There's this (slightly credulous, to my mind, anyway) version of the LA air raid.
The cited further reading at the end does not exactly inspie confidence. I like Jim Marrs, but he is one paranoid gentleman. But, FWIW, here:
Conspiracy Theory
Few remember the Los Angeles air raid of World War II
UFOs and a government cover-up.
6/22/2000
The View from Marrs by Jim Marrs challenges bureaucratic secrecy and the status quo. Big Media watch out!
Quickly lost among the ever-increasing reports of the battles and home front campaigns of World War II, the Los Angeles Air Raid of 1942 has all but been forgotten, except to those who lived through it. Although the incident was brushed off by government officials the very next day, there remain aspects of this event with a decidedly UFO flavor.
By late February, 1942, just three short months after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, tensions were high on the West Coast - and rightly so.
America had been attacked and there was a fear of imminent invasion. Air raid drills had been conducted regularly since the attack, and on February 23, a Japanese submarine shelled the Bankline Oil Company refinery in Goleta, just north of Santa Barbara.
At 2:25 a.m. on February 25, Los Angeles County residents were awakened by the wail of air raid sirens. Most believed it was simply another drill. They were blissfully unaware that one of America's most recent military secrets - radar - had picked up blips indicating a flight of approaching aircraft about 120 miles west of Los Angeles, shortly after 2 a.m.
According to a report on the incident sent to President Franklin D. Roosevelt the next day, 1,430 rounds of antiaircraft ammunition were fired at the incoming craft, yet no planes were shot down and no bombs were dropped. There were no casualties among American military forces and no Army or Navy planes were involved.
The firing, which went on for about an hour, caused considerable damage to several homes and public buildings. The city was littered with pieces of metal from exploded ordinance. At least six civilians died as the result of automobile accidents and heart attacks attributable to the gunfire. The all-clear signal did not come until 7:21 a.m. and traffic jams lasted well into the morning rush hour.
For all the commotion, there was no evidence that an enemy attack took place. Embarrassed military officials immediately began to downplay the incident. In Washington, Navy Secretary Frank Knox said, "as far as I know the whole raid was a false alarm and could be attributed to jittery nerves." But West Coast witnesses did not support his reassuring statement.
They told of fast-moving red or silver objects high in the sky, accompanied by a large slower-paced - some said as slow as 60 miles per hour - object, which then hung motionless in midair for some time as antiaircraft shells burst around it.
Peter Jenkins, on the staff of the Los Angeles Evening Herald Examiner said, "I could clearly see the 'V' formation of about 25 silvery planes overhead moving slowly across the sky toward Long Beach."
Long Beach Police Chief J. H. McClelland said he watched from the roof of Long Beach City Hall and gave this description: "An experienced Naval observer with me using powerful Carl Zeiss binoculars said he counted nine planes in the cone of a searchlight. He said they were silver in color. This group passed along from one battery of searchlights to another, and under fire from antiaircraft guns, flew from the direction of Redondo Beach and Inglewood on the land side of Fort MacArthur, and continued toward Santa Ana and Huntington Beach. Antiaircraft fire was so heavy, we could not hear the motors of the planes."
Paul T. Collins, an employee of the Douglas Aircraft Company, observed the objects as he stood beside his car. He said he saw several "unidentified red objects . . . appearing from nowhere and then zigzagging from side to side". Collins said he and other observers estimated the objects' top speed "conservatively to be five miles per second."
With such witnesses running into the thousands and the damage done to the area, the official explanation of "jittery nerves" fell on suspicious ears. "There is a mysterious reticence about the whole affair," according to an editorial in the Long Beach Independent, "and it appears some form of censorship is trying to halt discussion of the matter." In fact, prior to the 1974 release of the day-after report to Roosevelt, U.S. military authorities claimed they had no record of the incident.
Some researchers offered the opinion that the whole thing was caused by the ascent of meteorological balloons. One of these apparently was released carrying a red flare by an antiaircraft unit in Santa Monica in response to the alarm. While this theory is supported by the fact that batteries were officially chastised for wasting ammunition on targets moving too slowly to be aircraft, it was shot down thanks to an Associated Press photo which showed one of the objects caught by converging searchlight beams and surrounded by bursting shells. This photo prompted one commentator to correctly conclude, "That it was not a balloon seems probable because the escape of no balloon has been reported as well as because it failed to collapse under intense and apparently accurate shell-fire."
In 1997, at a book promotion in Albuquerque, when the Los Angeles raid was mentioned in conversation, a decorated World War II bomber pilot spoke up and said, "I know all about that. I was there."
The man said he was living with his brother in Santa Monica awaiting induction into the military on the night of the commotion. The events he saw and heard was almost identical with the above account.
When asked what the gunners were shooting at, the aging pilot made a cryptic grin and with a slight wink replied, "Hell, they didn't know then and they don't know now!"
If you would like to learn more about UFOs in World War II, be sure a get a copy of the most comprehensive book ever on UFOs, Alien Agenda, by Jim Marrs. And don't miss his new e-book on the U. S. Army's top-secret remote viewing program titled Psi Spies, available right here at Alien Zoo. Jim's latest book, Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects The Trilateral Commission, The Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids, is now available in finer bookstores everywhere, or check out JimMarrs.com.
http://www.alienzoo.com