LATCC West Drayton
 

I heard a story that in the 1960s when the site of the new ATC Centre was being chosen the senior RAF officer who made the decision chose West Raynham but was mis-heard by his Secretary who was a little hard of hearing as West Drayton.

Does anyone know if this is true and if it isn't it should be because it is a great story and it would explain one or two things.

I heard this too, but I don't know the truth of it. It could just be ATC humour !

I heard that someone on a course, who had been posted to LATCC, thought it was a village on the South Coast. LATCY?

Personally I would rather have gone to West Raynham.

I heard the story as two sites were being considered, Market Drayton and West Raynham - and the inevitable happened! What a bl**dy dump West Drayton was, I hated every minute I spent there. If LATCC had been built on any of the sites out in the sticks that NATS owned I probably would never have gone on 'my travels'!

Agreed Brian. The site was previously a prison I believe (or was that another joke). Just swapped one set of bars for another. The delights of sitting on the flight plan suite in the Ops room on nights watching couples having it off up the closes between the Council Houses over the street.

I heard the story back in the 1960s so it's nothing new.

What a brilliantly stupid decision. The Air Defence Headquarters for the country co-existant, in a soft building about 8 km due North of Heathrow. Would have been almost impossible for the Russians to find it. Later I remember seeing bunkers placed along the front, obviously to deter the IRA hoying hand grenades through the windows

BTW it would have been planned back in the 50s)

Market Drayton would have been even better than West Raynham.

You can't be serious. Have you been to Market Drayton?

Yes, but you could have lived in leafy Cheshire in places such as Nantwich or in Shropshire.

Much as I like the idea of working at either West Raynham or Market Drayton I fear that this is just an urban myth. Having joined at West Drayton in 1972 there was a very good reason for its siting. The old radar station was on the north side of EGLL and the S264 radars were fed through heavy cabling to give an analogue picture, the old 10 mile wide blips! The new radar centre had to be within a few miles of Heathrow as the signal degraded significantly over distance due to cabling. Digital radar was a few years away. The first digitised radar at LATCC was from Burrington which came down telephone lines in 1973. Up until this time the centre had to be near the radar heads, West Raynham would have been too far away. However it is a very pleasant thought!!

Yes...Good point DC10man

LATCC West Drayton
 

The selection of the run-down RAF station at West Drayton was no accident. The nucleus of the initial civil and military controllers that would man LATCC would move across from Heathrow Radar, so a site in the general vicinity was considered essential. Cost was as usual a major factor, so the whole place was built on the cheap, as anyone who ever worked there knows only too well. Thankfully the RAF were committed to LATCC development and were therefore not involved in the planning or anything else when the Swanwick plan got underway.

The Fighter Control element at West Drayton (Linesman) was essentially a trial of the system to see if it would work, so housing Linesman 1 (L1) in a bunker was considered unnecessary. If the Linesman concept actually worked, then Linesman 2 was planned to be installed at Bawburgh, an Sector Operations Centre R4 bunker in Norfolk. In the event the whole Linesman programme was a complete disaster and a colossal waste of money; consequently, it was effectively abandoned and the concept of the Master Radar station was introduced instead.

West Drayton was great! You could live in London or out in the Home Counties. Great transport links. Wherever you chose to live you made more on your house than you did as an ATCO.

I hate Hampshire!!

To do that you've first got to get on the property ladder. That's becoming more and more difficult with the stupid prices asked for houses there.

Too true LM but it was a lot easier to get on the ladder 10 years ago when Drayton was in its death throes.
And I'll wager that every ATCO posted to West Drayton from at least the mid 80s onwards made a tidy sum on property, much more so than if LATCC had been in the Midlands or Norfolk. Or almost anywhere else in the country.

…er…I think you must mean 're-located'. Some of us were 'posted' across the A4, just for love...

Most of the ATCOs I knew lived miles away from LATCC, including me!

and I can certainly add that no, not every ATCO posted from the mid-80s made a tidy sum on property. Sweeping false statement :ugh:

My Pa was posted to West Drayton in the seventies - I'd left home by then. The family was quartered in Uxbridge.

An old STPO at Aldergrove insisted on calling LATCC LAXEY. No amount of discussions would persuade her that LATCC was NOT situated on the Isle of Man.