Local history: 'It was something amazing.' Millions stared at strange glow across night sky in 1941

Millions of people gaped at the night sky, unsure of what they were seeing.

An eerie glow shimmered and swirled across the horizon.

Some thought it was a Nazi death ray. Some thought it was a giant wildfire. Some thought it was Judgment Day.   

Copley second grader Don Martin, 6, thought it was the most beautiful thing he had ever witnessed.

A magnetic storm, created when a coronal mass ejection from the sun collided with the Earth’s magnetic field, produced a spectacular light show that was visible around the world Sept. 18, 1941. 

For a week before the event, astronomers had observed sun spots and solar flares. But then a gigantic explosion near the sun’s surface hurtled a cloud of electrically charged particles 93 million miles toward Earth.

The magnetic storm disturbed radio broadcasts, disrupted telephone services, halted telegraph transmissions, affected power grids and turned night into day. The northern lights, or aurora borealis, were visible across most of the United States, including places in the Deep South where they are rarely seen.

Ohio Edison retiree Martin, 86, who lives in Barberton, has a vivid recollection of that strange evening from 80 years ago.

“It was something amazing,” he said.

He was on a fishing trip in Michigan with his parents, Ray and Mary Martin, 4-year-old sister, Janice, and uncle and aunt Carl and Lillian Stone. They were staying for a few days at Thornapple Lake near Hastings, but the fish hadn’t been biting, so they decided to try their luck at night.

It was a moonless evening as they paddled two rowboats. There were two adults and one child in each boat. The splash of paddles was the only sound in the darkness.

“We rowed way out into the lake,” Martin said. “It was peaceful. There was no wind whatsoever. The lake was just glass.

“All of a sudden, the sky was every color in the rainbow. It was so impactful because in the middle of the lake you can see from horizon to horizon. There’s nothing blocking your view.”

The fishing party soon realized they were looking at the northern lights, although not everyone back home in Ohio was as savvy. 

The view in Akron

Curtains of green, yellow, blue, purple, pink and silver began to flutter over the Akron-Canton region around 7:30 p.m. People poured out of homes and looked upward. Motorists pulled automobiles to the side of the road so they could gawk.

Concerned citizens called police officers, reporters and weather experts, but most of them were outside staring up. The lights peaked by 10 p.m. but were still visible in some places until about 4 a.m.

“The wrinkled old globe still was turning today although there were times Thursday night when some people thought the jig was up and judgment day was at hand,” the Beacon Journal reported Sept. 19, 1941.

“When blazing streamers of light turned the heavens into flame, more than one call was received by police, newspaper offices and other central points from persons who interpreted the aurora borealis display as a religious omen. Others who did no know or accept the natural explanation called to ask if the flaring banners were a new type of death ray or some other imaginative death-dealing weapon.”

People who thought it was a local phenomenon were mistaken. The lights were visible in the United States as far south as Florida and Alabama and as far west as Colorado and New Mexico. 

Lights over East Coast

Confusion rippled across the East Coast as the lights danced in the sky. Although the United States was still two months away from entering World War II, citizens were jittery about the possibility of German U-boats in the Atlantic.

Authorities were peppered with questions: “Are the Germans attacking?” “Is the Army testing a new searchlight?” “Has a German boat been sighted?” “Are the beams dangerous?” “Is there a huge fire to the north?” 

More than 100 calls per hour flooded the Hayden Planetarium in New York City. Meanwhile, the weather bureau received so many inquiries that it switched calls to a record player that explained: “The lights now visible are an unusual display of the aurora borealis.”

Much to the annoyance of sports fans, the storm knocked out a radio broadcast of a game between the Pittsburgh Pirates and Brooklyn Dodgers. Meanwhile, a private phone conversation between two girls somehow went live on New Jersey radio after a telephone cable got scrambled with a radio line.

“I fixed it for Eddie to pick up a guy for you and afterwards we’ll go to the party,” one girl said.

“I guess it’s OK,” the other replied. “But how do I know the guy Eddie’s bringing for me is all right?”

Shortwave radio transmissions were knocked out for a while. England lost contact with Australia. Signals from Rome, Berlin and Moscow were lost. Teletype machines, like those in the Beacon Journal office, began to print gibberish.

The Royal Air Force used light from the aurora borealis to pound German positions in Norway and France. Meanwhile, a German U-boat attacked a Canadian convoy in the North Atlantic, sinking a ship and killing 18 sailors.

Spots on the sun

Akron astronomer W.I. Barnholth gazed at the beautiful lights all night. Early the next morning, he rushed to his telescope, put on a solar lens and observed spots across the face of the sun.

“There were a dozen big spots and some 40 or 50 small ones, and they remained there until Sunday morning, when they gradually began to slide over the sun’s edge” Barnholth later told the Beacon Journal.

When Martin returned home from his Michigan fishing trip, he thought he had an unusual story to tell his friends. Then he learned that the northern lights had been visible all across the northern hemisphere.

“When we got back to Akron, in talking to various people, they said: ‘We thought the end of the world was coming,’ ” he recalled.

It’s stuck with him all these years. He’s even done online research about the 1941 magnetic storm, which was one of the most intense ever recorded.

The only other time he glimpsed the northern lights in the Midwest was in the late 1940s or early 1950s.

“All you saw was some greenish stuff going up in the sky,” he said. “It didn’t amount to much.”

He said he has asked people in their 70s if they remember seeing the northern lights in Ohio. Across the board, the answer was no.

The aurora borealis of September 1941 was something special to see.

“It was so bright that it was like daylight,” Martin said.

Mark J. Price can be reached at mprice@thebeaconjournal.com.