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This is Volume One of The Army Air Forces in World War II, titled Plans and Early Operations, January 1939 to August 1942, edited by Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate. The University of Chicago Press first published it in 1948, and the Office of Air Force History reprinted it in 1983. The front matter explains how the AAF historical program was set up during the war. The index covers Pacific, Atlantic and European operations, and nothing in the text concerns unidentified aerial phenomena.
“King”32 pages
D E F E N S E O F T H E W E S T E R N H E M I S P H E R E resulted from their belief that such a raid as this would be employed by the enemy to divert attention from a major air task force which would hurl its planes against a really significant target. 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 the next night.’4 The Army, too, was con- vinced that some new action impended, and took all possible precau- tions. Newspapers were permitted to announce that a strict state of readiness against renewed attacks had been imposed,75and there fol- lowed the confused action known as “the Battle of Los Angeles.” During the night of 24/25 February 1942, unidentified objects caused a succession of alerts in southern California. On the 24tl1, a warning issued by naval intelligence indicated that an attack could be expected within the next ten hours.76That evening a large number of flares and blinking lights were reported from the vicinity of defense plants. An alert called a t I 9 I 8 was lifted a t 2 2 2 3 , and the tension tem- porarily relaxed. But early in the morning of the 25th renewed activity began. Radars picked up an unidentified target 1 2 0 miles west of Los Angeles. Antiaircraft batteries were alerted a t 02 I 5 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 f o r ~ e . ~ ’Radars tracked the approaching target to within a few miles of the coast, and a t 0 2 2 I the regional controller ordered a blacko~t.~’ Thereafter the information center was flooded with reports of “enemy planes,” even though the mysterious object tracked in from sea seems to have vanished. At 0 2 4 3 , planes were reported near Long Beach, and a few minutes later a coast artillery colonel spotted “about 2 5 planes at IZ,OOO feet” over Los Angeles. At 0306 a balloon carrying .a red flare was seen over Santa Monica and four batteries of antiaircraft artillery opened fire, whereupon “the air over Los Angeles erupted like a volcano.” From this point on reports were hopelessly a t variance. Probably much of the confusion came from the fact that antiaircraft shell bursts, 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, some- times, balloons) of all possible sizes, numbering from one to several hundred, traveling at altitudes which ranged from a few thousand feet to more than to,ooo and flying a t speeds which were said to have 283
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