Air Operations, CBI

1st AVG Fighter Squadron P-40 pilots down 3 Ki-27 'Nate' fighters over Rangoon about noon and 23 Japanese Army fighters and 1 Japanese Army bombers around 1700 hours, also over Rangoon.

Air Operations, East Indies

During the morning, 17th Provisional Pursiut Squadron P-40s down 3 Japanese A6M 'Zeros' over Soerabaja, Java.

Air Operations, Europe

There is an RAF night raid on Kiel.

Allied Command

The unified ABDA Command is dissolved. The ABDA proved to be too complicated for the effective coordination of forces and was unable to overcome national animosities and suspicions. Gen Wavell again becomes Commander-in-Chief, India. The Dutch Gen Ter Poorten takes command in Java.

Battle of the Atlantic

U-156 sinks the British tanker La Carriere (5685t) 70 miles southwest of Guanica, Puerto Rico with the loss of 15 of her crew. 21 crew members make it to Guanica in life boats, 5 others are picked by an American coast guard cutter.

Burma

The Japanese infiltrate through a gap opened between Nyaunglebin and Pegu, threatening the Rangoon-Mandalay railway. Retreating British troops use 'scorched earth' tactics in Rangoon setting fire to oil installations.

Natives examining bomb damage in a main Rangoon street following a heavy Japanese air raid

Bomb Damage in Rangoon

A grief-stricken Burman, whose wife has just been killed by a fragment from a Japanese bomb, clutching his little child closely to his side

Tragedy from a Japanese Bomb

In view of the proximity of Japanese forces to Rangoon, a curfew was imposed and a military governor appointed, on 25 February in order to prevent looting. On the same day the R.A.F. and the American Volunteer Group scored a notable success by shooting down thirty Japanese bombers attempting to raid the capital. Meanwhile, in India, the evacuation of part of the Chittagong district, on the shores of the Bay of Bengal, was carried out as a precautionary measure.

Indian Ocean

• The Italian submarine Torelli sinks the Panamanian tanker Esso Copenhagen (9245t) off the coast of Somalia with the loss of 1 crewmen.
• I-58 sinks the Dutch steamer Boero (7135t) south of the Sunda Strait. There are no casualties among the crew of 70.

Malta

Axis bombers attack the naval base at Valletta and the airfields at Hal Far and Luqa.

United States, Home Front

There is an air raid scare in Los Angelese with a heavy anti-aircraft barrage. Secretary of War Stimson announces that '15 commercial planes operated by enemy agents' have flown over the city. It was a false alarm; no bombs were dropped.

Searchlights converge on unknown object over Los Angeles in the early morning hours.

Searchlights Over Los Angeles

Over 1,400 Anti-Aircraft Rounds Are Fired

On 24 February 1942, air raid sirens began to wail across southern California. Air raid wardens quickly rushed to their posts and the San Fernando Valley, usually a vast carpet of lights, went dark as streetlights went out and people drew their blackout curtains according to wartime regulations. Radar tracking stations began picking up strange unidentified blips headed toward the city. At 3:16 AM, the operators of an anti-aircraft battery thought they saw something and began shooting. Convinced that the Japanese were conducting an air raid on Los Angeles, various batteries started up, filling the skies above L.A. with over 1400 exploding shells. Almost everybody was convinced that World War II had finally come to the U.S. mainland.

This was not so far-fetched a scenario. Pearl Harbor had been attacked a little more than two months before, and the major Japanese military offensive across the Pacific–of which that attack was the start–was still going in full swing. Singapore, the main British base in Southeast Asia, had fallen to the Japanese less than ten days earlier. The previous night, 23 February, FDR gave one of his fireside chats warning of possible Japanese attacks. Before he had even finished speaking a Japanese submarine surfaced off the coast of Santa Barbara and began shelling an oil installation. Little damage was done, but the attack, undeniably real, made nearly everybody on the West Coast think a major Japanese invasion was imminent. Thus, the actions in Los Angeles on the night of 24-25 February seemed entirely reasonable.

There was just one problem, though: there was no Japanese invasion. Not a single Japanese aircraft flew over the U.S. mainland that night. Despite the ferocity of the anti-aircraft fire, curiously no “enemy planes” were shot down (although there was a rumor that one had been, and crashed at a Hollywood intersection). Also, the phantom air raid force didn’t drop a single bomb. When military commanders began to realize that the attack was a phantom, they started–cautiously–to stand down. At 7:21 AM, without any evidence of a real Japanese attack, the all clear signal sounded.