page_title: Peter Scott
section_title: Second World War
hierarchical_section_title: Peter Scott / Second World War
caption_attribution_description: English: Motor Gun Boats during the Second World War, 1939-1945 Steam Gun Boat, MGB S309, under the command of Lieutenant Commander Peter Scott underway at sea. S.309 was also known as 'Grey Goose'
context_page_description: Sir Peter Markham Scott, CH, CBE, DSC & Bar, FRS, FZS was a British ornithologist, conservationist, painter, naval officer, broadcaster and sportsman. The only child of Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott, he took an interest in observing and shooting wildfowl at a young age and later took to their breeding.
  He established the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust in Slimbridge in 1946 and helped found the World Wide Fund for Nature, the logo of which he designed. He was a yachting enthusiast from an early age, and took up gliding seriously in mid-life. He was part of the UK team for the 1936 Summer Olympics and won a bronze medal in the sailing event. He was knighted in 1973 for his work in conservation of wild animals and was also a recipient of the WWF Gold Medal and the J. Paul Getty Prize.
context_section_description: During the Second World War, Scott served in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve. As a Sub-Lieutenant, during the failed evacuation of the 51st Highland Division he was the British Naval officer sent ashore at Saint-Valery-en-Caux in the early hours of 11 June 1940 to evacuate some of the wounded. This was the last evacuation of British troops from the port area of St Valery that was not disrupted by enemy fire.
  Then he served in destroyers in the North Atlantic but later moved to commanding the First (and only) Squadron of Steam Gun Boats against German E-boats in the English Channel.
  Scott is credited with designing the Western Approaches ship camouflage scheme, which disguised the look of ship superstructure. In July 1940, he managed to get the destroyer HMS Broke (D83) in which he was serving experimentally camouflaged, differently on the two sides. To starboard, the ship was painted blue-grey all over, but with white in naturally shadowed areas as countershading, following the ideas of Abbott Handerson Thayer from the First World War. To port, the ship was painted in "bright pale colours" to combine some disruption of shape with the ability to fade out during the night, again with shadowed areas painted white. However, he later wrote that compromise was fatal to camouflage, and that invisibility at night (by painting ships in white or other pale colours) had to be the sole objective. 
  By May 1941, all ships in the Western Approaches (the North Atlantic) were ordered to be painted in Scott's camouflage scheme. The scheme was said to be so effective that several British ships including HMS Broke collided with each other. The effectiveness of Scott's and Thayer's ideas was demonstrated experimentally by the Leamington Camouflage Centre in 1941. Under a cloudy overcast sky, the tests showed that a white ship could approach six miles (9.6 km) closer than a black-painted ship before being seen.
caption: Steam Gun Boat, SGB S309, under the command of Lieutenant Commander Peter Scott, underway at sea
exif: {}