Scott was at sea in the battleship HMS Revenge at the outbreak of war, he took part in convoy operations and the bombardment of Cherbourg, during the period when invasion threatened.

Scott believed that a large canister embarked at Holy Loch in Scotland was "optical instruments", as marked, until, off the Spanish port of Huelva, it was revealed that it contained a body dressed as a major of Royal Marines.

On it were carefully devised high-level documents purporting to show that the Allies were planning to invade Southern Europe through Greece, while holding Sardinia and Corsica.

With Scott on the bridge and Jewell on the upper-deck casing with two officers to assist — the remainder of the crew being kept in ignorance — Seraph crept close inshore in the dark and launched this "courier" together with a half-inflated RAF life raft.

In 1948 he was appointed flag lieutenant to the C-in-C Far East Fleet and was on the fringes of the famous escape of the frigate Amethyst from under the guns of the Chinese Communists on the Yangtse river.

Because she had destroyed all her secret radio codes against capture, Scott’s contribution was to devise and signal to Amethyst a " one-time pad" encryption system based on her nominal crew list which was fortunately available at both ends.

Promoted rear-admiral in 1971, he was posted to Washington D.C. as the head of the British naval mission, forming useful relations with politicians, with Pentagon officials and a friendship with the charismatic US Navy chief, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt.

After exhausting other avenues, Scott blew the whistle on the Chevaline development to the First Sea Lord on the grounds that cost and time had not been properly evaluated and that certain facts had been concealed.

As a result, the department was reorganised; Scott became the chief Polaris programme executive, reporting to the First Sea Lord and with responsibility for both scientific and naval aspects.