What was the Battle of Los Angeles?

“On the night of 24-25 February 1942, U.S. Army anti-aircraft batteries fired 1,440 rounds at unidentified objects over Los Angeles. Six civilians died from heart attacks and falling shrapnel. The official explanation was war nerves and weather balloons.”

The Battle of Los Angeles (also the Great Los Angeles Air Raid) occurred on the night of 24-25 February 1942, less than three months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. U.S. Army anti-aircraft units along the Southern California coast fired 1,440 rounds of 12.8-pound shells at unidentified slow-moving objects over the city; the engagement lasted nearly an hour. Six civilians died — three of heart attacks attributed to the panic, three from falling shrapnel and friendly fire. The Los Angeles Times published a now-famous photograph showing searchlights converging on an apparent object. The Secretary of the Navy attributed the incident to "war nerves" the next day; the Army's later position was "unidentified airplanes, probably commercial." Modern UFO researchers cite Battle of LA as a pre-Roswell government acknowledgment of unidentified objects in U.S. airspace. Not part of PURSUE Release 01.