Hawker Siddeley HS 748 Hawker Siddeley HS 780 Andover C.1

In the early 1960s the Royal Air Force wanted a medium tactical freighter. Avro offered a military version of the 748 and Handley Page one of the Herald; both were tested at Martlesham Heath in February 1962. The RAF picked the Avro proposal, designated Avro 780, and in April 1963 ordered thirty-one aircraft under the service name Andover C.1.

To prove the concept the original 748 prototype was rebuilt as the Avro 748MF, with an upswept rear fuselage, rear loading ramp and a kneeling undercarriage that dropped the hold floor to truck-bed height. It flew from Woodford on 21 December 1963. Larger four-bladed propellers forced the engines further out from the fuselage, and the wingtips were clipped to preserve the 748's span; the tailplane gained dihedral to keep it out of the propeller slipstream.

The first production Andover C.1 flew from Woodford on 9 July 1965 and the first four went to trials work. After entry into service in 1966 the type equipped Nos 46, 52 and 84 Squadrons in the United Kingdom, the Far East and the Middle East. Seven aircraft were later converted for navigation aid calibration as the E.3 and E.3A, and two more for photographic reconnaissance. The Royal New Zealand Air Force bought ten in 1976 and flew them on United Nations missions and Pacific disaster relief until 1998; range was the limiting factor for the distances involved.

The last British Andovers flew well into the twenty-first century on test work and Open Skies Treaty missions. Several retired airframes went to African civil operators. The last in commercial service, with a Kenyan company, was written off in a non-fatal accident at Malakal in South Sudan in November 2015.