Luis A.D.Tavares : 54 years old, Mechanical Engineer (Aeronautics). He served in the Portuguese Air Force as Maintenance Officer in the engine department at OGMA (Air Force Workshops) from 1971 to 1973 and at FAP Material Direction at Lisbon during 1973. He has been a researcher of military aviation since his twenties, and specially of Portuguese military aviation history, collecting in the process thousands of photos, slides and documents.
António Mimoso e Carvalho: 45 years old, a career officer of the Portuguese Air Force, once Squadron Commander of the 301 Squadron "Jaguares" (Fiat G.91). With a total of 3.500 flying hours, still flying Tiger Moth and T-6 Texan in the Portuguese Air Force Air Museum Demo Team.
Being close friends for many years we have been trying together
to classify all the information gathered. We published already a
book on the G-91, with the help of Portuguese Air Force, and several articles
in other magazines, including MAIS ALTO the official magazine of FAP.
In one of these articles we clarified for the first time the serialling
system of the Portuguese Military Aviation.
We always had the idea of publishing our material, to make
it available to other fellow enthusiasts.
The arrival of the World Wide Web allowed us to put in practice
our dream, due to the relative easy way for publishing information,
and the potential vast audience.
The aim of these pages is therefore:
- To present as much information as available
on the Portuguese Military Aviation history until today, specially centered
on aircraft and air unit , serials, colours and markings. These, we think,
are the most interesting subjects for all the international aviation enthusiasts.
We must say we have been inspired by the pages on the military
aviation of Brasil and Chile by respectively Rudnei Dias da Cunha and Eduardo
Ahumada, which we think can be models.
- To encourage those that have more information
available, to contact us. This way, and knowing that in this
subject the final truth is very difficult to attain,
we can come near our objective - to be able to present to the widest
audience possible the results of all these efforts.
Perhaps we may go against the "well established facts" that many
times are not completely true, but we think this is one of the more challenging
aspects of any investigation.
We hope also these pages will help to throw light in less known areas of the history (for instance the aircraft interned in Portugal during W.W. II), through feedback of readers and friends.
Trying to put together a light structure we will explain in each sectionits reason and composition.
Also, we opted for presenting the information in blocks , as soon as we are able to prepare it. We will try to cover always the less known facts or the subjects asked for by any interested readers that contact us.
We decided to use the English language instead of the Portuguese one,because we wanted to be reached by the widest audience possible.Anyway we think taht our fellow countrymen will understand us. Our apologies for the language mistakes.
So, we hope you will enjoy the result of
our work and we are eager to receive your comments !