Partly due to the Overseas War, on 25 April 1974, middle rank officers of the Portuguese Armed Forces launched a military coup that became known as the "Carnation Revolution" and overthrew the Estado Novo regime. This led to a re-orientation of the Portuguese policy towards the grant of independence to the Overseas territories, with ceasefires being quickly negotiated and agreed with the several nationalist movements. The independence of the several territories followed, occurring between September 1974 (Guinea-Bissau) and November 1975 (Angola). In the middle of the turmoil of the Revolution and the turbulent independence process, the FAP still had to perform some air operations to counter the violation of the Angolan northern border by foreign forces, to support the withdrawal of the Portuguese forces scattered across the several territories and to aid the evacuation of the hundreds of thousands of Portuguese civilians that had fled from those territories. The FAP gradually withdrew from the several Overseas territories, delivering its bases and part of its aircraft to the authorities of the new countries. A reverse process occurred however in Portuguese Timor, to where FAP had to send a detachment of Alouette III helicopters and another of paratroopers to aid the local authorities in the independence process of what would become East Timor and which was degenerating in a civil conflict. These two detachments ended up becoming the only relevant forces with which the Portuguese Governor could count. When Indonesia launched the invasion of East Timor on the 7 December 1975, the FAP detachments were with the Governor in Atauro Island, withdrawing with him to aboard two Portuguese warships, with the helicopters being destroyed and abandoned on the island.