On 22 January 1963, Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer signed the Élysée Treaty, sealing the reconciliation of two countries that had fought three wars in seventy years. Thirty-four days later, on 25 February 1963, a twin-turboprop transport rolled down the runway at Melun-Villaroche and lifted off. It was French and German in equal measure, and its name said so.

IL Transall C-160, short for Transporter Allianz, would haul troops, vehicles and aid for the French and German air forces for more than half a century. It dropped paratroopers in Africa, carried electronic spies over the Baltic, and became one of the first true products of Franco-German aerospace cooperation, the seed of what later became Airbus.

Replacing the Noratlas

The story begins in the late 1950s. France and West Germany both flew the piston-engined Nord Noratlas, and both needed something better. According to Airbus, Nord-Aviation proposed a new cargo aircraft in 1957, but French needs alone could not make the programme viable. Germany came in as a partner.

Three companies were chosen to design and build it: Nord-Aviation in France and Weser Flugzeugbau (VFW) and Hamburger Flugzeugbau (HFB) in Germany. The engines would be Rolls-Royce Tynes, and final assembly lines were set up in Bourges, Bremen and Hamburg. Each partner built one prototype; the first, from Nord, flew on 25 February 1963.

Lockheed tried hard to sell Germany the C-130 Hercules instead, but in September 1964 a contract was signed for 160 production aircraft: 110 C-160Ds for the Luftwaffe and 50 C-160Fs for the French Air Force. The first was delivered to France on 22 November 1967, with Germany following in April 1968.

Built for rough strips

The C-160 was a classic tactical airlifter: a high wing, two big turboprops, an upswept tail and a rear ramp. Its hold was sized to fit international railway loading gauges, and it could carry around 16 tonnes of cargo, 93 troops or up to 88 paratroopers depending on the configuration.

It had a clever trick on the ground. The landing gear could be partly retracted to lower the fuselage, so vehicles drove straight into the hold without climbing a steep ramp. Combined with steep approaches and short landing runs on rough strips, that made the Transall at home on the kind of airfields the Hercules was also built for, with only two engines to maintain.

Technik Museen Sinsheim Speyer takes viewers inside one of their preserved Transalls, cargo hold and cockpit included.

A second generation

The first production run ended in the early 1970s. Airbus puts the first-generation total at 169 aircraft, counting three prototypes, six pre-production machines and 160 production aircraft for France and Germany. South Africa also received nine C-160Zs, and in 1971 Germany passed 20 of its aircraft to the Turkish Air Force.

Then France wanted more. A New Generation Transall, the C-160NG, was built on a single assembly line in Toulouse, with modern avionics, an in-flight refuelling probe and extra fuel in the wing centre section. It first flew on 9 April 1981. Some NGs became tankers, four became C-160H Astarté relay aircraft for communicating with France’s submerged nuclear submarines, and two became C-160G Gabriel signals-intelligence aircraft.

Not every Transall wore uniform. Four French C-160Fs were converted into C-160P mail carriers and flown at night for the French postal service, and a pre-production aircraft was leased to the International Committee of the Red Cross at the end of the 1960s. Plans for a stretched civil airliner version and a four-engined Transall never left the drawing board.

Everywhere from Kolwezi to Kabul

Its twin-engine layout was a deliberate choice. Two big Tynes instead of four smaller engines meant lower purchase cost, less weight and fuel burn, and a simpler, more reliable aircraft, while the rugged structure absorbed decades of upgrades. By 1999 some 2,000 modifications had been incorporated, from GPS navigation to missile warning systems and Kevlar armour.

The Transall worked hard. According to Wikipedia, Turkish C-160Ds carried troops and dropped paratroopers during the 1974 invasion of Cyprus, and in 1978 French C-160s dropped Foreign Legion paratroopers into Kolwezi in Zaire. South African aircraft supplied troops in the Border War, and German Transalls supported missions from Sudan to Afghanistan. In 2013, French and German C-160s flew side by side in support of Operation Serval, the French-led intervention in Mali, fifty years after the first prototype took off.

For France, the C-160 was the backbone of military airlift and of support to its bases in Africa for decades. In Airbus’s words, it took part in essentially every military and humanitarian operation from the 1970s to 2020.

The Gabriel was especially prized. Until their retirement, the two signals-intelligence Transalls could still be seen supporting NATO surveillance over the Black and Baltic Seas. Their loss left a gap that France is filling with the Falcon 8X-based Archange.

Il lungo addio

The Airbus Atlas A400M was supposed to replace the Transall by 2018, and its delays kept the old aircraft flying. Germany’s Lufttransportgeschwader 63 at Hohn was the last Luftwaffe unit to fly it, and its final Transall flights came in mid-December 2021, after a year of farewell tours around Germany. The A400M and a new Franco-German C-130J squadron at Évreux took over.

The last flight of a C-160 Transall of Lufttransportgeschwader 63, filmed on 14 December 2021.

France followed a few months later. After a farewell tour in a special livery, the last flight of a C-160 in French colours took place on 3 April 2022, according to Airbus, and aircraft 212 went to the Aeroscopia museum at Blagnac, near the Toulouse factory where it was built.

Turkey kept the type flying longest. Airbus counted two C-160s still in Turkish service in 2023, and Wikipedia records the type’s formal Turkish retirement at Kayseri in March 2026. Even that may not be the end: ex-Luftwaffe airframes have been bought by an Australian company that plans to turn them into water bombers.

A French farewell formation: the C-160 flying with the A400M, C-130 and CN235 that inherited its work.

Sixty years is a long life for any military aircraft. For one born in the same spring as the Élysée Treaty, it is fitting that the Transall’s European story ends with an aircraft built by the company it helped create.

Sources: Airbus (The Transall turns 60), Bundeswehr, AeroTime, Shephard Media, Wikipedia (Transall C-160)