![]() Hugh Landis a single faulty 3-inch shell blew up only when it hit the concrete driveway in front of the garage. In just five minutes the two boys picked up more than a dozen jagged pieces of shrapnel and the detonators from two faulty 3-inch anti-aircraft shells that exploded when they hit the ground less than 100 yards from the Perez home.Īt the home of Mr. Young Mary Perez and her two brothers, walking through a familiar vacant lot on the way to school the next morning near Hawthorne, noticed two small craters that had not been there the day before. And almost 10 tons of expended ammunition fell somewhere on the city during the supposed raid.Īccording to the Los Angeles Examiner,’shrapnel-strewn areas took on the appearance of a huge Easter-egg hunt, youngsters and grownups alike scrambled through streets and vacant lots, picking up and proudly comparing chunks of shrapnel fragments.’ Some of the 3-inch anti-aircraft shells had failed to explode in the air and hurtled back to earth. Not counting unofficial shots, 48 shells were fired per minute. During their 30-minute fusillade, the command’s guns hurled 1,440 rounds of 3-inch and 37mm ammunition into the night sky above Los Angeles. The Los Angeles air raid was on.Īnti-aircraft guns from the IV Interceptor Command opened fire at 3:16 a.m., fired steadily until 3:36, stopped, then resumed at 4:05 for another 10 minutes. At 3:05, San Diego was given the red-alert warning, and radio communication between the two cities stopped five minutes later. At 2:32, anti-aircraft and searchlight crews were at the manned-and-ready position. ![]() Two minutes later, radio silence was ordered. Air raid sirens immediately began to sound, and wardens donned their white helmets and grabbed their flashlights. Three minutes later, with the aircraft still unidentified, the red alert was given. This indicated that presumed enemy aircraft were bearing down on the coast. Fifteen minutes later, the blue alert signal was given. By 2:07 it was officially declared an ‘unidentified aircraft approaching the coast’ and a yellow alert was called. on February 25, the unknown contact was approximately 100 miles southwest of Los Angeles. ![]() When an air raid defense radar picked up a mysterious contact shortly before 2 a.m. Anti-aircraft guns were manned and searchlights turned on. Not only did they trigger air raid alarms, blackouts and radio silence, they sent some 10,000 air raid wardens and auxiliary police onto the streets. Of the dozen or so instances when yellow alerts had been announced, only two had gone to the red stage. Yellow alerts were sounded when unidentified aircraft were detected. None of these warnings, however, had ever gone beyond the yellow-alert stage. The most recent warning had been in effect earlier that night. on February 25, air raid sirens blared throughout parts of the ‘City of Angels.’ It was not the city’s first air raid alert of the war. In fact, what happened that night 10 miles north of Santa Barbara contributed to what followed the next night in the skies over Los Angeles.Īt 2:25 a.m. coast and anti-aircraft defense units were on edge before, the incident of February 23, just a few months after Pearl Harbor, considerably heightened their tension. No coastal defense units were within 100 miles of the area to shoot back, so after its ineffective cannonade the Japanese sub slipped away without incident. The closest shell exploded in a field 30 yards from one of the tanks. The 20 or so shots, for the most part, were wild, one landing more than a mile inland. ![]() Moments later it opened fire on the giant Richfield aviation fuel storage tanks on the hill behind the beach. on February 23, 1942, the Japanese submarine I-17 surfaced a few hundred yards off the Barnsdall Oil Company’s mile-long row of shoreline derricks 10 miles north of Santa Barbara, California. Phantom Japanese Raid on Los Angeles During World War II CloseĪ few minutes after 7 p.m.
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