Hawker Siddeley HS 748 748 Military Transport (Series 2A/LFD)

The ramp-equipped Andover answered the demanding tactical transport requirement, but it was a different and expensive aeroplane. For air forces that simply wanted something modern to replace their DC-3s, Hawker Siddeley offered the standard 748 with the minimum necessary changes: the large freight door that had appeared as a civil option from 1971, and a floor able to take concentrated loads.

That freight door is what identifies these aircraft from outside. It sits in the rear fuselage, slides forward and admits loads no passenger door could take. With it, and with removable seating, swapping between cargo and passenger layouts took minutes, needed no special tools and no ground equipment.

In military form the 748 could be cleared to optional overload take-off and landing weights, improving the payload-range trade against the equivalent civil aircraft. The cabin held up to about sixty troops, and at maximum payload the range was on the order of eighteen hundred kilometres.

This was how many small and medium air forces bought the 748. The Belgian Air Force is a well-documented case: after a long search for a Douglas C-47B replacement, the government decided in April 1974 to buy three HS 748s with the side cargo door. They arrived between June and September 1976 and served until 2001 and 2002, when Embraer aircraft replaced them; two were later donated to the government of Benin.