My 1400th parody achieved in 16 mos 13 days! This one concerns another little-known incident of WW2 in which Japanese sub I-17 attempted an attack on the Ellwood Oil Fields off Santa Barbara in Feb '42. The cause of the attack was a revenge motive from Captain Kozo Nishino who, in the late 1930s, had visited the oil facilities to load up and during a welcoming ceremony tripped and fell into cactus. Having the cactus spines pulled from his buttocks in broad daylight caused the oil workers to laugh hysterically and so it was payback time in 1942. Nishino had surfaced and opened up with a 140mm deck gun, firing between 17 rounds. The gunners were poor shots and missed anything vital, shelling inland on a ranch or into the sea wildly. The only thing they hit was a catwalk and some pumping equipment which cost $500 damage, but nothing more. Nishino left the area reporting to Japan that "Santa Barbara was in flames"!!! This added to the post-Pearl Harbor hysteria on the West Coast and was the first direct attack on the US mainland during the war. The next day was the infamous "Battle of Los Angeles" against an unknown object! Oregon would later be bombed by a submarine-launched Geta floatplane with no consequence as well as an attack by Japanese submarine I-25 against the Columbia River Harbor Defense installations. Later on, maybe 1,000 FUGO balloons (out of over 9,000) lauched form Japan landed in the US which started wildfires and killed one family that tampered with its incendiary devices. As for Ellwood, it continued to provide oil until the 1970s. The location where Nishino fell is now on a golf course as well as the place where the small damage was done. A plaque is there.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f2/EllwoodDetail.jpg/776px-EllwoodDetail.jpg