Avro Anson Mk I: Wingleader Photo Archive Number 25

It has always been our intention to cover the ‘less glamorous’ types and they don’t come more ‘less glamorous’ than the good old Avro Anson!

The ‘Annie’ entered service with the RAF in spring 1936 as a Maritime Reconnaissance aircraft. By the outbreak of war however, it was pretty obsolete. With a maximum speed of just 188 mph, the odds of it surviving an encounter with German fighters were extremely small; and so the Anson was reassigned into the training role, where hundreds of them tootled up and down the country, with student pilots and navigators learning their trade inside.

The Air Transport Auxiliary also made great use of the Anson as a taxi to ferry its pilots to and from airfields as they delivered fighters and bombers to the RAF. By all accounts, it was a safe and easy aircraft to fly.

Although there were over 20 different Mks of Anson built, the vast majority were MkIs and so that is what this book concentrates on. It saw service worldwide so we have tried to include as many overseas operators as possible, especially as modellers now have the new Airfix kit to find colour schemes for.

‍This book contains approx 120 original wartime/pre-war photos and 6 in-depth colour profiles