No music! Army vs. UFO (1942; Los Angeles). Captured on Film w/CBS Radio Report of Battle.
1942 footage and radio report of "
Battle of Los Angeles" synchronized to
Byron Palmer's detailed account of the
UFO incident witnessed by a million people on
26 February in sky over southern
California. There were a minimum 1430 artillery rounds fired at the object.
Palmer was an announcer for the
Columbia Broadcasting System (
CBS) in those days of dominant nationwide radio mass media with television still the embryo.
Note Mr. Palmer's reference to the unidentified flying object as a "craft." Note also Palmer's pronunciation of "
Los Angeles" with hard "g" sound (as in "go"). His was typical way of pronouncing city's name at that time and earlier by native and non-native
Angelenos alike. In fact, it is closer to original
Spanish pronunciation which uses the hard "g." Cf. "Loce Ahng-hail-ais." Using the soft "g" (as in "gentry") in voicing "Los Angeles" is a modern conceit.
After a stint in
Army Air Force in the
Pacific theatre during
WW II, Byron Palmer became a star of
Broadway stage,
Hollywood film, and television.
This historic record of the 1942 sighting, which triggered the era of official UFO secrecy by
U.S. government, speaks for itself. It is presented without distracting musical soundtrack. See links to additional photographs and news accounts below.
Also see:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3pXjvDyj8U
Photographic analysis seemingly explodes ad hoc explanations offered from 1942 to date. These include "slow-moving blimp", "
Japanese aircraft", "weather balloon", "mass hallucination triggered by war hysteria", and "light reflection".
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Newspaper and eyewitness accounts:
http://www.realufos.net/2009/04/ufo-battle-of-los-angeles-1942-actual
.html
http://www.bookmice.net/darkchilde/japan/battle.html
http://theunexplainedmysteries.com/battle-of-la.html
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/132795-Eyewitness+to+
History:+
The+Battle+of+Los+Angeles
http://www.rense.com/ufo/battleofla
.htm
http://www.ufocasebook.com/battleoflosangeles.html
http://wanderling.tripod.com/la_ufo.html
Los Angeles Times UFO photograph (
Page B; 26 February 1942)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
File:Battle_of_Los_Angeles_LATimes
.jpg
Computer analysis of the 1942 UFO photograph
http://brumac.8k.com/battleofla/bola1.html
http://www.rense.com/general67/batofla.htm
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Los_Angeles
Air raid sirens were sounded throughout
Los Angeles County on the night of 24 -
25 February 1942. A total blackout was ordered and thousands of air raid wardens were summoned to their positions. At 3.16 a.m. the 37th
Coast Artillery Brigade began firing 12.8-pound anti-aircraft shells into the air at reported aircraft; over 1,400 shells would eventually be fired.
Pilots of the 4th
Interceptor Command were alerted but their aircraft remained grounded. The artillery fire continued sporadically until 4.14 a.m. The "all clear" was sounded and the blackout order lifted at 7.21 a.m.
In addition to several buildings damaged by friendly fire, three civilians were killed by the anti-aircraft fire, and another three died of heart attacks attributed to the stress of the hour-long bombardment.
The incident was front-page news along the
U.S. Pacific coast, and earned some mass media coverage throughout the nation.
Within hours of the end of the air raid,
Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox held a press conference, saying the entire incident was a false alarm due to anxiety and "war nerves".
Knox's comments were followed by statements from the
Army the next day that reflected
General George C. Marshall's belief that the incident might have been caused by commercial airplanes used as a psychological warfare campaign to generate panic. Some contemporary press outlets suspected a cover up. An editorial in the
Long Beach Independent wrote, "There is a mysterious reticence about the whole affair and it appears that some form of censorship is trying to halt discussion on the matter." Speculation was rampant as to invading airplanes and their bases. Theories included a secret base in northern
Mexico as well as Japanese submarines stationed offshore with the capability of carrying planes.
Others speculated that the incident was either staged or exaggerated to give coastal defense industries an excuse to move further inland. Rep.
Leland Ford of
Santa Monica called for a Congressional investigation, saying, "
...none of the explanations so far offered removed the episode from the category of 'complete mystification' ... this was either a practice raid, or a raid to throw a scare into 2,
000,000 people, or a mistaken identity raid, or a raid to lay a political foundation to take away
Southern California's war industries."