M25 motorway re-examined as a motorway route in Sir Charles Bressey's and Sir Edwin Lutyens' "The Highway Development Survey, 1937". Sir Patrick Abercrombie's "County of London Plan, 1943" and "Greater London Plan, 1944" proposed a series of five roads encircling the capital. The northern sections of the M25 follow a similar route to the World War II Outer London Defence Ring, a concentric series of tanks and pillboxes designed to slow down a potential German invasion of the capital. Little was done to progress these plans until the 1960s when the Greater London Council developed its London Ringways plan consisting of four
M25 motorway began in 1973. The first section, between South Mimms and Potters Bar in Hertfordshire (junction 23 to junction 24) opened in September 1975 and was given the temporary general purpose road designation A1178 (a section of motorway-standard-road, originally the M16, which eventually was incorporated into the M25) was completed and operational before this. A Watford-avoiding route between the M1 and the A40 between north Watford and Denham was locally known as the Croxley Green/Rickmansworth bypass, and was operational about 1973/4; a section south of London (junction 6 to junction 8) opened in 1976. A section of Ringway 3 south of