Three months after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. military fired 1,400 anti-aircraft shells over Los Angeles at a terrifying enemy — that turned out to be a weather balloon.
On February 25, 1942, at 3:16 AM, air raid sirens jolted Los Angeles awake. Anti-aircraft searchlights swept the sky and the 37th Coast Artillery Brigade opened fire. For nearly an hour, approximately 1,400 shells were blasted into the darkness above one of America's largest cities.
The attack came just 79 days after Pearl Harbor and one day after a Japanese submarine had actually shelled an oil field near Santa Barbara. Wartime paranoia on the West Coast was at a fever pitch. Army troops were stationed at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank to defend against potential Japanese raids.
Five civilians died — three in car crashes during the blacked-out chaos and two from heart attacks attributed to the stress of the alarm. Los Angeles spent the night in darkness, residents cowering indoors or watching the artillery display from their rooftops.
Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox declared it a false alarm within hours: 'war nerves' and mass hysteria. The Army's investigation suggested enemy agents may have flown commercial planes over the city as a psychological tactic. Newspapers demanded a Congressional inquiry, convinced of a cover-up.
After the war, Japan confirmed it had flown no planes over Los Angeles that night. The official 1983 U.S. Air Force history concluded the incident was triggered by a stray weather balloon, after which 'imagination created all kinds of targets in the sky' — a classic example of mass panic feeding itself.
A heavily retouched Los Angeles Times photograph of the searchlights has become a staple of UFO conspiracy literature, cited as photographic evidence of alien spacecraft. The retouching was standard darkroom practice of the era. The image has now circulated for over 80 years, making it one of the most enduring wartime misidentifications in American history.