Original subtitles

Tonight, a terrifying event in the skies over Los Angeles.

Los Angeles is one of the most critically important war defense cities

entire country. All hell is breaking loose. There are reports of a Japanese

aircraft shot down in Hollywood.

No lights anywhere.

No streetlights.

No lights in buildings.

No house lights.

Complete and utter darkness. It's as if L .A.

has just been wiped off the map.

This is absolute pandemonium.

The only lights are the searchlights and the anti -aircraft guns firing.

When the smoke clears, the incident becomes known as the Battle of L .A. and

veiled in secrecy and lies.

The Army says that there was something in the sky. The Navy then says there was

actually nothing in the sky at all.

Angelenos are committed to the fact that they have seen something.

Is the government actually covering something up?

Now we explore the top theories surrounding this mysterious occurrence.

In the middle of a blackout, in pitch dark, it's a lot harder to separate

from fiction.

What really triggered the so -called Battle of Los Angeles?

February 24, 1942,

Los Angeles, California.

It's less than three months since the Japanese Imperial Fleet launched a

surprise attack on American forces at Pearl Harbor, killing 2 ,400 and

the United States fully into World War II.

On the home front, the possibility of another attack on American soil is now

very real, especially in the nation's biggest...

coastal cities.

There's widespread fear that Japan will attack the U .S. mainland next, and the

U .S. military has vowed never to be caught off guard again.

Not only does Los Angeles lead American cities when it comes to aircraft

production with Douglas, Lockheed, and North American Aviation, but in San

Bay, it also houses a huge naval armada. With a vulnerable location on the

Pacific Ocean, plus...

Major metropolitan area and a population of over one million? The city makes for

a great target.

And they know it.

So to bolster its defenses, anti -aircraft guns have been placed all

city, bunkers have been built, and air raid protocols have been drilled into

population.

After Pearl Harbor, the United States has been practicing blackout drills in

every coastal city out of fear of an aerial attack.

The purpose of these blackouts is so that enemy planes can't see the lights

the city.

The enemy might send hundreds of bombers to fly towards American cities and drop

bombs almost indiscriminately across any urban zone. At night, it's very hard to

engage in aerial navigation. However, the lights of a city could make it very

obvious if you were near your target.

By now, Los Angeles has been through so many blackouts, the L .A. Times has

nicknamed it the City of Shadows.

The city's ordeal begins with a typical blackout drill.

on the night of February 24th, 1942.

No light anywhere.

Not a cigarette is allowed to be lit on the street for fear of giving away any

type of location to a potential enemy. Even all the radio stations in L .A. go

completely silent.

At 10 .23 p .m., the blackout is lifted, and Angelenos go to bed thinking it was

just another drill.

But at 2 .21 in the morning...

L .A. residents wake to the scream of air raid sirens.

And the city is again thrust into darkness.

Searchlights start sweeping over the skies.

And you have all of these people starting to run out of their homes

see what it is that they're looking at.

It's becoming increasingly clear whatever's happening in Los Angeles

another drill.

At 3 .06 a .m., the searchlights converge on a target over Culver City.

And Los Angeles erupts.

The 37th Coast Artillery Brigade starts firing 12 -pounder guns that lob three

-inch shells up into the atmosphere.

The sound is enormous.

A lot of the people mistake it for the impact of bombs striking the Earth from

enemy attacks.

You can only imagine what the sky had to have looked like that night. You've got

these orange tracer lights in the air, bursts in the sky.

No one had ever seen anything like this in the United States. To a lot of people

in Los Angeles, It seems like it's the end of the world, like it's doomsday.

Phone calls flood the city's information lines with wildly differing accounts of

sightings in the sky.

Eyewitness reports start pouring in to military authorities. We have reports of

hundreds of enemy aircraft flying overhead. We have reports of aircraft

throughout the Los Angeles area, presumably shot down by air defenses.

The only light you've got is a searchlight.

and the anti -aircraft gun firing, which just add to the sense that they are in

a war zone.

The anti -aircraft artillery lobs almost nine tons of ordnance into the skies.

Hundreds of buildings and vehicles are damaged by the fragments of the falling

cells coming back to Earth.

This is absolute pandemonium. A lot of people are just trying to get the hell

out of there.

They're piling into cars and driving.

There's gridlock.

Five people are killed.

Three fatalities as a result of traffic accidents in the chaos.

And two people die of stress -induced heart attack.

And it's pitch black.

But nothing's been shot down. No bombs have been dropped.

What's the story? What actually happened?

Military command orders a ceasefire at 4 .14 a .m.

They officially lit the blackout at 7 .25 a .m.

Daylight brings more questions than answers as local newspapers print a

of conflicting reports.

The most iconic image from this event is a photograph that appears in the

newspaper with eight spotlights shining up into the sky on this object that's

floating in the middle. You can't really make out what the object is because

it's... Brightened up by all the spotlights.

But not even the military can agree on what, if anything, was there.

The Secretary of the Navy, Frank Knox, came out immediately after the Battle of

Los Angeles and announced that the air defense guns had been firing at nothing.

He says this is the result of rising panic, of jittery nerves, that those

manning the coastal defense batteries were also scared.

But then Henry Stimson.

The Secretary of War gives a press conference and he says, no, there were

present and they weren't United States aircraft.

Less than 48 hours before the Battle of Los Angeles, area residents feel their

vulnerability for the first time.

As President Roosevelt is about to deliver his fireside chat.

A giant Japanese submarine rises out of the sea about 10 miles northwest of

Santa Barbara and takes aim at the Elwood oil fields.

The submarine took shots at the piers, and it shot at the fuel storage on top

the bluff.

It miraculously managed to miss just about everything it shot at. But Santa

Barbara's only 90 miles north of Los Angeles.

If they're going to attack Santa Barbara, couldn't Los Angeles be next?

there's this really heightened sense of fear.

of what's coming.

Around 7 p .m. on February 24th, Naval Intelligence instructs coastal defenses

to prepare for an attack within the next 10 hours.

The entirety of Southern California is under this blackout and general alert.

There's the concern that Japanese submarines might still be out there

for trouble.

But nothing really happens, so that alert is canceled around 10 .30. People

going to bed. They think everything might be okay.

just when it looks like nothing is going to happen.

Right before 2 a .m., a radar station near Santa Monica picks up what appears

be a formation of aircraft.

Two more radar installations report that they, too, have detected something

moving towards the American coastline.

At 2 .15 a .m., the military issues its highest -level alert, ordering the 37th

Coastal Artillery to engage enemy targets as soon as they appear.

There are anti -aircraft batteries distributed all over the city, and

concern that Japanese aircraft are soon to attack Los Angeles.

At 2 .27 a .m., the target is tracked to within three miles of the Los Angeles

area and then disappears.

At the same time, information centers are flooded with reports of enemy planes

overhead. The reports of seeing these planes...

They're not just coming from people on the street who are panicking. These are

trained military personnel.

There's an artillery colonel that sees 25 airplanes in formation.

There's another report that there's 12 airplanes in formation.

Someone else reports that they see a single aircraft.

So there's total confusion here about what people are seeing.

But military witnesses are certain they've spotted aircraft overhead.

And the top brass believes them.

It's not just the Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, who's saying the aircraft

were real. It's George Marshall, FDR's Army Chief of Staff, and he writes a

to FDR and he says, yes, there were aircraft present.

But whatever the Coast Defense Brigade is firing towards is not shooting back.

And there are so many unanswered questions about these planes, like where

they have launched from? There's no Japanese aircraft carriers within range

Los Angeles.

There are rumors of downed Japanese aircraft, but that turns out to be just

rumors. There are rumors that bombs were dropped, but again, no bombs were

dropped. So there's a little bit of a mystery.

In his memo...

Marshall posits a possible explanation for the lack of enemy fire.

Marshall's memos state that Axis pilots could have flown commercial aircraft

over Los Angeles, not as a bombing mission, but as a surveillance tool to

spot enemy aircraft positions and also spread fear and panic.

But if the enemy had access to commercial planes...

Where were they keeping them?

There's speculation from Secretary Stinson and General Marshall that the

may have established a secret base in Mexico and used it to launch aircraft to

fly over Los Angeles.

That sounds like crazy person talk, but there's actually something to it. And

the reason why is that during the First World War, the German government...

made some advances attempting to recruit the Mexican government to join World

War I on the side of the Central Powers against the allies that included the

United States.

And there was an awareness that Mexican commercial airliners were operating

aircraft that had been made in Germany that could be easily converted from

civilian commercial transport into aircraft that were capable of carrying

or paratroopers.

American authorities devote an enormous amount of resources searching for secret

access bases, both in northern Mexico and throughout southern California.

However, there's no evidence that there's a secret base.

The American public wants answers, and Secretary Stimson is not going to supply

them. Stimson just says, well, we don't have definitive answers to this, but

maybe it's better to be too alert than not alert enough.

For days after the so -called Battle of Los Angeles, residents still struggled

to make sense of what happened.

So whatever happened that night turns out to be a solitary event, and there

much bigger concerns happening in Europe and the Pacific.

As World War II rages on, the mysterious air raid fades in importance.

But after the war's end, the U .S. Coastal Artillery Association... shows

renewed interest in the mysterious 1942 event.

The Coastal Artillery Association is essentially a veterans organization made

of units that were responsible for coastal and harbor defenses in the

States. So they start reviewing the Battle of L .A., documenting it for

posterity, and what they discover puts a whole new spin on the event.

It turns out that at 1 a .m., so just really two hours before the Battle of

Angeles, commanders two weather balloon were launched in the hollywood area and

it becomes clear that they may not be the only ones to have been launched that

night weather balloons

are critical to the war effort both on the battlefield and on the home front

coastal artillery units constantly release balloons to collect

data things like air speed and precipitation and atmospheric

actually helps the guns on the ground be more accurate.

If there is enemy aircraft coming, it is imperative that they get these balloons

up in the air as soon as possible.

In order to track the balloons, they added a small candle that they put in a

glass jar underneath the balloon. Because the balloon has a kind of a

skin, that light is able to reflect as far as 25 ,000 feet.

But about 3 a .m.

About 40 minutes after the first sirens go off, the 203rd Coastal Artillery Unit

launches two further weather balloons.

One's launched from westward and the other one from Battery D in Santa

The lieutenant in charge of Battery D's meteorological operations notifies his

commander of the balloon's departure.

The timing couldn't be worse.

Gunners are scouring the sky looking for enemy aircraft, and almost immediately,

Battery D notices that their balloons are coming under fire.

There is no controlling system such that when one unit releases balloons into

the sky over Los Angeles, other units would know where those balloons are or

when they were released.

So while one unit is releasing balloons to collect data for its own accuracy,

another unit might be mistaking those balloons for enemy targets.

Colonel Ray Watson is commanding Battery D of the 203rd, and he basically says,

don't fire. These are our balloons. Don't fire. Don't shoot.

So even though Colonel Watson is warning people, the order comes back from high

command, no, shoot.

The 203rd Coast Artillery.

probably triggered this entire incident by releasing weather balloons.

But interestingly, this is a battery that did not fire that night because the

battalion commander decided that there was nothing in the sky.

Colonel Ray Watson is relieved of his duty immediately, and the story about

balloons in Battery D that night remains hidden for a number of years.

Nevertheless, questions remain, particularly about the earlier radar

Is it possible that something far simpler is to blame?

In the years since, we have learned that the military's weather balloons weren't

the only things floating in the sky that night.

In the 1960s, two full decades after the events of the Battle of Los Angeles, a

former air defense artillery crewman claimed that his unit was desperate to

their own radar capabilities.

And because there were no aircraft available for that very type of test,

obtained some children's balloons, loaded them full of hydrogen for

suspended some foil streamers underneath them to create a radar return, and

released them into the sky.

And, lo and behold...

It worked. They were able to see these balloons on the radar.

But as the night wears on, the winds change, and an onshore breeze starts

pushing the balloons back towards the city.

Prevailing winds make it almost impossible to conceive of radar picking

of these children's balloons with foil beneath them 100 miles west of the city

out at sea. However, if a radar were to pick up that kind of a return, if the

balloon popped, the return would disappear from the screen almost

Maybe a combination of radar balloons and weather balloons tricked the city of

Los Angeles into believing that they were under attack.

So this information might fill in some puzzle pieces from 1942, but people

find it odd that 1 ,400 rounds shot into the air couldn't bring down a single

balloon.

Eyewitnesses recall seeing an object floating in the dark skies over Los

on February 25th, 1942.

Something moving ominously slow, practically hovering overhead.

Many historians believe they could have been weather balloons or toy balloons

used for radar testing. But even if true, it leaves more than a few

questions.

One of the biggest problems with this theory is in relation to the size of the

balloons. Kids' balloons are not exactly airplane size.

And military weather balloons back in the day were around four feet in

But there is another kind of balloon that could explain what witnesses claim

have seen overhead.

The Japanese were absolutely desperate to find ways to attack the United

There was no possibility of bringing their aircraft carriers within range of

land -based air power.

So they start looking at other mechanisms.

In 1933, almost 10 years before that terrifying air raid signal went off, a

Japanese general begins a new weapons program called the Fugo.

The Japanese will ultimately launch a major offensive operation against the

United States using intercontinental weapons in the form of a series of

balloons.

They discover that high altitude air currents can deliver a balloon across

Pacific in as little as 30 hours.

These are 33 foot wide balloons made of laminated paper.

They're capable of holding a massive amount of hydrogen inside of them and

lofting high explosive and incendiary bombs.

When released from the Japanese home islands and put into what we now know as

the jet stream, they can effectively blow over the North American continent.

What the Japanese were hoping to accomplish was that they would hit the

Northwest at a time when it's being swept by intense winds, when

dry. and that they will then rain down balloons that will start forest fires.

And the thought was that if we can suddenly give them this epidemic of

fires, we will use our resources trying to put those fires out rather than

trying to attack the Japanese home island.

These things are a little bit more sophisticated than people realize.

mechanism once the balloons get into the jet stream to make sure that it

maintains. height if it gets too low it drops a sandbag and then that keeps the

height up until it gets over the land and they don't need to be particularly

well aimed as long as they hit a rural area with dry tinder the prevailing wind

patterns of the jet streams in february of 1942 would have essentially blown

balloons from the japanese foam islands directly towards los angeles

The Fugo balloon could explain the sudden blips on the radar, the scattered

reports of the Zeppelin, and the oddly slow speed at which it left the city.

But Japanese documents discovered after the war revealed that the Fugo was mass

-produced starting in 1944, two years after the Battle of Los Angeles

But could this have been a test run of an early prototype?

Perhaps.

The documents also reveal that many of these floating bombs successfully made

to North America.

From November of 44 until March of 1945, they launch over 9 ,000 Fugo balloons.

At least 300 of them actually reach the mainland of the United States and

Canada. Most of the payloads fizzle out, but one actually got through and

knocked out the power to the very facility.

that was producing the plutonium that would be used in the atomic bomb that

later dropped on Nagasaki.

And just four months before the war's end, one of them reveals its full

destructive potential.

May 5th, 1945,

Bly, Oregon.

Reverend Archie Mitchell and his pregnant wife Elsie take five of their

school students on a picnic in the nearby mountain.

When one of the kids, a 13 -year -old girl, finds some fabric sprawled out on

the forest floor, she calls over Elsie and the other kids to come investigate.

Elsie calls to her husband back at the car.

Look what we found.

It's some kind of balloon.

The balloon gondola had experienced a failure of its triggering system, the

system that would have dropped the incendiary charge and dropped the bomb.

Instead, the entire gondola comes down with the incendiary device and the bomb

still intact.

Just as the Reverend tells his wife not to touch it, boom, there's a huge

explosion.

The Reverend goes running to give aid to Elsie and the five kids, but there's

nothing he can do.

They've all been killed instantly.

Some people are convinced that a balloon like this is actually what drifted into

LA's airspace and started the so -called Battle of LA.

Even so,

Questions remain.

So as hard as it is to believe that the United States military could not shoot

down a weather balloon, it's harder still to even fathom that they couldn't

shoot down this larger object with an explosive payload.

Whatever that iconic photo is showing in the Los Angeles Times, whether it's

something like a balloon or a more traditional aircraft, you'd think that

artillery fire would have at least taken it down or at the very least sent it

reeling.

More than 80 years since the skies erupted over Los Angeles, the so -called

Battle of L .A. remains an enigma.

No one from the military or the government can say for certain what

city's airspace that night, nor will they explain why the city's anti

batteries failed to take anything down.

In the absence of any definitive answers, a new theory takes hold, one

confounds experts to this day.

As interested sleuths start to comb through all the documentation and

statements, they begin to think that the official story has swept a lot of the

eerie details under the rug.

In particular, people fixate on the iconic photo of searchlights that are

shining on some unidentifiable object in the sky.

It's disc -shaped, but it's appearing to glow as well. Now, you can say, well,

it would, wouldn't it? I mean, it's illuminated by searchlight. But again...

They picked up something. There's got to be something there for this thing to be

glowing.

In 1950, a former Marine Corps aviator named Donald Kehoe makes an interesting

connection.

Kehoe suggests that the unexplained aerial phenomenon was extraterrestrial

nature, not the government's explanation of Japanese planes or balloons.

With all due respect to the Air Force, I believe that some of them will prove to

be of interplanetary origin.

In 1942, the concept of a flying saucer isn't really part of the American

lexicon at all.

However, investigators looking back on the Battle of Los Angeles essentially

backdate that idea into the story surrounding what might have happened

night.

Some of the eyewitness statements help fuel the theory that this is a UFO.

Because of this strange ability to be very slow on the radar and then suddenly

it speeds up.

that it's maybe hovering, then suddenly it's moving very fast, that it's at a

low altitude, and then it's at a high altitude.

All of these help fuel this idea that maybe this is some kind of unknown

aircraft from another planet that's coming down to Earth.

There are going to be questions from the highest ranks of leadership and command

in the military and civilian government.

And reports about this incident go all the way to the Secretary of War. They go

all the way to U .S. Army Chief of Staff George Marshall.

And they have to report to the president what happened in L .A.

Proponents of the UFO theory point to a series of unauthenticated memos.

There are a number of documents floating around, purporting to be from George

Marshall to FDR, talking about the recovery of two craft.

One of these was apparently recovered off the coast between Los Angeles and

Catalina Island.

The other in the San Bernardino Mountains.

Marshall also goes on to allegedly explain to FDR in these memos that the

objects that were recovered didn't resemble any conventional aircraft.

And he presumes that whatever these objects were, were of an interplanetary

origin.

The eyewitness reports that come in the night of the air raid include many

descriptions of unusual aircraft.

The U .S. will encounter even more unidentified flying objects as the war

continues.

Towards the end of World War II, Allied pilots begin to describe being followed

by very strange lights over the skies in Europe, and they nicknamed them Foo

Fighters. Whatever these objects were, it was said that they would usually

in red, yellow, and green. They would fly alongside the Allied aircraft at

speeds up to 200 miles an hour. Sometimes there would be one. Sometimes

could be several of them.

Some ufologists speculate that FDR himself was a believer.

in extraterrestrial life.

Allegedly, this unauthenticated memo written by FDR in February of 1944 is

to a special committee on non -terrestrial science and technology.

Supposedly, in this memo, FDR is slowly coming to grips with the idea that the

planet Earth is not the only one that's able to house intelligent life.

He says that we will take advantage of these wonders that have come to us after

we've won the war.

There are many people who believe the Battle of Los Angeles was really Earth's

first big encounter with extraterrestrials. And of course there's

large number of people who think that's complete nonsense.

Under particular scrutiny are the unauthorized documents between Roosevelt

Marshall.

Experts question their credibility.

There is a lot of controversy about this. There are many, many documents

circulating in the UFO community that are, frankly, bogus.

There are big question marks over there.

In addition, analysis of the infamous LA Times photograph from 1942 raises even

more questions.

Retouching of photographs was something that occurred commonplace in the 1930s

and 1940s.

At newspapers at the time, it was very common for them to create more of a

contrast with the black and the white.

When they look at the negative of this photo versus what's published, they

discover that this photo has been touched up quite a bit.

There are details that are in the foreground toward the bottom of the

where they can see they brought out the mountain ranges that are seen in the

background. They also blow out some of the overexposed components of it.

The skyline has been darkened.

The searchlight beams.

have been enhanced, and what's actually lens flare has been altered to make it

look as if it's explosion.

The photograph makes people think that there was something in the sky, but what

if there actually wasn't something in the sky that night?

Whatever terror the people of Los Angeles endure on February 25th, 1942,

matched by frustration and anger.

There are so many questions about what happens on this night in Los Angeles.

And the government doesn't seem to be very forthcoming with any real

information. One thing the public still can't understand is why there wasn't a

single American aircraft in the sky that night.

It is understandable to not want to try to fly a plane over a densely populated

city when shells are raining down. But what a lot of people still have trouble

coming to grips with is that when the blip showed up on the radar.

Why wasn't one military plane sent up to intercept the object, or at least just

to check out what it was? The fact that aircraft weren't scrambled in response

to this radar return suggests to some people that they knew there was nothing

there, that the whole thing was some sort of deception operation organized by

the government.

Representative Leland Ford demands a congressional investigation into this.

He wants answers because he feels that the government hasn't been very

forthcoming about what really happened.

Leland Ford is concerned that there might be a reason for this deception.

He thinks it's possible that the government might be laying the ground

moving some of the defense infrastructure and industry.

away from Los Angeles.

If you wanted to persuade people to move, having some sort of dummy raid

just scare them into saying, OK, then we'll move.

Since the beginning of the war, there has been discussion of moving L .A.'s

shipbuilding and aviation industries inland to protect them against possible

Japanese attack.

Some people at senior level in the government do think it's prudent to move

these industries.

And Leland Ford is concerned.

His view is, look, these industries are essential to the economy of California.

We don't want to move them. If they're at risk, we protect them.

The greatest thing to happen to the economy after the Great Depression is

War II. Suddenly everyone is back to work.

and manufacturing's at an all -time high.

So no one wants to see the sudden booming economy of the war industries

Southern California.

Before the shelling begins, there are reports of these flashing lights and

flares that are showing up near these defense plants around the city.

And during the shelling, there are reports of these objects in the air that

following a route that would have taken them over the highly sensitive areas of

Douglas, Lockheed, and North American Aviation.

News coverage immediately after the air raid suggests that whatever phantoms

were in the sky that night, they seemed to show an interest in defense industry

targets.

Some people start to question whether or not the attack was staged or at least

maybe exaggerated.

But some historians suspect there may be an even more sinister reason to

orchestrate a giant false flag operation throughout Los Angeles.

At the beginning of the Second World War, there was really no real concern

the loyalty of Japanese Americans.

After Pearl Harbor, as time goes on into January and February...

There's continued war propaganda coming out. There's more dehumanization of the

Japanese people.

Even though the commander of Western Defense Command, Major General John

reported that there were no acts of Japanese -American sabotaging American

industry or other aspects of the war effort, he still also recommended that

Japanese citizens be moved away from the West Coast and its vital defense plans.

The initial hope is that they will very quickly evacuate themselves to these

internment camps.

It didn't take long for the president to realize, well, that's not going to

work. Because who's going to want to do that? Nobody.

Absolutely nobody.

On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt issues Executive Order

9066.

Executive Order 9066 authorizes the removal of anyone that could be

danger to the war effort.

It's vague language, but it is clearly pointing to Japanese people,

Japanese people who live on the West Coast.

To Roosevelt in early 1942, just 80 days after the attack on Pearl Harbor,

the world looked very scary and intimidating.

And unfortunately, he made this decision.

to deprive American citizens of their rights.

The Battle of Los Angeles came really only five days after FDR signed the

infamous executive order to do with the internment of Japanese people in the

United States.

This was controversial.

It arguably went against his political instinct.

But on the other hand, there was a feeling that this was necessary.

And therefore, did something get staged that would really make everyone go along

with this and say, yeah, we get why this is needed?

Was it all part of hyping up the Japanese threat, not just the threat

invasion, but the threat from within?

After the smoke clears, after the blackout order has been lifted,

There's no evidence that there's actually been an attack, yet the

arrests 20 Japanese Americans for colluding with the enemy.

This makes no sense because how could they collude with planes when at least

part of the official narrative is there were no planes and the suspicion is that

this is perhaps something aimed at driving forward and accelerating the

of the internment program.

When Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox first dismisses the so -called Battle of

Los Angeles as a false alarm, many citizens are outraged.

But as time passes, even Angelenos begin to question what they saw.

One of the big questions about the Battle of Los Angeles is why are there

many different conflicting stories?

People report a wide variety of things.

And I think that's really an indication of the type of panic and utter fear that

is driving people in this moment.

For every person that comes forward and says that they did see something in the

night sky, whether it was a plane or a floating object, other people come

forward, like Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Ernie Piles, and says they

nothing that night except for flashing lights, treasure fire, smoke in the sky.

Some military historians claim.

that the combination of things that happened that night led people to see

that actually weren't there.

All of the elements leading up to mass hysteria are in place in Los Angeles in

February of 1942.

You have the attack on the oil fields north of the city. You have the

of the Pearl Harbor attack.

You have war preparedness movements and the assignment of civil air defense

wardens. All of these elements combine to make people afraid, to make people

nervous, to make people jumping at shadows.

We already knew how easily excitable the American population was from an event

from 1938.

I'm speaking from the roof of Broadcasting Building, New York City.

you hear are ringing to warn the people to evacuate the city as Martians

approach.

Orson Welles.

And his radio broadcast, Dramatization of the War of the World, was done in a

full documentary style as if it was actually happening.

A shockingly large number of people thought they were listening to an actual

broadcast announcing the arrival of extraterrestrial aliens who were making

with the planet Earth.

The American public although it likes to think of itself as very sophisticated

and intelligent, is not immune to the effect of mass hysteria. They flooded

telephone switchboards for their local police forces and their local media,

demanding assistance and demanding answers about what was happening in the

invasion of the United States.

Less than two and a half years later, in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, with the

country on edge, it's not just the American public.

who fall prey to their own fears.

In the period after Pearl Harbor, scared American aviators and naval personnel

constantly file reports that are alleging that Japanese warships are off

western coast of the United States.

There are reports of aircraft carriers, battleships, massive flotillas of the

Imperial Japanese Navy.

Typically, they turn out to be cargo craft, elements of the U .S. Navy, or

in a couple of instances, floating debris like logs.

And the radar systems that sparked the Battle of Los Angeles are far less

reliable than most people realize.

A lot of the technology that we take for granted today in regards to air defense

was in its infancy at the beginning of World War II.

Radar is a new technology here. So it's not foolproof.

There's mistakes.

There's inconsistencies with radar. A bird could show up on the radar and you

might think it's a plane.

Maybe that's why the object just suddenly disappeared off of radar

miles from downtown L .A., because there was nothing ever there.

Sometimes what you perceive outweighs your own experience, and it causes you

draw conclusions that don't really fit the facts. In the case of the Battle of

Los Angeles, people who had no wartime experience see flashing lights, they see

explosions, and they want to assume that there's a purpose behind them.

When we're in a moment of war, when we're in a moment of fear, where the

feels upside down and the unknown is happening, people's minds play tricks on

them.

On February 25, 1942, the helplessness and fear Angelenos felt was

very real, even if an imminent invasion was not.

We may never know what triggered the barrage, be it a phantom aircraft, or a

case of nerves.

Either way, the Battle of L .A. remains one of World War II's enduring, unsolved

mysteries.

I'm Lawrence Fishburne. Thank you for watching History's Greatest Mysteries.