File:Avro Nineteen Srs.2 'G-AHKX' (12837066404).jpg

Owned by BAE Systems and operated by the Shuttleworth Collection. c/n 1333. Seen displaying at Old Warden during the 2013 Autumn Airshow. 06-10-2013

The details below are from the Shuttleworth Collection website:-

The aeroplane which became famous as the Avro Anson was designed in 1933 around an Imperial Airways requirement for a high performance, twin engined transport. Avro's Chief designer, Roy Chadwick, created the Avro 652 by cleverly relocating the one piece wooden wing from the established Avro-Fokker high wing airframe to produce a modern low wing twin with a welded steel tube fuselage. Only two civil 652s, which carried four passengers and a crew of two, were built as, while the aeroplane was still in the design stage, the Air Ministry invited tenders for a coastal patrol landplane to a very similar specification. Avro beat the fierce competition and, with various modifications to meet Service requirements, the first 652A, as the military version was known, flew in December 1935 and was given the Service name Anson Mk.I. This was the prototype of nearly 1,000 aircraft delivered to the RAF by the outbreak of WW2 and which fulfilled many roles from bomber through air sea rescue to ambulance: it was, incidentally, the first aircraft in RAF service with retractable undercarriage. The Anson continued in production throughout the War and went through many Marks and configurations in military service with various nations until the first major redesign in 1944. Prominent changes were the raising of the cabin roof to give more headroom and hydraulic operation of the undercarriage. Post-war an Anson Mk.12 was fitted with nine seats and five oval windows a side to meet the Brabazon XIX feeder liner specification in a version known as the Avro 652A Nineteen. A military variant was ordered by the RAF as the C.Mk.19. The Nineteens were built in two versions, the Series 1 with wooden wings and tailplanes and the Series 2 with metal tailplane and tapering, slightly greater span fabric covered metal wings. Many series 1s were later converted to metal wings. The last of 11,020 Ansons of all marks first flew in May 1952 and the Anson did not retire from RAF service until June 1968.

This aircraft 'G-AHKX' had the first of its test flights in November 1946 and was subsequently delivered to Smiths Instruments at Staverton who operated it on communications and instrument development work until 1959. For the next six years it was used on aerial survey contracts by Meridian Air Maps, based at Shoreham. Sold on in 1958 to Treffield Aviation, G-AHKX flew freight until returning to survey work with Kemps Aerial Surveys Ltd of Southampton in 1968. Kemps kept the aircraft for just under five years, until early 1973, when it was acquired by the expanding Strathallan Museum.