[1][2][3] The incident occurred less than three months after the U.S. entered World War II in response to the Imperial Japanese Navy's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, and one day after the bombardment of Ellwood near Santa Barbara on 23 February.

[4] In 1983, the U.S. Office of Air Force History attributed the event to a case of "war nerves" triggered by a lost weather balloon and exacerbated by stray flares and shell bursts from adjoining batteries.

[8] The rumors were taken so seriously that 500 United States Army troops moved into the Walt Disney Studios lot in Burbank, California, to defend the famed Hollywood facility and nearby factories against enemy sabotage or air attacks.

[10][11] As the hysteria continued to mount, on 23 February 1942, at 7:15 pm, during one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's fireside chats, Japanese submarine I-17 surfaced near Santa Barbara, California, and shelled Ellwood Oil field in Goleta.

[14] Several buildings and vehicles were damaged by shell fragments, and five civilians died as an indirect result of the anti-aircraft fire: three were killed in car accidents in the ensuing chaos and two of heart attacks attributed to the stress of the hour-long action.

[16] Within hours of the end of the air raid, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox held a press conference, saying the entire incident had been a false alarm due to anxiety and "war nerves".

Knox's comments were followed by statements from the Army the next day[17] that reflected General George C. Marshall's supposition that the incident might have been caused by enemy agents using commercial airplanes in a psychological warfare campaign to generate mass panic.

The dawn, which ended the shooting and the fantasy, also proved that the only damage which resulted to the city was such as had been caused by the excitement (there was at least one death from heart failure), by traffic accidents in the blacked-out streets, or by shell fragments from the artillery barrage.

[22][23] Times writer Larry Harnisch noted that the retouched photo along with faked newspaper headlines were presented as true historical material in trailers for the 2011 film Battle: Los Angeles.

"[24] Every February, the Fort MacArthur Museum, located at the entrance to Los Angeles Harbor, hosts an entertainment event called "The Great LA Air Raid of 1942".