Faithful Annie

 

I enjoyed doing the Wellington picture so much that I'm now going to work through all of the aircraft in The Larks and Maybe It's Tonight. They'll be at much higher resolution so that they can print out to a nice big picture for the wall. The first is this Avro Anson. It's the squadron hack that Harry Sallis (and just about everyone else) uses for general runabout duties, so it's not in the pink of condition, but it's impossible not to love it.

In Harry's words: 'The squadron hack showed plenty of evidence of hard usage, but it was still an Anson, and that meant friendly, dependable and faithful as a spaniel.'

The markings are correct for Harry's squadron - 142 Squadron, based at the time of the book at Waltham, near Grimsby. I wanted to use a real Anson registration, so chose W2364. She's the Anson 1 belonging to NHill Aviation Heritage Centre in Victoria, Australia. I hope one day to visit her.