The Smoking (Anti-Aircraft) Guns (of Los Angeles, 1942), page 23

I hope CUFON can help with the reports.

Sorry if this has already been posted, but it's a long thread and I don't recall seeing it, it's a youtube video of the incident, and all I know about the video is what's stated in on the youtube page. Is this a dramatization of some sort? I suspect it is, especially based on the flashes inserted at about 43 seconds, a discontinuous shot that suggests it may not be real footage. And the Caption only mentions a radio broadcast which of course would have no video.


If it's a real video I have no idea how they got some footage which appears to be shot from the air?



I stared at that famous picture so long looking at it with different filters etc, that it's nice to get a different view in this video of what happened.

[edit on 6-10-2009 by Arbitrageur]

reply to post by draknoir2

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The AA guns aren't suppose to be precise.

...the same way depth charges work with submarines.

Originally posted by draknoir2
The AA flak seems to be going everywhere but towards the target.

Originally posted by Tifozi
reply to post by draknoir2

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The AA guns aren't suppose to be precise.

...the same way depth charges work with submarines.

Originally posted by gambon
hello all , any more research on this ? thread seems to have died which seems a shame

The case is pretty much solved for me, but there are only two mysteries about it that come to mind:

1. What was the offshore radar contact around 2-2:30am that was going a couple hundred MPH? We don't know and probably never will. But there's no evidence that was the object they were shooting at over LA because the shooting didn't start until the balloons were released at 3am. nd there was no radar tracking between 2:30 and 3am.

2. Why didn't the AA shoot down the balloons immediately? Both meteorological units reported that the AA fire was just making their balloons dance around in the sky. This is plausible if a shockwave from the AA explosion hit the balloon, but no shrapnel did. This raises questions about the quantity, size, and dispersal pattern of AA shrapnel and the distance the AA shells were detonated from the balloons, but as Tifozi said, they weren't intended to be direct hits. However i suspect that the AA shells were exploding even further from the target than expected.

To the people that say that if it was balloons they were shooting at, they would have been shot down immediately, I have to agree with that observation, as this would have been my expectation as well. But apparently I come to a different conclusion than some others. I conclude that it was in fact balloons they were shooting at, at least initially, and wonder why they weren't able to shoot them down. I think there are good answers to that question.

Other people seem to conclude that the balloons must be bulletproof to not be shot down by AA fire, and while I'm puzzled by this, I don't think the answer is that the balloons were bulletproof. I think the shockwave hit them, but the shrapnel didn't, if the meteorological balloon soldiers statements are accurate about what the AA fire did to the balloons.

Remember, we know that the radar training was found to be dismal, and the radar was used for aiming the AA fire, so if they had terrible radar training, then it seems possible their aim could be off and they wouldn't get close enough to the balloons to shoot them down with the first couple of shots. I suspect that eventually, the balloons were shot down, but that they withstood so many shots initially without being shot down is fascinating, especially since the shots were close enough to the balloons for the shock waves to knock the balloons around in the sky. Either that or it was some kind of optical illusion like autokinesis where their eyes told them the balloons were getting knocked around but it was just an optical effect from the explosion that they misinterpreted. But they were sure that those were the balloons they had released that were being shot at, and I don't see any reason to doubt that.

reply to post by Arbitrageur

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bullet proof balloons and optical illusions eh ?

it was a ufo and if you have never seen a real one then you'll always find ways to dismiss it. i am noticing that seems to be the norm for people who haven't seen the real thing. i could be wrong

reply to post by easynow

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The January 2000 sighting in Illinois by multiple police officers was a real UFO, and I don't know what that was.

But the balloons being shot at initially in this case were clearly identified by the soldiers who released them. So that means they are not UFOs.

Whether I've ever seen a UFO or not won't change the facts in either of these cases. I still believe the police officers in 2000 when they said they saw a UFO just like I believe the soldiers in 1942 when they said they saw the balloon they released being shot at.

reply to post by Arbitrageur

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"First there would be a period immediately after the balloons were released while they were still ascending that they would be within the range of the AA guns"

I do agree with you , although the above would depend on the location the balloons were launched , the minimum gun angle and still the range at these low angle firings?if that makes sense , could the hills have covered the balloon untill it was fairly high for instance ?

How far was the launch site along the ground as the crow flies to the aa batts , searchlights?

I think the sonic boom / heat from multiple exploding ammunitions " could " produce this effect , much like a piece of litter over a fire , or near a car exhaust for instance


[edit on 10-5-2010 by gambon]

reply to post by Arbitrageur

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Don't you think the Army might have released the balloons as a distraction to keep people's minds off the real object?

This is supposedly what happened with the Phoenix lights in 1997. The lights themselves were flares, but were meant to distract everyone's attention from the large V-shaped flying object flying slowly over the area.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by sos37

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I agree the flares in Phoenix in 1997 may have been such a distraction. I'm not sure they were but it seems plausible as a possibility.

In 1942 I don't think the balloons were a distraction, it doesn't even seem plausible.

www.nicap.org...

Accompanying documentation showed that weather balloon releases were scheduled daily for 0300Z, 0900Z, 1500Z, and 2100Z.

So they released the balloons EVERY DAY at 3am, it was part of a regular daily schedule of balloon releases.

Originally posted by gambon
How dark would it be at 3 am on the date in q including weather conditions?
In california?

You inspired me to look up the moon data, it set at 2:31 AM about half an hour before the shooting started on Feb 25 1942:

www.heavens-above.com...

Since the 1990s I've flown into the Los Angeles basin numerous times at night and I can say it's never very dark, as viewed from the air, the lights extend literally from the Pacific ocean on the West to the mountains east of Los Angeles. I imagine the city was normally well lit in 1942 also, at ground level.

However once the "lights out" was declared, the city went dark, since they thought the Japanese would find it hard to hit their bombing targets at night if they couldn't see them. And since the moon had set and all the lights were out, it might have been dark for a change.

But I'm not sure why you're asking, the weather balloons had their own light so you could see that even in the dark. And that's what they started shooting at according to the guys who released the weather balloons.

reply to post by gambon

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My guess is the brightness of the light on the weather balloon would be something comparable to a simple Chinese sky lantern brightness, so it would be visible even with the city lights on.

But yes, once the city lights went out, and the moon had set, the balloon light would have really stood out.

reply to post by Software_Pyrate

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There were many eyewitness accounts claiming many different things. Some of them contradict others so they can't all be right.

The reason the eyewitness accounts saying they started shooting at balloons have more credibility to me than any other eyewitness account, is that those came from the guys who released the balloons, so they were the only people that whole night who knew for sure exactly what they were looking at.

None of the other witnesses can make that claim, because none of the other witnesses released what they saw.

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