ATC History
Hello
I'm interested in the history of air traffic control in the UK, and was wondering, when did London Airways (or London Control) start using radar?
From information I have managed to find so far, I notice that during the 1950s Gatwick had radar (Director) but seemed to have only procedural approach until the aircraft was past Mayfield VOR. Also, in a recording of Heathrow ATC in 1975, I noticed that Director asked all arrivals to squawk ident, which seems to suggest that they were coming from a non-radar controller.
If anyone has any info on this I would be interested to hear about it.
Thanks
Callum
Ps - just one more question while I think of it - I see in the early days Gatwick had PAR approach but this was replaced by the SRA approach, does the Gatwick Director at Swanwick have a special radar mode for this, only I did not see it when I was there?