the man ever emailed me to tell me he lived in Redondo Beach as a kid and rounds of gunfire whizzed right across his front yard the night of the Battle, when the younger Edwards and the men were talking about the incident in the market the day I was looking at pennies, there was a boy with one of the men he was talking to. The boy, who we did not know, had come over to the end of the counter where we were sorting pennies and told us he was from Hollywood Riviera and when he was a kid they had an anti-aircraft gun mounted in their front yard. He said that in February of 1942, a couple of days after his 7th birthday, "the Army was firing it north up the beach toward Redondo all night long."The point past the Edison steam plant where the object turned inland toward the southeast, the ground generally slopes up from sea level at the beach to around 150 feet within a mile or so. The object must have already been flying at or near that height as it did not seem to need to change altitude much as it approached the level of the top of the hill. It was clearly exposed to ground fire in the open air broadside from both the north and south before it began hugging the rooftops of the houses built along the higher level ground. It was out of range of anything from the north and to the south, the Hollywood Riveria battery was almost two miles away. That did not stop it from opening up on the object for the short time it had it in profile. It just was not effective, the rounds were falling all over the place before and beyond its path. It was attested to by the emailer going around the next day with a couple of buddies picking up pieces of shrapnel in various far-flung parts of the neighborhood.90mm Anti-aircraft guns OR 3-inch Anti-aircraft guns:
Over and over in reports regarding the Battle of L.A. it is stated that the the 37th Coast Artillery Brigade began firing 12.8-pound anti-aircraft shells at the unidentified object (just Google "12.8-pound anti-aircraft shells" and you will see what I mean. The last time I checked there were over 43,000 results). The 12.8 pound figure given as the weight of the anti-aircraft rounds used against the unidentified object is a typo most likely from some long lost original source that has been repeated again and again until it has taken on a life of it's own. Even Wikipedia cites the 12.8 figure. It should have been 12.5 pounds. BUT, in either case, using 12.5 or 12.8, the guns used against the unidentifed aerial object that night could NOT have been 90mm.
The below from History of the 4th Antiaircraft Command, I, 115-25, and IV, Docs 28 and 29.:
- The shell weight for the 90mm anti-aircraft round is 23.4 pounds
- The shell weight for the 3-inch anti-aircraft round is 12.5 pounds
"During the next hour they expended some 1,400 rounds of 3-inch antiaircraft ammunition against a variety of "targets" in the Los Angeles area. Exhaustive inquiries on 25 February accumulated a mass of conflicting evidence as to what these targets were."
The source for the following figures regarding the number of of anti-aircraft rounds expended and the size of the rounds expended has been compiled through the research data provided by The History of the 4th AA Command, Western Defense Command, Jan 9 1942 to July 1 1945:
TIME: 0306. Batteries B, C and D of the 65th and Battery B of the 205thFrom the Footnote text above:
482 rounds of 3-inch
TIME: 0333. Batteries B, C, D, G and H of the 78th and B, C and D of the 122nd
581 rounds of 3-inch, 38 rounds of 37mm
TIME: 0355. Batteries C and D of the 65th
100 rounds of 3-inch
TIME: 0405. Batteries B, C, and D of the 78th
246 rounds of 3-inch
TOTAL ROUNDS: 1447
TOTAL WEIGHT OF 3-INCH ROUNDS @ 12.5 LBS EACH: 17,612.5 POUNDS (8.8 tons)
"At the time both regiments armament consisted of 3-inch and 37mm anti-aircraft guns and it was a combination of those guns and those from surrounding batteries that expended the nearly 10 tons of ammunition that rained down all over Los Angeles and the surrounding cities during the supposed raid."
The above 17,612.5 pounds of 3-inch rounds does not factor in the 38 rounds of 37mm shells nor do the figures reflect additional or "unaccounted" ordinance which could easily add up to the NEARLY 10 tons of ammunition so cited. However, considering the almost two-to-one weight ratio between 3-inch rounds and the 90mm rounds it is almost impossible to rectify the use of 90mm rounds.
Please note that the total number of batteries officially reported as responding to the raid that night, Batteries B, C and D of the 65th; Batteries B, C, D, G and H of the 78th; B, C and D of the 122nd; and Battery B of the 205th, add up to the total number of guns (12) as found in The Army Air Forces in World War II Volume VI:
"(The) plan called for 120 three-inch guns for Los Angeles and its immediate environs, but in December (of 1941) there were only 12 guns on hand to protect all the defense plants of that area."
For whatever reason the anti-aircraft battery at Hollywood Riviera is not included in any of the statistics. It was most likely not on a full up and running status or even on an active operational list, with the crew still in training status. They most likely simply just joined in impromptu.
NOTE: If you have not read any of the Footnotes in either section or the above section please do so by scrolling down toward the bottom of the page.
FOOTNOTE [1]
In the main text above, I write that the object, after leveling off over the ocean "reduc(ed) it's speed to a near crawl some 50 miles out, turning inland somewhere near Point Dume." I then go on to say:
"Scattered eyewittness accounts from years later pick up the object apparently dropping down into the radar shadow by hugging the mostly unpopulated ridge-line along the north side of the Santa Monica mountains in an easterly direction."
Sometime in the early 1990s I set a meeting with a man who had been an eyewitness to a portion of the Battle of Los Angeles and able to add a bit of credence to the possible accuracy of the "scattered reports" that the object hugged the mostly unpopulated ridge-line along the north side of the Santa Monica mountains in an easterly direction as it headed toward it's rendezvous with history.
In my exclusive interview, according to the man's story, whose name was William "Bill" Stout, and who had been a carpenter in civilian life and went on to build hopped-up Ford flathead wooden hull speedboats after the war, had joined the Navy in his late teens or very early 20s following Pearl Harbor. The Navy shipped him off to Point Hueneme and Point Mugu near Ventura, California, to help in the early stages of construction of the naval facilities they were building there. In the process he met and started seeing a young woman that lived in a fairly isolated section of the mountains east of Heuneme not far from Paramount Ranch, an old western movie set used on and off over the years by various film studios.
Late one night after seeing and covorting around with the young woman (his words, not mine), he was racing back to the base to make sure he would not miss morning muster when, on a small road leading up toward the town of Agoura, his car got a flat tire.
The man had borrowed the vehicle from a fellow Navy buddy and in that he was totally unfamiliar with all the ins-and-outs of changing the tire on that specific model of car, as well as being caught on a super dark night along the road with no flashlight, it took much longer to change than expected -- as well as quite a bit more effort. Finally finished, even though it was cold and late as well as him being tired and dirty, he sat on the side of the road, lit a cigarette and sort of leaned back in the tall weeds to rest his back for a few minutes. No sooner had he done so when some sort of a giant object, a huge gigantic flying thing not much higher than the tops of the trees --- and not making a sound, but all the while blocking out a good portion of the night sky and most of the stars --- slowly crossed overhead curving toward the east after coming out of a more south southwesterly direction.
When he got back to the base the place was in turmoil. People were running everywhere, forming up into platoons, getting into the backs of trucks carrying rifles, gernades, and gasmasks. He was told the city of Los Angeles was under attack from the air, there was a statewide blackout and everybody was going to be spread out along the coastline to protect the city and country from invasion. Some trucks did leave, but most didn't and by sunup everything had pretty much calmed down. Eventually they were told the whole thing was a fluke, to put the weapons away and to go back to their regular business. Shortly thereafter he was sent to the South Pacific and he pretty much forgot the incident.
Then one day in the late 1980s he saw a movie on television titled 1941. Although a comedy, in the movie the California coast was attacked by a Japanese submarine and the ensuing outcome, except for the giant airborne object, was highly similar to what he began to remember from his experience in 1942. The thing is, when he began to tell people about the incident HE experienced nobody knew what he was talking about. Eventually his story filtered down to me and since I had seen the object as a young boy myself, I sought him out to hear what he had to say and then went to physically visit the areas he mentioned.
As far as describing the object itself is concerned, he said, because there were trees on both sides of the road where he stopped and the fact that it made no sound, the object was practically on top of him before he ever saw it. He said at first he thought it might have been a blimp except it was shaped more like a "brick" and seemed heavy like one too, albeit possibly curved somewhat rather than square-like and flat in the front like a brick. Also, as he found out later, at the time of the fly over there was an area-wide blackout. The thing is, not knowing about any blackout, because it was so dark that night where he pulled over, he left the headlights on to reflect off the trees to give him as much light as he could in order to change the tire. He thought the object flew over his location on purpose because the headlights, dim as they were, unbeknownst to him at the time, still provided the only real visible light source for miles around.
In addition to his discription of the object "looking like a brick," later in the conversation he told me the incident was an eerie-like reminder of another incident that happened a few months before. He was doing some sort of training for the Navy using an inflatable seven-man liferaft. He was coming onto the beach IN the raft with some equipment as several of his buddies guided it alongside in the water holding onto ropes when the boat was swamped by a huge wave and flipped over. He was trapped underneath as the forward momentum of the waves pushed him along with his face and body being scraped by the sand and rocks. Until the raft washed back into deeper water and he was able to get out of underneath it with the help of his buddies he thought he was either going to suffocate or drown. He said when he first saw the giant flying object overhead that night he thought it looked a lot like an upsidedown liferaft --- he also, for a quick few moments, felt the same apprehension or fear that he felt when he was trapped under the liferaft in the water. Like he was going to suffocate or drown.
In June of 1966, one of only two operational prototype mach three XB-70 bombers crashed. As a result there was a short term rash of publicity surrounding the plane in the press, including the release of photographs in a number of popular magazines and other sources that depicted the plane from a variety of angles and operational modes.Albert Nozaki, an eyewitness to the 'UFO over L.A.' reports that although the XB-70 itself did not resemble the object he saw that night in its totality, some photos that he did see during that rash of publicity following the crash struck him because of the way the plane was photographed reminded him of the object he saw that night. The closest that captures the essence of what he was trying to say looked something like the following:
MACH-3 XB-70 SEEN FACE-ON IN FLIGHT WITH WING TIPS DOWNIt is fairly easy to visualize that if an airborne object of similar configuration, especially of any length, flew directly over the top of you at a slow suffocating low altitude and you looked up, that you might describe the object --- at least from your viewpoint --- as looking like an upside down life raft.A PRESENT DAY SIGHTING?In a first ever description of a similar observation that I have ever heard of from any source, one that parallels the account given by MY own eyewitness --- that is, that the the huge object he observed looked like an upside-down liferaft --- has been brought to my attention. Although I am yet to pinpoint a specific year or date, it seems to have been seen sometime in the 1980s, around thirty to forty years AFTER the Los Angeles flyover --- and not over L.A., but in place called Bickel's Camp located in the desert about 100 miles north of Los Angeles, in an area called Last Chance Canyon. The object, as described below, was seen by three men, Mark Aslin, the current caretaker of Bickel's Camp, John Bullock and Walt Bickel:"The three men went outside and beheld an awesome sight. In the eastern sky hovering over the nearest hill was an enormous dark object.
"'It was shaped more or less like an inflated life raft,' Aslin recalled. 'The sky was crystal clear and it was a brilliant, star-studded night.' Aslin pointed out that desert living had made them accustomed to ambient stillness, but the silence they encountered that night was like being deaf."'Then the shape moved over the cabin slowly,' he said. Everything became unearthly hushed. 'You couldn't hear animals, insects or even the wind. It became frighteningly quiet in a desert known for silence.' The object moved on slowly and disappeared in the west."(source)I had been in and out of the Bickel Camp since the time, as a young boy, I was found wandering in the desert all alone by an old man in a jeep who took me there. Because of that I knew one of the witnesses personally, Walt Bickel, the man the camp was named after. However, I had not been to Bickel Camp since 1972 when I stopped by to tell Bickel that my dad, who was a onetime old prospector friend of his, died. The object flew over the camp well after my last visit so, not only had I never discussed the sighting with Bickel, I wasn't even privy that it happened until recently. I do know Bickel's word was as good as gold and if he said he saw it, he saw it. And if it was huge and looked like an inflated life raft it was huge and looked like an inflated life raft. For more on Walt Bickel and any relationship I may have had with him through my father from my youth to adulthood please see The Tree and/or go to:ALEX APOSTOLIDES
NOTE: Even though the Navy man was sent to the South Pacific and says he pretty much forgot the incident it should be stated that at the time of his covorting around with the young woman in the mountains near Paramount Ranch he was engaged to another woman, a woman of which he eventually married after the war. Now while it is true he pretty much forgot about the incident, that is the fly over of the giant object, he found it difficult to discuss under most circumstances and so he didn't because he felt the how of how it happened undermined the fidelity of the relationship with his wife.
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