The Smoking (Anti-Aircraft) Guns (of Los Angeles, 1942)

Originally posted by NephraTari
They fired at a solid object with LIVE rounds for a long time without doing it any damage whatsoever and the craft did not return fire but just left casually when it wanted to.

Originally posted by WitnessFromAfar
Just a quick update, I'll do my best to attend the Re-enactment of the event this year.


I'll bring my camera & audio recording equipment for documentation purposes. Hopefully there will be some experts there who will be able to tell us more about the equipment involved in the battle. I'm counting on there being searchlights there as well. I'll try to document that activity if it happens.

-WFA

Scott Littleton writes:

I was an eye-witness to the events of that unforgettable February
morning in February of 1942. I was eight-years-old at the time, and my
parents lived at 2500 Strand in Hermosa Beach, right on the beach. We thus
had a grandstand seat. While my father went about his air-raid warden
duties, my late mother and I watched the glowing object, which was caught in
the glare of searchlights from both Palos Verdes and
Malibu/Pacific/Palisades and surrounded by the puffs of ineffectual
anti-aircraft fire, as it slowly flew across the ocean from northwest to
southeast. It headed inland over Redondo Beach, a couple of miles to the
south of our vantage point, and eventually disappeared over the eastern end
of the Palos Verdes hills, what's today called Rancho Palos Verdes. The
whole incident last, at least from our perspective, lasted about half an
hour, though we didn't time it.

Originally posted by WitnessFromAfar

Clip 3:

Clip 5:

The target in question is the one from clips 2 and 3 of this post, and is the likely object photographed by the LA Times. The object is tracked on radar for 21 minutes, until it is within 3 miles of Los Angeles at 0227.

"From Santa Barbara, area of the submarine attack Monday night, District Attorney Percy Heckendorf said he would appeal to Lt. Gen. John L. DeWitt, commanding officer of the Western Defense Command, to make Santa Barbara County a restricted area for enemy nationals and American-born Japanese as well. "There is convincing proof," Heckendorf asserted, "that there were shore signals flashed to the enemy." Heckendorf said the people will hold Gen. DeWitt responsible if he failed to act. Army ordinance officers, meanwhile, were studying more than 200 pounds of shell fragments from missiles fired by the submarine, which caused only $500 damage in the Ellwood oil field near Santa Barbara."

It is said by some locals that the skipper or one of the officers on the Japanese sub had worked in the Ellwood oil field some years prior to the outbreak of the war. The story claims that the man had been mistreated by some of his co-workers during that time, had returned to Japan before the war began, and had then subsequently helped lead the submarine back to the area to make it's attack.