About the aircraft Avron Anson

The Avro Anson was a British twin-engine, multi-role aircraft that served with the Royal Air Force, Fleet Air Arm and numerous other air forces during the Second World War and afterwards

The Avro Anson GR.Mk I was produced to specification 18/35. The first production aircraft flew on 31 December 1935, and only three months later No. 48 Squadron became the first squadron to go operational with the Anson.
The Anson was the first monoplane to enter RAF service, the first aircraft with retractable landing gear, and the only faster aircraft in the RAF were the faster fighters. Nothing demonstrated the dramatic increase in aircraft performance in the years before the Second World War better than the Anson’s rapid decline from the “hot ship” of 1935 to the obsolescent “Faithful Anne” of 1939.

The Avro Anson Mk I was the most numerous version of the aircraft. A total of 6,742 were produced, 3,935 at Woodford and the rest at Yeadon. The Mk I was powered by two Armstrong Siddeley IX radial engines. It carried two machine guns – one fixed forward firing Vickers gun in the nose and one Lewis gun in a dorsal turret. It could carry two 100lb bombs under the wing centre section and eight 20lb bombs under the wings.
Source: http://www.historyofwar.org/index.html

By the end of its production life in 1952, the Anson spanned nine variants and a total of 8,138 had been built in Britain by Avro and, from 1941, a further 2,882 by the Canadian Federal Aircraft Ltd.
Limited numbers of Ansons continued to serve in operational roles such as coastal patrols and air/sea rescue.
The aircraft's true role, however, was to train pilots for flying multi-engine bombers such as the Avro Lancaster. The Anson was also used to train the other members of a bomber's air crew, such as navigators, wireless operators, bomb aimers and air gunners. Postwar, the Anson continued in the training role and light transport roles