On the UFO UpDates List, this week, there has been considerable discussion about the validity of a photograph that was printed in the L.A. Times newspaper on February 26th of 1942. [see the photograph]

In the early morning hours of February 25, 1942 an event took place that ufologists have been calling "The Battle of Los Angeles" and the photograph that was published in the L.A. Times shows some kind of object illuminated by a multitude of searchlights and being fired on by anti-aircraft batteries.

There have been a number of theories advanced about this particular photograph.

Some people think that it might have been a FUGO balloon under attack. Some people think that it might have been nothing more than a cloud or smoke that was erroneously identified as some kind of aircraft while others simply state the photograph is a fake, generated by superimposing one image over top of another.

We'll begin with the FUGO balloon theory. A Fugo balloon is a balloon that carries a number of bombs as a payload and was the brainchild of the Imperial Japanese Forces. The concept was to position a number of submarines off the west coast of the United States and then launch these balloons so that they would drift inland and eventually drop out of the air and rain down bombs on the populace. Reality struck home of course when the Japanese discovered that the bombs were ineffective because they couldn't deploy enough of them and they had no control whatsoever of where the bombs drifted away to. The possibility of the object in the photograph being a FUGO balloon is possible - albeit, highly unlikely based on the facts that Japan had only been at war with the United States for 2 months at this point as well as the balloon would easily have been shot out of the skies and as reported by the L.A. Times, that had not taken place.

The concept that it might have been a cloud that was under attack was shot down effectively by the photographic analyst, Bruce Maccabee, who pointed out that whatever was in the beams of the searchlights was sufficiently opaque enough to prevent the strong beams of light from penetrating past the object into the night-time sky.

Something that adds to the story is a report that Jeff Rense has pulled from a lady that was the one of the Air Raid Wardens and she claims to have seen the object up close and personal. In her report she also claims that the army air force sent planes up after the object and it simply ignored them and went about its business even though the U.S. Army vehemently denied ever sending any aircraft up after the object.

The final theory is that what we are seeing in the photograph is nothing more than simply a superimposition. In other words, take a picture of some kind of craft, plunk it down on a picture of an antiaircraft battle and voila, you have a UFO under attack. The problem here is we have to ask why somebody would create such an elaborate hoax. To create a picture that good would take considerable effort back in 1942 because they didn't have the technology to manipulate images like we do today and to be blunt, it is much easier to detect "doctored" photographs than it is today.

The bottom line is photographs like The Battle of Los Angeles provide us with the best possible images to examine for authenticity because of their age in relation to the technology that was available for "doctoring". We should examine more photographs like this and hopefully will be able to find the 'smoking gun'.

But that's just my take on it.....