Los Angeles in February 1942 was a city on edge. Pearl Harbor was still a fresh wound. On February 23, a Japanese submarine had surfaced off Santa Barbara and shelled an oil field - the first enemy attack on the U.S. mainland since 1814. Rumors of imminent invasion spread. Aircraft factories dotted the region, making it a logical target. When naval intelligence warned of a possible attack on the night of February 24, the city was primed for panic. Air raid sirens sounded at 2:25 AM. A total blackout was ordered. Searchlight batteries swept the sky. Then someone started shooting.

The firing began near the coast and spread inland as batteries tracked what they believed were enemy aircraft. The Los Angeles Times would report that anti-aircraft shells 'burst in a seemingly endless series of angry red flashes.' Searchlight beams converged on targets - though observers disagreed violently about what those targets were. Some saw aircraft. Some saw formations of planes. Some saw nothing at all. The shells kept flying, arcing across the basin, falling back as shrapnel on homes and cars. The 37th Coast Artillery Brigade alone fired over 1,400 rounds. Not a single plane was shot down. Not a single bomb fell. By 4:14 AM, the all-clear sounded.

The military's explanations satisfied no one. Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox called it a 'false alarm' caused by 'war nerves.' Secretary of War Stimson blamed the firing on fifteen to twenty commercial aircraft operated by 'enemy agents' trying to spread panic or locate anti-aircraft positions. But no aircraft were ever found. The Japanese denied sending planes. After the war, captured records confirmed no Japanese operation over Los Angeles that night. Modern explanations include weather balloons, mistaken identification of celestial objects, or simply accumulated tension releasing in a deadly group hallucination. UFO enthusiasts point to a famous photograph showing searchlights converging on an apparent object - though the photo was heavily retouched by newspapers of the era.

The Battle of Los Angeles claimed at least five lives, all civilians. Three died in traffic accidents as panicked residents fled through blacked-out streets. Two others died of heart attacks attributed to the stress of the attack. Falling shrapnel damaged homes, cars, and buildings throughout the basin. One shell reportedly fell on a reservoir in Silver Lake. The psychological damage was harder to measure. The incident exposed how vulnerable Los Angeles felt, how eager citizens were to believe the worst, and how little control the military actually had over the situation. In the midst of a real war, America had fought an imaginary battle - and lost.

The 'Battle of Los Angeles' occurred over a wide area of the Los Angeles Basin, with no single memorial site. The Fort MacArthur Museum in San Pedro preserves some of the anti-aircraft batteries that fired that night. The Los Angeles Times building downtown was the nerve center for reporting the incident. The neighborhoods where shells fell - from Santa Monica to Long Beach - have long since absorbed the memory. The famous photograph, showing searchlights converging over the city, is displayed at various local museums. For those interested in the incident, the experience is less about visiting specific locations than understanding the geography of fear: standing in Los Angeles and imagining a night when the sky itself seemed to attack. LAX is, of course, the closest airport - its runways occupying land where anti-aircraft batteries once blazed at nothing.