C. Scott Littleton, a professor of anthropology at Occidental College in Los Angeles, has posted an interesting write up of the Battle Of Los Angeles. As a boy, he was one of the many witnesses, and he's now written what looks like part one of his eyewitness account of that night's events.

The two of us stood side by side in front of the house, huddling together in the chill night air and staring up into the sky. The planes we’d heard were not in sight, but what captured our rapt attention was a silvery, lozenge-shaped “bug,” as my mother later described it, that was clearly visible in the searchlight beams that pinpointed it. Although it was a clear, moonlit night, no other details could be discerned, despite the fact that, when we first saw it, the object was hanging motionless almost directly overhead. Its altitude is hard to estimate, especially after all these years, but I’d guess that it was somewhere between 4,000 and 8,000 feet. This may explain why we didn’t see the orange glow reported by several eyewitnesses in Santa Monica and Culver City, where the object was apparently much lower. (One witness suggests that this glow may simply have been the reflection of shell bursts against the object’s “silvery” body.)

This is one of the most well known UFO sightings of all time, and was witnessed by over a million people on February 25th 1942, just three months after Pearl Harbor. Obviously, in that climate, the air defenses in the west coast were on heightened alert, so when something flew over California in the very early hours of the morning, the first response was that it was likely another attack. At that point the "target" was lit up with spotlights, and at least 1400 rounds of 12.8 pound, anti-aircraft artillery was fired at it. Much to their dismay, the object simply hung around for a while, and then flew off again, seemingly impervious to their attack. According to some reports, there were multiple crafts sighted during the late night of the 24th, and the early morning of the 25th, however, the one featured in the picture above seems to be the only one which was fired upon. Although the official word from the Navy about that night is that it was simply a case of "war nerves" and they were firing at nothing, the million or so people who witnessed the craft would probably disagree.