chevvron #24: XP447 was one of very few to move on after its RAF service, to Alaska & California as N1430Z.
AW650 was a political invention, though this time by industry, not Ministry. After Thin-Wing Javelin was cancelled (much fabrication would have been in Coventry), Hawker Siddeley in mid-1956 did not know what to do with AWA. The last of 119 Hunter F.6 was for delivery 2/4/57, last of 57 Javelin F.A.W.7 in ’58, last Vulcan tail would emerge in ’62. AWA's Board extracted HSAL £ in Sept.,’56 for R&D and to lay down 10 AW650 Srs.100. They minimised cost by adapting Lincoln wing and taking Dart with minimal installation engineering (should of course have been Tyne, with much, which RR, as was normal, declined to fund). 7 were taken up by Riddle, for whom roll-on/roll-off was helpful on the Arctic DEW-Line. The other 3 were bought by MoA in 1961, leased to BEAC.
The titty variant was a fluke: UK had paid lip service to the 1958 Nato Basic Military Requirements, hoping to win business without having to buy any of them: they were all part-US funded for the explicit purpose of starting up Aero design competence in NATO's W.Germany. NATO's choice for the field transport NBMR was Nord/VFW C.160 Transall. Its use of Tyne was good, but what it was not was what RAF wanted to haul the new Rapid Deployment Force: C-130E. Ministers in 1959, an Election year, were interested in exporting jobs neither to Georgia nor Bremen. Claiming that UK's need was urgent such that we "could not wait" for C.160, MoA ordered 56 AW660 "off-the-shelf".
It did well on time (OCU, 1/62; Transall in service 1967), but it had no payload/range. BEAC had 6 faintly-better Srs.200, 1965-70. RAF slipped 66 C-130K into 1965's US credit-package and relegated the barrow to Signals.