Thinking Sideways: Battle Los Angeles

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Thinking Sideways. I don't think you never know stories of
things we simply don't know the answer too. Well. Hi there,
and welcome to Thinking Sideways. I'm Steve, I'm Joe, I'm Devin.

(00:27):
Did you forget what we're doing? A? Yeah, I guess
I always forget. I always eat. Everybody does it differently.
Joe is always like, I'm joined as always by blah
blah blah blah blah, and then when I'm doing it,
I don't have to think about it at all. So well,
you guys shamed me out of doing on my left
on my right because I didn't. You always make fun
of me, so I stopped doing that. But anyway, this
is Thinking Sideways the podcast, and this week we're going

(00:50):
to talk about a story that probably a lot of
people haven't heard about, which is the Battle over Los Angeles,
Ang Angeles. You're talking about the movie, right, Have you
seen that movie? It looks action packed. Well, anybody who's
seen the movie will probably agree with me. As a
feature length film, it was garbage. It was really bad.

(01:13):
But the great thing about that movie is if you've
seen it, you actually know about the story that we're
going to talk about today because in that movie, at
the beginning, they put up some fake newspaper clippings or headings,
headlines that talk about the Battle of Los Angeles. They
do I don't know if this is intentional or accidental,

(01:35):
but they sort of got the year in the date wrong,
but they talk about the event. Yeah, well, so, so
the event was a precursor, like a scouting mission according
to the movie. Yes, yeah, that's where they're going. Yeah,
that's why whenever I see anything in the skyt I
don't know what it is, I get at my fifty
cow and start blazing away up because I know they're

(01:57):
a scouting mission. Lane. Well, let's let's move to the story,
all right. If anybody who knows their World War two
history will remember that the attack on Pearl Harbor happened
on the seventh of December, and immediately after that, the
United States jumped into World War two and the population

(02:21):
was all behind it. Everybody was gung ho. But there
were also a lot of fears that the Axis would attack.
I believe it was mostly the Japanese people were worried
about We're gonna attack our native soil, and then they
actually actually did. They sent those balloon bombs. Over there
were balloon bombs, and there were a lot of scares,

(02:43):
and like the balloon bombs, there were a couple of
things that did actually happen which didn't cause any damage
at all. Yeah, and and actually one of those attacks
is the precursor to the Battle of Los Angeles or
over Los Angeles, depending on where you read. It's said
in a number of different ways, but that having been said,
on the February, a Japanese submarine surfaced outside of Galena, California,

(03:10):
which is on the coast, and it fired fifteen shells
at an oil refinery. Thankfully, their aim is really bad,
so they didn't damage make any serious damage to anything
like the movies. Actually kind of kind of, but they did.
They did scare the crap out of a lot of people,

(03:32):
and then they they you know, descended and disappeared. Nobody
knew where they were. The US Naval Intelligence Service put
out a warning. And remember this first attack was on
the twenty three. They put out a warning that said
that on the four there was likely to be another
Japanese attack on the coast to California, presumably in Los Angeles.

(03:56):
So so they were like at the red level of
the Terriller. Yeah, they blacked out. I think they had
a citywide blackout. Or you were supposed to keep your lights,
you know, you draw the curtains, you keep it dark.
Ye with hooded headlights and all that stuff. Yeah, I'm
so glad that we have better targeting technology these days,
so we don't need to put the blackout because it
wouldn't do us any good. Yeah, so we don't need

(04:18):
to go to all that. No, we don't have to
go through all that. It must have been a great
time for stargazing, probably was. Yeah, No, what is light pollution? Right?
No light pollution? That has been kind of nice, that
would be kind Yeah. Well this, uh, this warning goes
into effect and it went into effect at seven eighteen

(04:40):
pm and it was turned off or went out of
effect at ten twenty three pm because nothing had happened.
There was nothing going on, so the naval intelligence said, well, nope,
everything's fine, Like, well, if it was gonna happen, at
would have happened already. There's no way that they could
be running a little late exactly exactly three hour window

(05:02):
and they didn't arrive. So the reservation is canceled five
minutes in the extra five minutes. That really doesn't that's
kind of mystifying it and of itself. It's really yeah,
they get they're out there. They can pretty much pop
up and shout shoot at anytime they feel like yeah, yeah,
Usually that's kind of what happens, well sometime after midnight.

(05:22):
So now we're at the twenty five February unidentified objects
or a object we're not really sure, which was picked
up about a hundred miles off of the California coast.
As a side note, when I was doing the reading,
I couldn't figure out how they knew that this thing
was a hundred or a hundred and twenty miles out

(05:44):
because radar technology at that time had a range of
twenty two miles. Could it have been like a warship?
Could there is such thing as radar picket ships were there? Yeah,
it could have been. It could have been a warship.
Ooomed that it was ground based radar. That's why I
wasn't sure, but that that would explain it. If they
were expecting something from Japan, they likely would have had

(06:07):
a lot of Obviously had the more notice the better,
So having having a line of ships out there off
shore probably would be a good idea. Okay, So so
that explains that piece. So it's it's about a hundred
hundred twenty miles out they pick up an object or objects.
The reports are unclear. At two twenty a m. The
city of Los Angeles was pushed into another blackout because

(06:30):
these objects are single object again, I don't know which
it is, had made their way to the coast, and
we they figured that it was over the city or
approaching the city, So let's black it out so they
don't know where the city is at so they can't
bomb the city. Yeah, exactly. Logic is super sound. But okay,
well when you if you think about the technology that

(06:52):
day and age just not not that advance. So I'm
going to bomb a target that I can see, that's true. Yeah,
if it's not lit up, I don't know exactly where
it is, so I don't know where it is. Let
this is pretty obvious to everybody now, but the residents
of Los Angeles are freaking out because the city has

(07:14):
just been forced into a blackout. Did they just like
cut the generators? They just cut the power? Yeah, there's
reports of people who were at diners or at places
and all of a sudden boom, power is gone. They
just shut I know the sound effect that goes along
with that, Yeah, yeah, you know, oh yeah, and the
light exactly like that. What's that that sound? What do

(07:39):
you lose that, pac Man? Yeah, that's the one. We're
really off topic, all right. So, like I said, the
people are freaking out. There were reports that varied, and
I mean varied all over the map, from twenty five
planes at twelve thousand feet into the air to a

(08:02):
balloon with a flare on it. So I mean people
are kind of kind of everybody's calling in saying I
saw this, I saw that. They're just hysteria, I guess
is the best way to say it, which, when you
think about it is it's kind of silly because Los
Angeles is a big place, and five planes, even if
they've got bombs on them, the chances of one of

(08:23):
those bombs hitting you is about the same chances as
you winning the lottery. I don't think you have much
to worry about it. I think that people who live
in Los Angeles have higher expectations of winning the lottery.
That's good point. And they probably think that those planes
are coming precisely for them. Yeah, because hey, I live
in Los Angeles. No offense. Oh yeah, but that reminds

(08:49):
me of a joke. But I'll tell you later. Yeah,
tell us that later. At three thirty am on February,
something is detected and the anti aircraft installations that were
spread around the city start going off. What what did?
What are those that is fifty caliber guns that are hidden? No,

(09:12):
they were, They were there installations because the war effort.
They were prepared for a coastal attacks and they had
I believe it was six different locations around the Los
Angeles area. They had these fifty caliber guns. And these
guns are shooting twelve point eight pound rounds. That's what
they shoot into the air. I think that I don't

(09:34):
think there are fifty cows. I mean because let me,
the project on the fifty cows just weighs a lot
less than that. But a lot of anti aircraft guns
are like kind of like cannons and shoot these shells
that explode in mid air. Rights the bullets. Yeah, no,
they're not bullets, they're they're frag fragmenting rounds is what
that is. And uh, my dad was in the in
the bomb squad when I was a kid and so

(09:56):
I've kind of it took me a while as I
was reading about this, and people may not understand this,
but how an anti aircraft gun works, especially in those days,
is it's not a guided rocket. It's just it's a
grenade that you pump into the air and it gets
a certain set height and then it explodes based on
its fuse, and it just fragments and just throws all

(10:17):
this shrapnel around, just on the hope that it'll like
tear up as much as it possibly can whatever's in
its range of fire. He's gonna get blasted's if you've
ever watched those are old, old World War two movies
and there's things going off, and there's all this rending
metal in the plane of what whoever's flying. That's what
it is. It's all this fragment material, I'm learning. And

(10:39):
by the way, of course, there's always the inevitability of
gravity which pulls her back down. All those metal fragments
you're putting into the air, dudes, yeah, they come back
up back down to earth. You know. A funny a
side story is, like I said, my dad was in
the military and he dealt with the bomb squad. I
remember when I was a teenager. He was on some
exers eyes and they were using fragmenting rounds. He actually

(11:04):
got one stuck in his finger. Yeah, a round went
off and it was a stray piece and hit his
hand and hit his I think it's his his trigger finger,
and he had to go to the hospital and have
a pulled out. This day, he's got a pretty hefty
scar on that finger, a purple heart. I hope no,
because it was a training exercise. But we did call

(11:24):
him frag Finger for a while. That was just kind
of a family joke. But anyway, so they they're shooting
these rounds into the air. The shooting happens for half
an hour, just like blindly, where they just like there
their searchlights going on there, trying to focus there, trying
to find whatever enemy craft is in the air, and

(11:46):
they're just they're going after it. During this half hour,
they shot one thousand, four hundred forty rounds into the air.
That must have been fun. That's a lot it was.
According to accounts I've read, it was like watching a
fireworks show. Just explosions all over in the video, right,

(12:08):
and you can kind of it's just like old film
and you're like looking and you're just like, like, it
just looks like explosion, explosion. You can't hardly see anything.
I'm sure we're going to talk about this with like
theories and stuff, but it's just like explosions, explosions, Everything
is just happening all over. The sad thing is is
that you really don't want to be outside Washington because

(12:29):
all that all that metal is going to rain down
like you got your neck crane back, and that is
one of the things. There was a lot of property
damage all those fragments coming back down. There's pictures of
houses with holes in them, cars with holes in them,
duds that came down and punched through driveways and streets
and stuff. It's seven damage. Several people were killed just

(12:52):
from metal fragments coming down to No, actually people didn't
die from fragments. The deaths that were reported from what
I can piece together in the less sensationalized versions, is
there was at least one, if not too heart attacks
from all of the commotion, and a couple of deaths
in traffic accidents because what's going on and you're seeing

(13:15):
all this stuff and you're looking up as you're driving
and you're not paying attention to where you're going and
you hit something, and as the heart, people were probably
gonna have heart attacks anyway, sooner or later they'll have
heart attacks. That was probably yeah, probably not even related. Yeah. Well,
during the time this half hour that we're putting all
this ordinance into the air, more crazy accounts are happening.

(13:37):
So the so the accounting from when the firing stopped
to when it finished start to finish completely unreliable because
it was there were there were reports that there was
a craft in the air that was moving between quote
unquote very slow to two. There were multiples at least

(14:00):
these four enemy craft were shot down and one of
them crashed onto one of the major roads in Los Angeles,
which but the wreckage mysteriously disappeared exactly nothing. Nothing was found,
Nothing was found on the ground in terms of enemy craft.
So there's a big issue. But the other thing is

(14:22):
that after they had done all this firing, so the
searchlights are going on, there were pumping all these rounds
in the air. We're trying to find an enemy and
just hose him with it and cut them down. They
stopped the firing and then forty p thirty eight fighters
are launched from one of the local military installations to
go into the air find these enemy craft and track

(14:45):
them down. Didn't find anything. Nobody else was up there,
no other enemy craft. Like I said, there was nothing
that was on the ground, no dead, no wreckage, nothing.
There's a I'm just gonna do a little aside here.
There's a episode of Futurama where there's kill bots and

(15:07):
you know, you know the kill bots rights like just
machine guns that are robots. What a great idea. And there,
you know, there's so many jokes scenes about this, right
where like somebody will be like, oh, I don't know,
it seems like there was a fire and they'd be
like fire and they'd start to fire and be like
and you'd just be like every you know, just like chaos.

(15:28):
And I a little bit feel like that happened. Like
somebody was like, oh, there's something the sky fire. Everyone
was like, fire, we're gonna fire, We're just expect. The
first battery opens up and then all the other batteries.
There's something going on and they got a little trigger happy,
and then everybody was like, oh, we better join in.
Yeah that's a little bit, but that's exactly and I'm sorry,
I don't mean to tread on because that's that's kind

(15:50):
of the way I was thinking of it is it's
the old movie trope of one guy fires and suddenly
we'll know we're firing up. We were just shooting he
started it. Oh yeah. And then thinking about it is
too it's a flat grounds. When they go off, they
actually makes they leave a trace of smoke, makes smokes.
I'm sure the air was pretty smoky up there, exactly,
and when and then and then searchlights are moving across

(16:13):
all that layer of smoke. And we're going to talk
about some of that when we get into the theories.
But it is there is a lot of smoke in
the air because of all this, plus rounds that are
up there exploding, you know, it just turned into a
murky mess. Yeah, it was. It's Los Angeles that already
was not probably not as bad. But so did the

(16:36):
military say anything about this, Yeah, yeah, yeah, they put
out some reports. Okay, the next day, one military official
said that the entire thing happened due to a false
alarm fire exactly. There was another guy who swore that
he had seen an aircraft and it was most certainly

(16:56):
some kind of craft in the air. Now, remember At
this point, the term UFO isn't in circulation, so they
weren't saying it was a UFO, but he said, I
definitely saw something in the air. He was shortly thereafter. Mothball.
I'm sorry, mothball means he was retired. I think that
what you're thinking of is like Cashiered, that's another one,

(17:20):
basically put him out to farm. Yeah, yeah, mothball. This
one he like takes something to put it in storage
for for the possibility of future usage. Oh yeah, all right,
well Cashiered mean same thing. Yeah, because he was he
was canned. He was caned, he was, he was done.
They put him on pension. Thank you very much for
your service. Actually put him on pension because like he

(17:42):
just kept talking. Now he was, as I understanding, the guy,
the guy had been in for Yeah, he was, he was.
He was a high ranking official. He was very decorated.
Wasn't like some private who just thank you private, You're done,
get out of here. Let's see. There was a show
War Department statement, and I love the official War Department

(18:04):
statement by R. I really like the fact that it
was called the War Department Department of Defense. I like
war better. Yeah, it's just got a better ring to it. Yea.
So the War Department said, and I quote, either they
were commercial planes operated by an enemy from secret fields
in California or Mexico, or they were light planes launched

(18:28):
from Japanese submarines. In either case, the enemy's purpose must
have been to locate anti aircraft defenses in the area
or to deliver a blow at civilian morale. Mission mission accomplished. Yeah,
I mean, you're definitely going to locate the anti anti
aircraft batteries in the area by sacrificing yourself. Of course,

(18:50):
of course there's no reason to do that because I mean,
as we all know from from the decryptions of the
Venona have you heard of Vanona? This it sounds sort
of there, but I'm it's not ringing a bell. Well,
none of us. This big project basically, so we intercepted
and decrypted all the communications between Japan and basically all

(19:11):
of their allies and their spies in the US. So
essentially we were aware of the fact that there were
Japanese spies in America, you know, So we were well
aware of this. That's and that's why the Japanese were
in turn, and what was by the way, let me stay.
It's like was not fair because it was a really
bad movie. And then I'm sure we're not spies, but

(19:32):
there were a good number of spies in that community
and so um, and that all came out, you know,
decades afterwards when they finally classified this stuff. So you've
got all these spies on the ground, and there's really
no need to sacrifice planes and pilots to try to
find out where the anti aircraft batteries are. It's a
little extremely Yeah, it's a kind of a hard way
to go about. Tough to get somebody to volunteer for

(19:52):
that task, especially when you know. The thing about it
is you send a couple of planes in there and
they get shot down and killed. How's it going to
like report back to the positions to the end. But
that's what the spies are for, right, Like the spies
can't figure it out because they're just like hidden in
like towers or whatever, and then sitting on the top
of ridges, obviously with a big gun on it, so

(20:14):
it was hidden. It had a ribbon on it, probably
like a tree maybe like around it, so they couldn't
tell where it was. So they were like all right,
send a couple of jets in or not jets, I'm sorry,
planes in, and the things will go off and we'll
be like, okay, we can mark them on the map
and then we'll send the map back to you guys,
and then we'll know where they are, which I don't

(20:34):
know why that would be helpful, yeah, to just know
where they are, but sure, yeah, exactly, Yeah, the whole
and the other purpose, of course is if you plan
a massive area to Los Angeles, don't you have better
things to do with your military assets, like you know,
like you know, destroying military assets rather than just bombing
civilian city. Yeah, yeah, I mean the whole. The whole

(20:55):
statement by the War Department was a little weird to me,
and I kind of equated to saving face. Yeah. I
think that they didn't want to admit that they had
screwed up. That somebody yelled fire, that somebody yeah well yeah,
I mean, although you know, for the guy's way up higher,
it's not that embarrassing because there's just some yokels down

(21:16):
their men in the anti anti aircraft battery. So yeah, sorry,
sorry built this trigger. Sorry sorry, Well that's the story.
So now let's get into some theories about what happened. Okay,
and right off the bat, the easiest theory is, well, duh,
it was us. Yeah, well, okay, let's be honest here, right,

(21:42):
let's be very honest. Technically, it was an unidentified flying object.
The unidentified flying object you mean that class of UFO
that we call flying saucers, Well, that is one of them.
And actually there's multiple UFO theory's on this one. I

(22:02):
really I think I kind of sold your thunder today, Evan,
because I know you love the UFO style story and
this I believe has three, if not for components. I
can't believe you stole this story from me. Then yeah
you can. You're right fine selling me out. Okay, theory
number one, it was a friendly flying saucer that just

(22:22):
happened have super awesome shields. Okay, here's the theory. You
remember we were talking about the news footage earlier and
the floodlights that were in the air where there's also
a very iconic photo that was run in the l
A Times that is multiple search lights all shining on
one location. Now that photo we're going to talk about that,

(22:46):
but that photo is what a lot of UFO enthusiasts
are drawn to in this storyogists those people too, And
what they do is that everybody says, well, obviously they
were focusing on something and it must have been a UFO. Uh.
They say that, you know, it must have had fantastic shields,

(23:09):
and so it was. It didn't get hurt by all
of it, the flat and I was able to go
into warp drive and get out of there right. And
they had to be benevolent because they didn't shoot back,
so they must have been friendly absolutely out of that
or we really ticked them off. And they're heading back
to the Mother's ship and they're coming back right there. Oh,
this is gonna be quick, which is a hundred years
for them. That's a short, short hop. Here's how our

(23:32):
friends proved their theory. I'm sorry, let's refer to them
as upologists. Here's how the US. I can't say that word,
which is why I wasn't doing I'm not good with
my word. Uh. This is how they proved that there
had to have been something in those spotlights. They put

(23:52):
it in photoshop and they adjust the holy crap out
of it until a shape appears at the apex of
all of those saucer shape. I just did that at
work today, did you Yeah? Did you do that with
that that Los Angeles time? No? I did it with
a picture of some people and they suddenly turned really
really pale and unhappy looking. Yeah. Photo was fun. Yeah,

(24:16):
it's fun. But here's my problem. Well, yeah, that original
photo was retouched. When they took that photo. To make
it proper for print and stand out from the page,
they had to doctor the negative. They used white paint
on the negative to really really make sharp contrast. So

(24:42):
that is not a reliable image. It's just sad too,
because you know, the original negative has been pretty much
just defaced. So it has. But there was actually somebody
found a copy of it in two thousand and eleven.
Was it a copy of it or was it just
like a frame or it was an original. It was
a copy of the original native before they did the

(25:05):
photo retouching, so it didn't have paint and all that
other crowd on it. And they did the same thing.
They scanned the negative, they did all the analysis and
they didn't find as much of a distinct object in there,
which I personally believe that distinct object was probably the paint.
But they didn't find nearly as much there, but they

(25:26):
still say, well, we we found something because we knew
what we were looking for. You know, I looked at
these pictures online and I think I would agree that
it vaguely looks like there's something there. But in my opinion,
what it looks like is there is like twelve different

(25:49):
spotlights all coming together to form a like a super
bright spot, a bright spot on a on a cloud
of smoke or just a cloud or just whatever. That
to me, it doesn't look like there's anything solid or
like of any kind of substance. Well, you know, and
the thing about it is too, is that even if
you had the original negative, it was very dark out

(26:12):
and so that one spot where they all came together
was so bright considering the settings of the everything, it
was so overexposed. It was that part of the photo
was completely blown out. And you know what the best
part is, Yeah, it's obvious that it's an extended shot.
It had to be an extended shot. It's the late exposure.

(26:33):
And for anybody that looks at this image, there's a
really easy way to figure it out. Don't look at
the bright spot where all the spotlights are coming together.
But instead look at all the little explosions, which are
those anti aircraft rounds going off. There's I don't know
a dozen or so of them, all exploding at once,

(26:56):
talking about well, there's the convergent point where the spots
are at. And then as you look in that dark
skier you will see all those Yeah, I think those
are lens flares. I don't think that know that it's
it had to have been a delayed exposure, and there
was only, like I said, four to six locations that
were shooting rounds off. Well, they can only shoot so

(27:18):
fast and everything couldn't have been exploding all at once,
so it had to be a several second, if not
a minute long explosion. Yeah. So anyway, Yeah, the up
shot of it is, though, is that that that center
spot where the saucer supposedly was completely blown out. Oh yeah, No,
I don't care how sophisticated your computer software is. You
can't restore information that's been destroyed, right, if it's gone,

(27:41):
I know, and I do not disagree with you at all. Well,
and it you know, it's gone in a really interesting way,
but it's gone. Yeah, it's yeah, it's no longer there. Yeah,
And so yeah, so that is the first ufologists theory.
Did I say that word right? I think it's actually
post you guys. Next UFO theory is that it was

(28:08):
a horde of little alien ships. So here's here's what
they say. Is that. Well, actually we we talked about this.
The footage, the video footage, I don't know. I did
not get a chance to look at that. Okay, before
we get into the footage. I know I told Devon this,
but I really really love listening to the narration because

(28:30):
it was old news film and it was in the
County of Los Angeles, Los Angeles, Los Angeles. You're just
really funny to hurt it here it pronounced that way
rather than Los Angeles. As we all say, it now
means nothing. Story. I just found it funny. Yeah, but anyway,
they had they did get some film footage of the explosions,

(28:56):
and people point out that they can make out shapes
in the lower corner. I think it's lower left hand
frame of the corner near the spotlights, and then the
shapes take off to the left. They don't really though,
I mean, okay, so, and I know I'm a little
jumping on your toes, right, but it just Okay, So

(29:18):
there are two really great, super plausible explanations for this,
both of which are way better than it's something that's
like taking off right, Like, okay, you can see things
exploding around this like space, So okay, maybe there is
a little shadow that passes through the light. Maybe that
actually happened. But it's like it's just as plausible that

(29:40):
it's just a bunch of little shrapnel pieces as it
is that they're like little ships. They don't move in
any way that stands out as like, oh wow, that
that thing moves like a ship, like it's being controlled
by intelligent being. It moves like gravity is pulling something through. Also,
it's really old film. It's degraded. They got thots on
it all the time, particularly if you're shooting a film

(30:03):
in this kind of like weird shadow. I mean, and
it's black and white, remember everybody, we're talking black and
white footage, and it's being shot in like there's just
shrapnel going off everywhere. It's not ideal conditions, you know,
it's actual film. Things happened to it, and you can see,

(30:23):
like earlier in other places, in less interesting maybe places
that there are definitely spots on the phone so to say, oh, no,
it's definitely not a spot like it's just well, because
it wasn't convenient for it to be. It was convenient
for it to be a spot over there, but it's
not convenient here. That just doesn't make sense to me. Well,

(30:44):
and the other the other thing about the footage that
I saw is, like I said, some people everybody's analyzed
the holy heck out of this, and somebody took several
frames of it and made stills and would point out
a dot. By the way, I have issue with the
fact that sometimes they were dots and sometimes they were
cigars shaped objects. But I'm gonna set that on the table.

(31:08):
Is there's once there's one place that I saw where
they say here it is in frame one, and then
the frame two that they've shown it's now shifted to
the left, and then in frame three it's gone up
and to the left. Okay, well, here's the problem. It's
some guy out in the dark with a wooden tripod

(31:28):
with a giant, heavy film camera trying to pan around,
which means that thing is shaking like mad from all
the concussions. So of course the camera is going to
vibrate and jerk around and whatever it's looking at and
recording is going to quote unquote appear to move because
the camera has actually shifted. Yeah, I mean, you know,

(31:50):
I think that the thing that really speaks to that
theory is that they zoom really in on this one,
because if you were going frame by frame on all
the film, you would see everything kind of jumping around. Yeah.
I feel that's probably a fairly accurate assessment that if
you watch the footage, you can tell that things are
really shaky. It's really shaky footage. They didn't have steadicams,

(32:14):
might have been handheld. Do you think no way, I
could have been on the shoulder. It might have been
a shoulder camera, but I don't know. Those cameras were
pretty big. But I guess, you know, like in extreme circumstances. Yeah, people,
Well that's so that's the Horde of Little Ships. Let's
move on to the next which is and I love

(32:36):
this name. It is a variation for Pleaedian beam ship.
That's my favorite. Yeah. Yeah, okay, yeah, those guys, I'm
on it. Okay, here's here's how this goes. And I'm
and I apologize if I sound like I'm dismissive of
this theory, So I'm not trying to be but where

(32:58):
this one comes from, I really really call it shaky footage.
So there's a person, Like I said, everybody's been doing
this photo analysis. And the one thing that the person
who put this together is I really appreciated that they
took the photo, the images from that night, and they
superimposed them onto current photographs of Los Angeles, so you

(33:21):
can kind of get a perspective of where it was.
And that was yeah, it was really and you know,
they made him as gifts, so it kind of the
uh photo, the black and white would kind of fade
in and ounce you get a perspective of where it was.
But what they did, this person did in this particular
article that I found is they said, well, you know,

(33:42):
there's this other guy who may who's got all these
UFO photos, and they took one of these supposed UFO
photos that is from a guy named Billy Meyer, and
they took Billy Myers photo and he's and that's where
the name variation for Plaudium beamship came from. He says,
that's what it is. And because he talks to aliens,

(34:06):
he talks to aliens. But no, they they they superimposed it,
and when they did their their adjustments to the original,
the shape matches according to them. Okay, well, my my
issue with this is I'm not going to go into
Billy Myers a whole lot. Actually, I've got about two
sentences on Billy Myers. Is That's as far as I
want to go. But this guy, since the seventies has

(34:29):
been publishing photos of alien craft. He's been publishing audio
recordings of alien crafts. He's been reporting abductions, and he's
been reporting contacts and conversations with alien species. He's been
doing this for fifty years and none of his stuff

(34:50):
is even close to being substantiated. And I looked at
some of his supposed photos and they kind of looked
like the old hub cap on a stream. Yeah, it's
people like you that are put here by the aliens,
keep people who are actually experiencing. Does not compute. I'm
not m Yeah, I probably should, just as I have

(35:18):
a real human being. But I've got to say that
his flying saucer, which I've seen pictures of, is is
kind of cheesy looking. It's very very fifties. It's very fifties,
and it also looks exactly the same in every picture, right,
And I think that there's something to be said for
like too much of the same thing. Maybe I showed
from different angles, dude, Yeah, like give us a different

(35:41):
angle or something like give it to us like lower
or higher. You know, it's just like it looks the
exact same and everything. It's very convenient. Yeah, I have
to say, And I don't want to plow my own horn,
but I haven't ever faked a UFO photo, but I'm
sure I could come up with a much better one.
I know I could. Yeah, And in fact, as soon
as we're recording, let's let's fake a UFO photo. Let's

(36:03):
not come on. Okay, Well we're done with us. Yeah,
we're done with the beam ship. But the Pleadians are
upset that we didn't give them more airtime. I know,
you know, I just went through the how to see ufologists.

(36:24):
You two are doing me, get it right, okay? Sin
is actually one that everybody has heard, which is that
it was a weather balloon. Okay. So I talked to
my mom about these things. She like, she just wants

(36:49):
to know, she's just very interested. And she said, you know,
what are you guys recording today? And I was kind
of telling her and she said, oh, I thought it
was a weather brew balloon. It's always a weather blow it,
like she said that though it's a total trope. It
absolutely is a total trope. It's that or swamp gas.
There are two things that were always Oh well, that's
what it was, that weird thing that you saw. The

(37:13):
weird thing is is like, it's always a weather balloon.
So you get the impression that weather balloons are being released,
like you know, by the hundreds every hour. And but
have I, the one of you, ever seen somebody releasing
a weather balloon. I have not, because we have better
technology than that. Now, yeah, they still use weather balloons
well but then not as much, but they do use

(37:35):
But let's let's get into this. So they were actually
in use on a regular basis at that time. Here's
how a weather balloon works, just so we get the
basis of it down. Is it's a six foot round balloon.
It's got a piece of recording equipment on it, because
usually it was for meteoron meteorological stuff, so weather and

(37:58):
all of that exactly. And what happens is they let
the balloon go and it's got some kind of gas
helium or hydrogen, whatever it might be in it. It rises,
and when it hits a certain altitude, the change in
pressure is so great that the balloon, as it's rising
will begin to expand. It will hit a certain altitude

(38:22):
and it hit its peak altitude and the balloon will
have expanded five to six times its original size, at
which point it breaks and then all of the equipment
that's on it would fall to Earth when it get shattered.
But then they would track it down, or it would
have a tag on it, please turn into and you

(38:42):
know X and X division, Please call these people. They
would come collect it and they would take up whatever
data it had recorded. That's how a weather balloon works.
Really basic, but they were being used all the time.
And do you remember when I was talking about the
reports that we're coming in, One of the reports was

(39:02):
there was an object that was moving quote unquote very slow.
Would be pretty slow, huh. A balloon is I can
only go as fast as the wind currents. And from
what I understand, the and the anti aircraft positions themselves
were releasing balloons just to get an idea of wind
conditions correct every six hours. They were releasing balloons every

(39:27):
six hours and as a matter of fact, shortly before
the firing took place, the two hundred and third Coast
Artillery Regiment had let one go. Of course, so let
it go, and then they said, oh what the hell
is that? God? Actually, I think they were one of
the regiments that might not have fired. There was one

(39:50):
regiment that didn't shoot any rounds during this, and I
think it was them because I weren't they frantically on
the horn like stop, you guys stop. I think they
were because their CEO was like, dude, no calling everybody
else and they can't hear the phone ringing in their pocket.
You know, that's awesome. But okay, So I guess my

(40:14):
question would be then, right, like, it's a balloon, right,
so it's like you like, you hit it once with
shotnel and is done. Not necessarily really, Yeah, So this
was what I was doing the reading on this. I
actually had to go out and do a little research
on weather balloons because I I thought the same thing.
It's like a party balloon. You hit it with something
and it's going, But that isn't the case. They're actually

(40:38):
pretty thick because think about it, it expands five times.
It's with and here's here's how it goes, is that
things that are in the air, so this they refer
to it as rigid and semi rigid crafts. You could
think of a balloons as semi rigid and like the
old Zeppelin's, that would be a rigid craft that are

(41:02):
using air pressure of some kind of or gas pressure
to rise. They don't need to hold their shape to float,
and when things collide into them, they didn't and it
bounces off or maybe they get a small puncture, but
they may not just pop. Yeah, all the way right thinking.

(41:24):
And the thing about it is too, this is Los Angeles.
So if if it flops to the ground deflated, well
it's Los Angeles. There's lots of litter, and it's so
everybody's gonna think, wow, this is just some trash. Probably
got swept up the next day. And if it landed
within city limits, yeah, that's exactly right. And if not,
there were weather balloons coming down all the time, right,

(41:45):
they were at least six hours by the way to
our l A listeners. I'm just kidding. I know that
Los Angeles is no trash here than most American city,
but no, that's the thing is that gage yeah, and
if it if it gets a punk. Sure, let's say that,
you know, one of these anti aircraft rounds goes off
near it. It's not going to explode. It's gonna get

(42:06):
a couple of punctures, and then it's gonna do what
balloons in your house do your party blues and go
and they slowly go down when they get the little
puncture in them. Instead, it was I worked on that
for hours the show. We can use that again and
again it again. Wait, we used tape. But yeah, so

(42:28):
it's it's very plausible that it was a weather balloon.
The thing is is and this and the next theory
I have issues with saying was a weather balloon because
that doesn't say or that doesn't explain what was picked
out up off the coast. And remember all that all
that dred and twenty miles I forgot about that. Well,

(42:48):
it could be that these guys released it and it
roared out, zipped out to a hundred miles off the coast,
and then slowly came back in. Or more likely, it
could be a coincidence, coincidental, um, it could have been
something else would be in radar is not how to
percent effective. I mean you can pick up ghosts on radar,
and it was like an hour later, right they saw
something out there, and then like an hour later, which

(43:10):
I guess No, that's a that's even from that time.
That's a really slow movement plane. Yeah, it's very well.
And you know you talked about the what was the
bomb balloons? What was the one you were talking about? Yea, Yeah,
the Japanese made these balloons and launched them, and the
idea was too because you know, Mayhem and everything like that.
And I forget what they called them, ah, and I

(43:31):
can't think I know the name, and I can't think
of what they know. One of them actually landed in
in southern Oregon and killed some people. It did. It
was a picnicking a family that was having a picnic. Yeah,
and it came down. And these things were you know,
they they actually were. They would go up and it
would go to a certain like a certain level, and
then would would come back down and from just losing

(43:51):
gas and a pressure valve. Basically they basically had had
an autimeter on them. At a certain point, they would
drop a sandbag to make them go back up again,
and when they came back down again, they dropped another one,
and they keep doing that, and then eventually at a
certain point, when they're out of sand bags, they start
dropping incendi areas and then at the and then the
last thing is a big just a big bomb and bomb.

(44:14):
And so the incendit areas were supposed to start house fires,
forest fires, you know whatever. And then the big bomb
was just going to land on the ground and somebody
will find it'll blow their it'll blow their arms off
or kill them or whatever. Yeah, so they weren't that effective,
but you know, and and and uh, we managed to
keep it a complete secret, so none of these incidents

(44:36):
were publicized, and so it had and so it actually
had a great It worked for us because Japanese eventually
stopped doing it because they weren't hearing anything about it,
so they assumed that we're actually getting here or doing anything,
and so they figured it was a waste of time.
It seemed to stop doing it. Service. Well, let's let's

(44:58):
move into a are you trying to talk about? I was?
I was, but and again I'm gonna preface this with
the same thing that I finished the last one on,
which is this does not explain what we picked up
on radar. But the next theory is that what they
saw it was clouds. Well, it's actually very plausible if

(45:20):
you think about it, because if there is clouds and
there's a lot of smoke from all of these this
ordinance going off in the air and your end lights
and you're trying to focus on it, and the clouds
are shifting around and the smoke is drifting, it's gonna
look like there's some kind of shape moving in there.
I don't know if you've ever seen a spotlight shining

(45:42):
on clouds. I'm sure you have, Like on just low deck,
like it looks like it looks like a flying saucer
zipping around. That's exactly right. If if you see uh,
you know, car I always see car dealerships doing it,
or or sports events when they have the big, the
big swooping spotlights, and if it's cloudy out, you're absolutely
you can just see this roving disc in the sky. Yeah,

(46:03):
and I always shot at those. But if you also
look at the photos again that that one iconic photo,
you can see that the beams of light all kind
of hit and then there's a little bit of diffused
light coming off of the opposite end of where each
beam should be. There's not a lot of it, but

(46:25):
that would indicate that it was hitting some kind of
cloud and some of it was leaking through the edges,
but that was it, or that it was reflecting off
of a metallic or that it was reflecting and reflecting
off their shields too. It could have been. Actually, you know,
it's funny if you bring that up. I wasn't going
to talk about this, but we're gonna go back to
your UFO friends. No, I'm not saying that word. Uh,

(46:48):
there is one person who I really I've got to
give them props for taking and tracking the vectors of
each of those lights, and they have one. There's one
particular light. It should be in a straight line, and
then it seems to jug off about twenty degrees after
he hits that center math. It's so weird. Although let's

(47:09):
be fair, clouds can do that. They can well, yeah,
and it's h and that it is water. That's an
interesting observation on his part. But at the same time,
also you gotta remember that this this negative has been
so intensely what's the word I'm thinking about debased? The
guy knows over analyzed. Yeah, what would it mean, it's
like the original negative was so intensely touched up that

(47:31):
who knows, maybe somebody decided to add add an extra
little streak in there, and it's and if he's looking
at the unaltered version, which I think that this person was,
because I remember seeing the side by sides of the
original and the unaltered is, Yeah, it looks a little weird,
but I don't know that it means that it's reflecting.

(47:51):
If that was going to happen to one beam, you
think it would happen to all of them. Yeah, but
they're they're light bending shields. Might have saved the day. Yeah,
you don't know. I don't know anything. YEA last theory,
which kind of relates to what Joe and I were
talking about about the Bloon bombs is the official War

(48:12):
Department statement if you remember, the official War Department statement
said they were commercial planes operated by an enemy from
secret fields in California or Mexico. Or were light planes
launched from Japanese submarines. Okay, Japanese submarines were able to
it had been known to launch small light aircraft, not

(48:33):
not to the level of like the circouf that we
talked about, But these are very small light, but it's possible.
Similar thing though, though the whole idea is that is
to put them up to go around looking for targets reconnaissance.
But it is possible. It is possible. But I think
we kind of already kind of you know, ran that
into the ground. Is well, what did they get out

(48:53):
of it? Nothing? Yeah, why do they get out of it?
They couldn't get out of their spots on the ground,
and where are they? Okay, we pumped a crap ton
of ordinance into the air and there's all these fragments
going around. You think we would have got something probably
and we got nothing. Yeah, So I I I really
I have I think that that was just kind of

(49:16):
a safe face. But I did. I looked at I
was like, well, I guess it is plausible that it
could have been some sort of enemy craph vaguely, but
we never heard any mention of enemy air fields in
use on the continent or in you know, in the
continental United States or in Mexico. We never heard of

(49:37):
any of that. So it doesn't seem to have a
lot of basis or a lot of footing. Yeah, a
little little shaky to agree with that pretty much. Again,
that you know, they would have found some wreckage. So yeah,
I think that we can rule that out. Yeah, it
could have been just like some people out just flying around,
you know, no, no Japanese at all. Of course we
would have found their wreckage too. So again, yeah that

(49:59):
they're in lines. The rub is, well where are they?
And why didn't they say? Ah, hi u s military,
you tried to shoot me out of the air stupid.
You would think that somebody would have said something. I mean,
maybe they were too embarrassed when they realized the hubbub
that they created by taking their unauthorized nighttime flight. But yeah, yeah, yeah, alright,

(50:25):
I'm gonna solve this mystery. Well, we are out of theory,
so please, okay, what is your solution? Mr? So? There
were six and aircraft batteries around the town, correct, Okay,
five or five of the six open fire and wasted rounds. Right,
Those rounds were manufactured by Acne Corporation. Acne Corporation bribed

(50:45):
the gunners of five of those stations to waste four
hundred plus rounds so that they could make some money.
It's always Acne. It's always Acne. Darn road runner. Yeah,

(51:06):
that actually would be kind of a sweet deal, you know.
I mean, if you could bribe people to just waste
lots around so they the government has keep coming back
and buy more from you, it would be yeah, yeah,
so yeah, yeah. I mean personally, I as much as
it sounds like I'm following the company line, I really
after doing the research, I think it was the weather balloons.
Is there the only things that could have sustained the

(51:29):
amount of fire and stayed in the air for a
bit of time before coming down, and then nobody would
have thought twice when they saw him on the ground. Well,
I you know, I'll get that one a close second.
I'm going to go with AcBe company perfectly. Okay, yeah, Devin,
So you put me in a hard spot because most
of me wants to Sayians definitely, the Plenians or Plebeians

(51:53):
and Pleadians or how are you say it didn't leads?
I don't know, but I mean, you know, I also
want to be rational and say, you know, weather balloons
makes a lot of sense. Yes, it doesn't really explain
you know, why an hour before they the radar caught something.

(52:15):
But like so maybe the Japanese did send a recon
thing and that like freaked us out a little bit,
and they were just like reconting to see how close
they could get before they did something and we're seen
or anything. I don't know they might have actually been.
And you know, if it was a Japanese aircraft, say,
launched from a submarine, they might have just been exploring

(52:37):
our radar defenses. Yeah, that's exactly what. So they launched
a plane, they fly until they detect radar emissions, and
it's like we've been picked up to turn when to
go back? Yeah, And so it could have been or
it could have been just a random occurrence to one
of our planes. And there is some some evidence that
adds validity to that because when the object, remember I

(53:01):
said it was off the coast, and then it came
inland and then it disappeared as it hit the foothills
outside of the in just inland from the coast, so
it disappeared. So it could have been like you're saying,
it may have been a plane. Oh, we've been caught
duck down below where we should be visible and turn

(53:22):
around and head home. Yeah, that is completely you know.
So I guess I'm torn between knowing that aliens exist
and this was probably their first attempt at contact, which
we screwed up. Yes, ever and now and now they're
arming for bear. Yeah, which you know, yeah, man, going away. Man,

(53:45):
that's how alien talk. I know you know that as
a sentient robot that I'm so sorry. Okay, all right, well,
ladies and gentlemen. All of the links about this particular
episode will be on the website as always. That website
is thinking Sideways podcast dot com. When you're on the website,

(54:09):
you can listen to the episodes, and you can always
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If you're on iTunes, go ahead, take the time to
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(54:31):
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(54:53):
want to join the group and chat with folks, please
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Sideways podcast at gmail dot com. So if you've got
ideas of things you'd like is to look into, or
just general comments stuff like that, feel free to send them. Yeah,

(55:16):
maybe somebody that you know has disappeared, like you know,
been abducted by UFOs and you want us to find them.
You will be if you fologous. If you're from a
Pleadian beam ship, please write us an email. But we
actually do have an email that we were going to
read this week. And you know, the mail bag is
always is overbrimming with letters, so i'll just well, just

(55:39):
you know, randomly pick a few out to read. So
this guy is from a guy named Joe Blank. I'm
not going to give you his last name. Hey, Thinking Sideways,
love your show. I work at a big window list
warehouse all alone and spend nearly all of my time
listening to podcasts and audio books on a variety of subjects.
But I have always had a love of the mysterious
and creepy events in history, which we're all about in
high school on the East Os. That was a big

(56:00):
Art Bell fan. Oh Art Bell and us, well, yeah,
we just talked about him last week. Yeah, yeah, uh,
And had a tape recorders set to set to a
timer so I could record shows while I slept until
as he was not on until one a m. E.
S t I wish there was a podcast in the
same vein, and then I found Thinking Sideways a little
before Christmas, and Binge listens to every episode. The show

(56:21):
is clever and I appreciate how careful you are to
articulate all explanations. Equally, I recommended the show to my
friend who listens to the podcast other than w t F,
and now he listens to nice work. So thanks a lot.
That we appreciate that you appreciate us. And uh, you know,
keep those cards and letters rolling in and and I really,
I really hope that that you know, we make life

(56:42):
in that uh it's a window lists warehouse, I believe,
yeah a little better because I've worked in a cube
village before, which was in the center of a yeah,
in the center of a giant building and so I
could see, you know, nine yards away was a window sunlight,
so I can kind of relate, which still fun. So yeah,

(57:05):
I hope things are going okay. So I have another
piece of listener mail that I wanted to read. Oh yeah, yeah,
it's some fan mail for Devon. Actually it's, uh, since
we already talked about my mom, tonight, we're gonna talk
about my dad. It's from him. I didn't know he
was listening to the show, but apparently he is, um

(57:25):
and he just sent us an email and it just
says see in this link, and it's a link to
wine Spectator that is about how well Champagne ages in
reference to the Baltic Sea anomaly. Oh yeah, we were.
We were wondering about why they were going after these
were like it was probably gross. Apparently it ain't. Is

(57:45):
totally fine. Thanks dad. I still don't I still don't
think it was like a UFO. But yeah, well thanks
Devon's dad. Now now I know, Yeah, now we know
there's actually legitimate reason for them to be going after that. Champagne.
I really love the way your dad told geus listening
to the show. Quite awesome. I hope you're enjoying the show. Alright, gang,

(58:09):
Well that's all we've got for this week, so we
will be chatting with you next week. Have a good one.
Next time we're going to solve another one. See you then.
Bufologists