The event that became known as The Battle of Los Angeles took place during the evening and early morning hours of February 24-25, 1942. Never fully explained, these events remain shrouded in mystery and the subject of intense speculation.


One day earlier, on February 23, a Japanese submarine surfaced and fired upon an oil production facility near Santa Barbara, California. With reports indicating that the sub was headed south towards Los Angeles, people were on edge and tension was high.


Beginning shortly after 2 am on February 25, and throughout the night, unidentified objects were reported over Los Angeles and the threat was so unusual that air raid sirens were sounded, and a total blackout was ordered. At 3:16 am, the 37th Coast Artillery Brigade began firing 12.8-pound antiaircraft shells at the objects -- more than 1,400 shells were fired over the next 58 minutes as the objects moved south, from Santa Monica to Long Beach.


"The obvious thought was that these were Japanese bombers come to attack the United States," says UFO expert Bill Birnes, publisher of UFO magazine. "But it wasn't. They were flying too high. And the astounding thing was, not one artillery shell could hit the craft -- out of all the hundreds of shells that were fired. People outside that night swore that it was neither a plane nor a balloon -- it was a UFO. It floated, it glided. And to this day, nobody can explain what that craft was, why our anti-aircraft guns couldn't hit it -- it's a mystery that's never been resolved."


Descriptions of the UFOs varied widely. General George C. Marshall, in his initial memo to President Roosevelt regarding the event, wrote that the "unidentified airplanes... [traveled at speeds ranging from] 'very slow' to as much as 200 mph and from elevations of 9000 to 18,000 feet." The number of craft reported by observers ranged from 9 to 15 to 25.


At first, officials offered a very vague explanation: the secretary of the Navy, Frank Knox, dismissed the event as a "false alarm" due to "war nerves," but when this failed to satisfy the press and the public, the Army responded with a definitive answer that the craft and the battle were real, and on February 26, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson confirmed that. Santa Monica's US. representative, Leland Ford, called for a Congressional investigation into the incident, but this went nowhere. In the years since, various explanations have been offered -- from Japanese planes to German craft launched from secret bases in Mexico to unidentified aircraft to weather balloons to sky lanterns to blimps.


However, it is also alleged that General Marshall reported that the Army had recovered an unidentified aircraft off the coast of California that indicated that the "mystery airplanes are in fact not earthly and according to secret intelligence sources they are in all probability of interplanetary origin."


We have alongside some great content for the highly anticipated Sony film Battle: Los Angeles TWO experts talking about the real Battle Los Angeles.
• CAPT. ROBERT SALAS and BILL BIRNES.

"There is nothing to convince Her Majesty's government that there has ever been a single visit by an alien spacecraft."
Lord Stabolgi - Government spokesman
"What does all this stuff about flying saucers amount to? What can it mean? What is the truth?"
Sir Winston Churchill - July 1952
For years, there have been documented cases of UFO sightings -- The Battle of Los Angeles in 1942, Buenos Aires in 1965, Seoul in 1983, France, Germany, China -- but all of these had official stories that covered up and dismissed these inexplicable events.
And the same is true of the U.K... The National Archives has just released the latest installment of UFO files -- the largest to date, containing 24 files and totalling over 6,000 pages of material spanning 1994-2000. The files are available to download for free for a month at nationalarchives.gov.uk/ufos
And the release also shows that defense intelligence documents on a reported U.K. UFO sighting known as the "Rendlesham Incident" have gone missing.
But what does it all mean? Could these sightings be alien scouting missions? And are world leaders aware? And if they are, are we, via the films we watch and the media we consume, being prepared for the eventuality of an alien invasion?
On March 11 2011, what were once just sightings becomes a terrifying reality when Earth is attacked by unknown forces in BATTLE: LOS ANGELES. As people everywhere watch the world's great cities fall, Los Angeles becomes the last stand for mankind in a battle no one expected.
Columbia Pictures presents in association with Relativity Media an Original Film production, Battle: Los Angeles. The film stars Aaron Eckhart, Michelle Rodriguez, Ramon Rodriguez, Bridget Moynahan, Ne-Yo, and Michael Peña. Directed by Jonathan Liebesman. Produced by Neal H. Moritz and Ori Marmur.

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