Wingleader Publications AVRO Anson Mk.I in Worldwide Service - Photo Archive #25 ISBN: 9781908757371

[Mike]

AVRO Anson Mk.I in Worldwide Service

Photo Archive Number 25 ISBN: 9781908757371

Wingleader Publications

 

 

Originally designed as a fast mail carrier in the early 30s, the original AVRO design was amended in the mid-30s in response to a specification issued by the Air Ministry for a reconnaissance aircraft that could also perform other roles.  It beat a similarly militarised de Havilland Rapide and was awarded a contract for series production with the name Anson after an 18th Century Admiral of the Fleet.  At the outbreak of war it was still performing its given roles, and was engaged in the Dunkirk evacuation where it surprisingly managed to shoot down two Bf.109s and damage another, as they found the low speed of the Anson hard to gauge, overshooting straight into the line of the nose-mounted .303 machine gun operated by the pilot.  She was thoroughly outclassed as a front-line aircraft though, so was soon withdrawn from fighting service to form part of the training fleet, and as a communications ‘hack’.

 

Despite its withdrawal from front-line service, more aircraft were built, and they were used as trainers for radar operators, navigators and as a stepping-stone for pilots that were destined to fly multi-engined bombers.  Its replacement in maritime service was the Lockheed Hudson, which had a substantially increased range and speed, the Anson only being capable of a four-hour endurance that prevented it from covering much of the Atlantic or North Sea before it had to turn for home.  It could carry a small bomb load however, so could take offensive action if it was to find a U-boat on its travels.  Following WWII, Faithful Annie as she became known was used as a civilian and business aircraft, although some of the wooden-winged examples that were used overseas began to suffer from problems due to humidity’s effect on the timber areas.  Not all Ansons flew on wooden wings though, and some of the wooden winged aircraft were retrofitted with the improved metal wings, although even these were eventually retired, leaving only one airworthy by the turn of the new millennium.

 

 

The book

This twenty fifth volume in the series by Andrew Thomas and Simon Parry covers the Anson Mk.Is exclusively, as they made up the majority of airframes built, even though there were several other variants during its service.  The book starts with the prototype that was created for civil use by Imperial Airways as the Type 652, gaining the approval of the military procurement staff as a potential trainer for pilots, navigators and gunners of the RAF and FAA.  Pictures of the civilian and military prototypes are to be found on the front few pages of the book, the original needing dozens of changes to be accepted for service, arrowing the square windows as one such item.

 

 

 

Some of the photos are of course staged for official use and in publications of the time, but there are also a large number of candid, personal and engineering shots, and some are of damaged aircraft, one lying flopped on the airfield after a less-than-successful landing by a novice pilot, another damaged by a “forced landing”, which could be pilot-speak for a mistake.  The photo of the Anson “parked” on top of another on the airfield will have you scratching your head until you read the caption.  Believe it or not, they collided mid-air and became locked together but with a degree of control, and miraculously, managed to land in that same predicament with no loss of life.

 

 

 

A visually impressive book with plenty of reading material into the bargain that will have you coming back to it again and again.  The inclusion of a unique float-plane conversion is tempting, and it was used as a teaching airframe for pilots before they progressed to Sunderlands, instructing them on water-handling of heavy aircraft without taking a four-engined Sunderland flying boat off front-line service.  There is also a section on Ansons in foreign service, including a batch sold to America from Canadian stock fitted with new engines and wearing stars-and-bars.  The last page of photos is a rare colour imagine of an Anson with a female aviator in the pilot’s seat, which faces a couple of tables printed on the inner cover that reproduces a list of all operational squadron codes, and serial number batches that the type used.

 

Highly recommended.

 

 

Review sample courtesy of

[Wheelsup]

Also has detail to help with an interesting cockpit mod. The second pilot's control column and rudder pedals were removable, to let a bomb aimer get into the nose!