While not the most glamorous aircraft operated by the RAAF, it played an important role in the training of Australian pilots and navigators, and numerically was the most operated aircraft by the RAAF with 1028 orders.

The Anson is quite a historic aircraft - being the first plane to have a retractable undercarriage, which was manually operated and required 140 revolutions of a hand wheel to retract or lower, a task that the aircrew dreaded. If the flight was of short duration (say less than 20 minutes), then the chances are the aircrew would have left the undercarriage down.

In the RAAF, the Anson was originally expected for coastal reconnaissance, but due to its poor performance in the loss of an engine, and the poor bomb payload, it was never suited to this (or any other) operational service. Instead the Anson made its mark as a trainer for multi-engine, advanced, observer and navigator training.

The main restoration Anson in the museum - A4-Ax350, was first received by the RAAF on the 6th of February 1942, and on the 4th of September 1942 was transferred to Number 1 Air Observation School. The following year on the 21st of January the aircraft was allocated to the Number 1 Navigation and Wireless Air Gunnery School at Ballarat. However, in heavy rain and attempting to land at night at Point Cook in Victoria on the 16th of August 1943, the aircraft hit a tree and crashed with its undercarriage semi-retracted. From the 11th to the 25th of October of that year, the plane was repaired and overhauled and returned to service. Later in its career, the plane was allocated to Number 6 Service Training Flying School at Mallala, where it remained until it was sold off to the RAAF to a farmer located 6 kilometres away from the airfield on the Owen road, for use as spare parts on farm machinery in the post World War 2 period when metal supplies were short. To ensure the plane could not be flown in an un-airworthy state, the RAAF chopped off the wings in a position similar to where the wings finish on the Anson now, and the farmer would then hook the tail of the plane to his tractor and tow it back to the farm.

The Anson was quite a prominent plane in South Australia - records show that between 1945 and 1957, 1 Anson was sold from Edinburgh, 21 from Mount Gambier, 68 from Mallala, and 95 from Port Pirie, the most of any Australian airfield. Out of the 691 sold around Australia, 185 were sold from S outh Australian RAAF bases, second only to Victoria with 251.

Along with this Anson, there is one Anson cockpit section in the museum (WZ-589) and a full fuselage frame of a later model Anson (MG-390). Interesting to note that the main restoration Anson (A4-AX350) didn't originally have a gun turret, and it was simply skinned over during its time as a trainer with the RAAF, but since entering the museum, it has had a manually operated Armstrong Whitworth gun turret attached. On the later model Anson fuselage in the museum (MG-390), you can note the difference in the gun turrets to A4-AX350, as it has attached the automatically operated Bristol dorsal gun turret.