AN AVRO XIX HAS BEEN GIVEN A NEW MILITARY IDENTITY TO COINCIDE WITH THE RAF’S CENTENARY COMMEMORATIONS. DARREN HARBAR TELLS ALL.
Numerous aircraft are flying in special markings this year to celebrate the RAF’s 100th ‘birthday’. A handful have also been fully repainted to mark this important anniversary.
Few, though, are likely to be as eye-catching as the BAE Systems Heritage Flight’s Avro XIX G-AHKX, which emerged from RGV Aviation’s workshop at Gloucestershire Airport in a spectacular new RAF livery on May 5.
The twin-engined classic had been displayed for many years in a pale blue civilian scheme, wearing its registration in large white codes along the fuselage. It now looks very different and represents Avro Anson C.19 TX176, a 1946-built former RAF Coningsby station flight aircraft that served from November 1957 to October 1964.
AVRO NINETEEN PROTOTYPE
The BAE Systems Heritage Flight aircraft was built as part of a batch of 52 Mk.XIXs after World War Two at Avro’s shadow factory at Yeadon in Yorkshire and was sold on to the civil market as an Avro Nineteen (XIX). It was the prototype of the Avro Nineteen Series 2 and was first flown at Yeadon by Avro pilot Ken Cook on November 13, 1946.
It was regi…
