Matthew M. Hurley is a military historian (PhD, The Ohio State University, 2009) and retired US Air Force colonel (US Air Force Academy, 1990). His 24-year military career included intelligence assignments worldwide, as well as instructor tours at the NATO Tactical Leadership Programme and USAF Air Command and Staff College. He has published and presented numerous works regarding military and air power history, operational design, and intelligence matters, most recently with the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.
José Matos is an independent researcher in military history in Portugal with a primary interest in operations of the Portuguese Air Force during the colonial wars in Africa, especially in Guinea. He is a regular contributor to numerous European magazines on military aviation and naval subjects, and has collaborated in the major project ‘The Air Force at the end of the Empire’, published in Portugal in 2018. This is his first instalment for Helion.