The F.A.P. has also been a virtual lightening rod for UFO sightings:
http://www.ufoevidence.org/news/article112.htm Portuguese air force on alert over UFO sighting
Agence France Presse (AFP) - 6/3/2004The Portuguese airforce has been on alert since late Tuesday, when several authorities and witnesses reported seeing a luminous unidentified flying object.
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LISBON (AFP) - The Portuguese airforce has been on alert since late Tuesday, when several authorities and witnesses reported seeing a luminous unidentified flying object.
"Military radar surveillance has been increased and F16 planes are ready for take-off" tabloid daily Correio da Manha reported Thursday.
It said the Portuguese civil protection service had received scores of calls from people who reported briefly seeing a silent, luminous object in the sky on Tuesday night, giving off white smoke.
Air force spokesman Colonel Carlos Barbosa confirmed to Lusa news agency that military radars had detected "a target... that was not identified as a plane" for two or three minutes.
The national air traffic control authority, Navegacao Aerea de Portugal (NAV), also confirmed a UFO had been spotted in the north and south of the country just before midnight on Tuesday.
"The control tower in Oporto (north) detected a flying object which had been observed 25 minutes earlier in Montijo and Beja (south)" NAV spokesman Paulo Lagarto said.
The authorities were unable to say what the mysterious object was.
But Jose Fernando Monteiro, a geology researcher at Lisbon's science university, said he had consulted US air defence officials and the UFO could not have been a meteorite.
If it had been a meteorite it would have travelled much faster and made a lot of noise, Monteiro told Correio da Manha and Lusa.
The European Space Agency said the UFO was not a falling satellite either and the Portuguese weather service said there was no meteorological explanation for the phenomenon.
The only person to come up with a possible explanation was astronomist Jose Matos, who said the UFO might have been an Iridium telecommunications satellite.
"These satellites orbit at a height of about 780 kilometres (490 miles). They each have three antennae, which are polished like mirrors and reflect the light of the sun" he told the media.
And this from the 1950's:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFOs_seen_by_Portugal_Air_ForceAt 19:21, four bombers aircraft took off the Ota Air Base, in Portugal. They were under Captain José Lemos Ferreira control. The others pilots were sergeants Alberto Gomes Covas, Salvador Alberto Oliveira e Manuel Neves Marcelino.
It was a routine mission to practise a nocturnal flight at 25.000 feet high between the Ota Air Base, the Spanish city of Granada, the Portuguese city of Portalegre and finally the Portuguese city of Coruche. The night was clear and the moon was almost full. The first part of the operation was successful, and so they turned towards the city of Portalegre.
At this point, Captain Ferreira noticed a light above the horizon. After observing it for 3 or 4 minutes, he warned the others about what he had just seen.
The object looked like a very shining star, but much bigger than normal. Its center changed colors constantly, going from green to blue, and also some yellow and red tones.
Suddenly the object increased its size, becoming 5 or 6 times bigger than before. Right after doing so, the object decreased its size until becoming an almost invisible shining point. The UFO kept on increasing and decreasing its size, and was holding position at 40° left. After 7 or 8 minutes, the object started getting smaller, going down at the horizon, now at 90° left.
Little before reaching Portalegre, at 22:30, Captain Ferreira abandoned his mission, and turned 50° left. At this moment the object was red and much deeper than 25000 feet. After several minutes on this route, the pilots noticed a small yellow circle getting out of the craft. Just some seconds later, 3 more circles appeared.
The main object seemed to be 15 times bigger than the smaller ones, and it was probably the mother ship, as the others were flying around it.
When the UFOs were next to Coruche, the big one suddenly descended and then climbed very quickly, intending to cross the pilots way, in a way that they could see the big UFO passing through them, as the smaller ones disappeared.
The bombers landed without any problems, after a forty-minute flight. They all agreed that there wasn't any easy explanation to the objects. Captain Ferreira declared: "We got no conclusions, except after this, do not give us the old routine of Venus, weather balloons, aircraft and the like which has been given as a general panacea for almost every case of UFOs".[1]
Captain Ferreira was interviewed at the Ota Air Base by the magazine Flying Saucer Review in Lisbon.
