One of 5 People Who Died During The "Battle of Los Angeles"
George Philip Weil was the son of Paul Weil, born in Épinal, Department des Vosges, Lorraine, France, and Elsie Spier, born in Rees, Germany. His detailed 1921, U.S. Passport Application says he was born in "Charlottenburg, Germany"* in 1906 to American parents, residents of Brookline, MA (already naturalized), and he resided in Charlottenburg & Wilmersdorf (former boroughs of Berlin*) between 1906 -1917. His birth was registered as an American Citizen in the United States Consulate General's office in Berlin (N.B. his his WWII Draft Card lists his p.o.b. as "Berlin, Germany"). His father was in the the leather industry and was Managing Director of American Hide & Leather Co., Ltd, in Northampton, England.
*According to Wikipedia: "Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf" became the fourth borough of Berlin, in an administrative reform on 1 January 2001, by merging the former boroughs of Charlottenburg and Wilmersdorf....Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf covers the western city center of Berlin and the adjacent affluent suburbs.
His family originally lived in Brookline, MA, a suburb of Boston and later returned there. A September 1926 Cunard Line Ship Manifest shows George was a student going from Boston to Liverpool and as a student in Oxford, England. A 1926 Boston Globe article says he was returning for his 3rd year at Wadham College at Oxford University. (I had to look up Wadham College. According to Wiki: "Wadham College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. It is located in the center of Oxford." Furthermore, "There are thirty-nine colleges of the University of Oxford and four permanent private halls." ) I later found in his marriage announcement, that he was a graduate of Oxford University, and in the banking business in Boston. Another account in the Boston Globe records his return voyage home England in June 1927, and states he had received an A.B. degree from Oxford University.
He was engaged to Margaret Falk "Peggy" Flexner, the daughter of Isador and Salina Flexner, in 1929, in Brookline, Massachusetts, and they married there on Sep 9, 1930. She was a 1929 graduate of Massachusetts Art School (today known as the Massachusetts College of Art & Design). Both families were Jewish.
Sometime after the birth of their son, Robert Flexner Weil, in Boston in Feb 1934, they moved to the west side of Los Angeles, to the Cheviot Hills section of the beautiful, Monte Mar Vista subdivision. Their parents also moved to Los Angeles. The 1940 Census shows he was working as a private accountant, and that was his profession at the time of his death according to news accounts.
The "Battle of Los Angeles" - February 24 & 25, 1942
Sadly, George Philip Weil, while serving as an Air Warning Service Warden, was one of 5 people who died during the "Battle of Los Angeles," in which an unknown aircraft/unidentified flying object (or objects), seen visually, and on radar, flew over L.A. and set off a panic, and hours of anti-aircraft shelling. People were convinced it might have been a Japanese air raid, since a Japanese sub had shelled a nearby oil refinery on the coast just a day before. According to information on the Enigma Labs site, about the sub raid, which was distilled from an official history of the U.S. Army's Fourth Anti-Aircraft Command, Chapter 5, Defense Operations on the West Coast, and news reports from the Los Angeles Times, and newspapers in surrounding municipalities:
On Monday, February 23, 1942, at dusk around 7:15 PM, a submarine surfaced some 2,500 yards off the beach by the Ellwood oil field a dozen miles north of Santa Monica, California. The submarine, later identified as Japanese Imperial Navy submarine I-17, fired 13 to 16 shells from its 14cm/5.5-inch diameter gun at the oil field over the course of about 20 minutes. The likely target was Ellwood's gasoline plant, the Army said, a critical facility for the region's defense.
Consequently, an urgent alert was issued, according to Wikipedia "The Battle of Los Angeles" page:
"On 24 February 1942, the Office of Naval Intelligence issued a warning that an attack on mainland California could be expected within the next ten hours. That evening, many flares and blinking lights were reported from the vicinity of defense plants. An alert was called at 7:18 pm, and was lifted at 10:23 pm. Renewed activity began early in the morning of 25 February.
"Air raid sirens sounded at 2:25 am throughout Los Angeles County. A total blackout was ordered and thousands of air raid wardens were summoned to their positions. At 3:16 am, the 37th Coast Artillery Brigade began firing .50-caliber machine guns and 12.8-pound (5.8 kg) anti-aircraft shells into the air at reported aircraft; over 1,400 shells were eventually fired. Pilots of the 4th Interceptor Command were alerted but their aircraft remained grounded. The artillery fire continued sporadically until 4:14 am. The "all clear" was sounded and the blackout order was lifted at 7:21 am."
The unidentified object was quickly illuminated by over a dozen spotlights, as it was pummeled by anti-aircraft guns from all directions. The searchlights locked onto it, and revealed it had the shape of a classic disc shaped UFO. An iconic photo of the object, capturing it surrounded by spotlights as shells burst all around it, was published in a huge front page spread by the Los Angeles Times (see photo, left). The anti-aircraft guns shelled it relentlessly for three hours, with over 1,400 shells, but, it did not fire offensively or defensively during the onslaught, and in the end, seemingly unscathed, flew slowly, then rapidly, westward over the Pacific, and was never seen again. (Radar followed it out to sea as far as possible.)
It could not have been an airplane, blimp or balloon, since no debris, of any type, was ever found, aside from the 100s of spent shells that crashed down on people's homes and vehicles during the barrage. This resulted in a huge amount of speculation by both the public and the military. What was it?! Or what were they?!
The mystery continues unabated to this day. The Army soon tried to write it off as a case of war jitters or hysteria, in light of the recent attack on Pearl Harbor; but some citizens reportedly saw from 50 to up to 200 aircraft in the sky, flying very slowly at times, hovering at times, and flying very rapidly at other times. And then there's the inconvenient corroboration of the radar hits from the objects. (See History Channel's series, "History's Greatest Mysteries": "The Battle of Los Angeles." 2017, rebroadcast in 2024; If you don't have cable, you can watch a 10 minute preview of it on the History Channel's Youtube channel, entitled: " The Alien Threat Behind the Battle of LA | History's Greatest Mysteries (S5)"
The famous WWII War Correspondent Ernie Pyle, writing for Scripps-Howard, was staying in a high-rise L.A. hotel, on a high floor, with no buildings obstructing his view, and was awoken to the sound of shelling. He described the event in a Mar 5, 1942 column, "Los Angeles 'Raid' Was Magnificently Rhythmic Affair" :
"There must've been at least two dozen spotlights pointed into the sky, all of them miles apart, covering a vast area in the southern suburbs of Los Angeles.
"They all converged into a big blue spot in the heavens, and that spot moved slowly but very definitely across the sky with never a falter. [The straight blue lines converging on that one spot] held it and moved with it across the sky like a leech that would not let go. I could not see anything in the spot for it was some 20 miles away, but I could see the anti-aircraft shells bursting around it. Now and then one seemed to burst right in the spot...."
As the antiaircraft shells were bursting above, two volunteer first-responders died of heart attacks, George P. Weil, an Air Warning Service Warden, and Henry Bryson Ayers. Ayers, age 60, a California State Guardsman, was driving in an ammo convoy through Hollywood, his station wagon brimming with ammunition for his State Guard unit, when he slumped over his steering wheel and died.
George P. Weil, age 36, was on duty at his air raid post when he was stricken by what was later determined to be a heart attack. His obit shows he died just after returning to his home at 3:30 a.m. in Cheviot Hills. One news article said a colleague brought him home when he fell ill during the air raid, and he died of a heart attack, shortly after arriving home. The Battle of Los Angeles was ongoing at the time he arrived home.
Three others died in car accidents due to the blackout and driving without lights. One being Buelah M. Klein, who was killed when the car she and her husband were traveling in to work at the GM plant in Los Angeles, was struck head on by a milk truck driven by Mrs. Goldie Leona Akers Wagner. Both were traveling with their headlights off due to the blackout. A Long Beach Policeman, Sgt. Engebret Larson, died in a collision as he raced to his air raid post. And a pedestrian, Jesus Alvarez (or Alferez or Alserez), died when he walked into the side of a passing car during the blackout. (His surname was published with several variants and I've been unable to find any more information about him).
According to Mr. Weil's WWII Draft Card, he was a self-employed accountant, and lived at 2834 Forrester Drive in Cheviot Hills, a neighborhood on the Westside of the city of Los Angeles, California. Founded in 1924, the neighborhood has served as the filming location of movies and television shows due to its convenient location between Sony Studios and Fox Studios.
After his death, his wife, Margaret Falk Flexner Weil, continued on working as "chairman" (sic) and Colonel in the the Red Cross in L.A. according to a Jul 1943 article in the West Los Angeles Independent. A year and a half after George's death, she remarried, Jules Howard "Dulie" Housman, on Aug 12, 1943 in Los Angeles. According to their announcement, they were married in the Cheviot Hills home of their friends Mr. & Mrs. Charles Brink, and they continued living in her house on Forrester Drive in Chevoit Hills, in the beautiful Monte Mar Vista subdivision.
Margaret and George had had one son, Robert Flexner Weil, who was then adopted by Jules, and his name changed to Robert Flexner Weil Housman.
Rest in Peace...
One of 5 People Who Died During The "Battle of Los Angeles"
George Philip Weil was the son of Paul Weil, born in Épinal, Department des Vosges, Lorraine, France, and Elsie Spier, born in Rees, Germany. His detailed 1921, U.S. Passport Application says he was born in "Charlottenburg, Germany"* in 1906 to American parents, residents of Brookline, MA (already naturalized), and he resided in Charlottenburg & Wilmersdorf (former boroughs of Berlin*) between 1906 -1917. His birth was registered as an American Citizen in the United States Consulate General's office in Berlin (N.B. his his WWII Draft Card lists his p.o.b. as "Berlin, Germany"). His father was in the the leather industry and was Managing Director of American Hide & Leather Co., Ltd, in Northampton, England.
*According to Wikipedia: "Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf" became the fourth borough of Berlin, in an administrative reform on 1 January 2001, by merging the former boroughs of Charlottenburg and Wilmersdorf....Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf covers the western city center of Berlin and the adjacent affluent suburbs.
His family originally lived in Brookline, MA, a suburb of Boston and later returned there. A September 1926 Cunard Line Ship Manifest shows George was a student going from Boston to Liverpool and as a student in Oxford, England. A 1926 Boston Globe article says he was returning for his 3rd year at Wadham College at Oxford University. (I had to look up Wadham College. According to Wiki: "Wadham College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. It is located in the center of Oxford." Furthermore, "There are thirty-nine colleges of the University of Oxford and four permanent private halls." ) I later found in his marriage announcement, that he was a graduate of Oxford University, and in the banking business in Boston. Another account in the Boston Globe records his return voyage home England in June 1927, and states he had received an A.B. degree from Oxford University.
He was engaged to Margaret Falk "Peggy" Flexner, the daughter of Isador and Salina Flexner, in 1929, in Brookline, Massachusetts, and they married there on Sep 9, 1930. She was a 1929 graduate of Massachusetts Art School (today known as the Massachusetts College of Art & Design). Both families were Jewish.
Sometime after the birth of their son, Robert Flexner Weil, in Boston in Feb 1934, they moved to the west side of Los Angeles, to the Cheviot Hills section of the beautiful, Monte Mar Vista subdivision. Their parents also moved to Los Angeles. The 1940 Census shows he was working as a private accountant, and that was his profession at the time of his death according to news accounts.
The "Battle of Los Angeles" - February 24 & 25, 1942
Sadly, George Philip Weil, while serving as an Air Warning Service Warden, was one of 5 people who died during the "Battle of Los Angeles," in which an unknown aircraft/unidentified flying object (or objects), seen visually, and on radar, flew over L.A. and set off a panic, and hours of anti-aircraft shelling. People were convinced it might have been a Japanese air raid, since a Japanese sub had shelled a nearby oil refinery on the coast just a day before. According to information on the Enigma Labs site, about the sub raid, which was distilled from an official history of the U.S. Army's Fourth Anti-Aircraft Command, Chapter 5, Defense Operations on the West Coast, and news reports from the Los Angeles Times, and newspapers in surrounding municipalities:
On Monday, February 23, 1942, at dusk around 7:15 PM, a submarine surfaced some 2,500 yards off the beach by the Ellwood oil field a dozen miles north of Santa Monica, California. The submarine, later identified as Japanese Imperial Navy submarine I-17, fired 13 to 16 shells from its 14cm/5.5-inch diameter gun at the oil field over the course of about 20 minutes. The likely target was Ellwood's gasoline plant, the Army said, a critical facility for the region's defense.
Consequently, an urgent alert was issued, according to Wikipedia "The Battle of Los Angeles" page:
"On 24 February 1942, the Office of Naval Intelligence issued a warning that an attack on mainland California could be expected within the next ten hours. That evening, many flares and blinking lights were reported from the vicinity of defense plants. An alert was called at 7:18 pm, and was lifted at 10:23 pm. Renewed activity began early in the morning of 25 February.
"Air raid sirens sounded at 2:25 am throughout Los Angeles County. A total blackout was ordered and thousands of air raid wardens were summoned to their positions. At 3:16 am, the 37th Coast Artillery Brigade began firing .50-caliber machine guns and 12.8-pound (5.8 kg) anti-aircraft shells into the air at reported aircraft; over 1,400 shells were eventually fired. Pilots of the 4th Interceptor Command were alerted but their aircraft remained grounded. The artillery fire continued sporadically until 4:14 am. The "all clear" was sounded and the blackout order was lifted at 7:21 am."
The unidentified object was quickly illuminated by over a dozen spotlights, as it was pummeled by anti-aircraft guns from all directions. The searchlights locked onto it, and revealed it had the shape of a classic disc shaped UFO. An iconic photo of the object, capturing it surrounded by spotlights as shells burst all around it, was published in a huge front page spread by the Los Angeles Times (see photo, left). The anti-aircraft guns shelled it relentlessly for three hours, with over 1,400 shells, but, it did not fire offensively or defensively during the onslaught, and in the end, seemingly unscathed, flew slowly, then rapidly, westward over the Pacific, and was never seen again. (Radar followed it out to sea as far as possible.)
It could not have been an airplane, blimp or balloon, since no debris, of any type, was ever found, aside from the 100s of spent shells that crashed down on people's homes and vehicles during the barrage. This resulted in a huge amount of speculation by both the public and the military. What was it?! Or what were they?!
The mystery continues unabated to this day. The Army soon tried to write it off as a case of war jitters or hysteria, in light of the recent attack on Pearl Harbor; but some citizens reportedly saw from 50 to up to 200 aircraft in the sky, flying very slowly at times, hovering at times, and flying very rapidly at other times. And then there's the inconvenient corroboration of the radar hits from the objects. (See History Channel's series, "History's Greatest Mysteries": "The Battle of Los Angeles." 2017, rebroadcast in 2024; If you don't have cable, you can watch a 10 minute preview of it on the History Channel's Youtube channel, entitled: " The Alien Threat Behind the Battle of LA | History's Greatest Mysteries (S5)"
The famous WWII War Correspondent Ernie Pyle, writing for Scripps-Howard, was staying in a high-rise L.A. hotel, on a high floor, with no buildings obstructing his view, and was awoken to the sound of shelling. He described the event in a Mar 5, 1942 column, "Los Angeles 'Raid' Was Magnificently Rhythmic Affair" :
"There must've been at least two dozen spotlights pointed into the sky, all of them miles apart, covering a vast area in the southern suburbs of Los Angeles.
"They all converged into a big blue spot in the heavens, and that spot moved slowly but very definitely across the sky with never a falter. [The straight blue lines converging on that one spot] held it and moved with it across the sky like a leech that would not let go. I could not see anything in the spot for it was some 20 miles away, but I could see the anti-aircraft shells bursting around it. Now and then one seemed to burst right in the spot...."
As the antiaircraft shells were bursting above, two volunteer first-responders died of heart attacks, George P. Weil, an Air Warning Service Warden, and Henry Bryson Ayers. Ayers, age 60, a California State Guardsman, was driving in an ammo convoy through Hollywood, his station wagon brimming with ammunition for his State Guard unit, when he slumped over his steering wheel and died.
George P. Weil, age 36, was on duty at his air raid post when he was stricken by what was later determined to be a heart attack. His obit shows he died just after returning to his home at 3:30 a.m. in Cheviot Hills. One news article said a colleague brought him home when he fell ill during the air raid, and he died of a heart attack, shortly after arriving home. The Battle of Los Angeles was ongoing at the time he arrived home.
Three others died in car accidents due to the blackout and driving without lights. One being Buelah M. Klein, who was killed when the car she and her husband were traveling in to work at the GM plant in Los Angeles, was struck head on by a milk truck driven by Mrs. Goldie Leona Akers Wagner. Both were traveling with their headlights off due to the blackout. A Long Beach Policeman, Sgt. Engebret Larson, died in a collision as he raced to his air raid post. And a pedestrian, Jesus Alvarez (or Alferez or Alserez), died when he walked into the side of a passing car during the blackout. (His surname was published with several variants and I've been unable to find any more information about him).
According to Mr. Weil's WWII Draft Card, he was a self-employed accountant, and lived at 2834 Forrester Drive in Cheviot Hills, a neighborhood on the Westside of the city of Los Angeles, California. Founded in 1924, the neighborhood has served as the filming location of movies and television shows due to its convenient location between Sony Studios and Fox Studios.
After his death, his wife, Margaret Falk Flexner Weil, continued on working as "chairman" (sic) and Colonel in the the Red Cross in L.A. according to a Jul 1943 article in the West Los Angeles Independent. A year and a half after George's death, she remarried, Jules Howard "Dulie" Housman, on Aug 12, 1943 in Los Angeles. According to their announcement, they were married in the Cheviot Hills home of their friends Mr. & Mrs. Charles Brink, and they continued living in her house on Forrester Drive in Chevoit Hills, in the beautiful Monte Mar Vista subdivision.
Margaret and George had had one son, Robert Flexner Weil, who was then adopted by Jules, and his name changed to Robert Flexner Weil Housman.
Rest in Peace...
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