On leaving the army in 1970 to pursue interests in artillery sighting devices, but with several consultancy contracts to keep him afloat, Fraser Scott discovered that some manufacturers were held back by dependence on Ministry of Defence (MoD) contracts that did little to encourage radical thinking because of budgetary constraints.
Six years later, in an attempt to remedy this state of affairs, Scott founded the Defence Manufacturers’ Association (DMA), an organisation that stands as his principal achievement in a life devoted to innovation. The purpose of the DMA was to give companies working in the defence industry a collective consulting capability, especially the smaller, specialist companies that worked in support of contracts won by larger manufacturers for the MoD or foreign clients.
Pressure could not always be brought to bear but the meetings that Scott called and chaired from 1976 to 1978 did a great deal to identify the obstacles facing defence firms. Today, the DMA is made up of 11,000 companies that employ 305,000 people and have an annual turnover of £12-£15 billion.
Sometimes used by the organisation as an apologist for the defence industry, Scott took part in discussions on the ethics of the arms trade, appeared in religious programmes on television and debated whether “defence is an overrated luxury” at Oxford Polytechnic. He once escorted a bishop round a defence equipment exhibition.
Fraser Scott was too unorthodox, too tangential in his thinking, to fit comfortably into the traditional military scene. Yet he would quickly hit on a solution to a seemingly intractable problem. While at a party, he decided to propose marriage by telephone before going abroad, but the only phone was in the room full of people. His office in the same building was locked and on the first floor so he proposed from the top of a ladder that he used to open the window.
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He was reading chemistry at Christ Church, Oxford, on the outbreak of war and already held a Territorial Army commission. A scientific bent and a restlessly inquiring mind led him to devise new gunfire-control equipment and techniques while still a junior officer. Later, in 1955, he conducted a study into the effects of air-burst fire from nuclear artillery in an effort to find a realistic tactical application for nuclear weapons on the battlefield.
Sent in July 1939 to join the prestigious 1st Regiment Royal Horse Artillery on Salisbury Plain to test his suitability for a regular commission, his outspoken views won neither friends nor approval. He was posted to a Territorial Army regiment, which was preparing to leave for Ballymoney in Northern Ireland, where he was assigned the task of surveying possible gun positions round the coast. Surveying caught his fancy but recognising that Ballymoney was likely to remain a remote theatre of war, he volunteered for an artillery course to learn about sound ranging as a means of locating enemy artillery positions. Given his personality, it was inevitable that he would become an authority on the subject.
When qualified, he joined the 1st Survey Regiment Royal Artillery, narrowly missed being sent to Singapore in time for the British surrender of the island, but sailed for the Middle East via South Africa in August 1942. As the battle for Stalingrad raged in southern Russia, Scott’s regiment was sent to support the British force in Iraq in case the Germans won and headed south for the oilfields. When this threat faded, Scott applied again for a regular commission and was again rejected.
Anxious to see action, he fixed a posting and by the autumn of 1944 was in Italy as a troop commander in support of the 1st Battalion Durham Light Infantry under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel “Crackers” May, an eccentric officer with whom he found it easy to empathise.
The Durhams were ordered to take Monte Spaccato but it proved difficult to find a good observation post from where to direct the supporting artillery fire. Standing up to check the view, Scott was promptly shot in the chest, presumably by a vigilant enemy sniper. Urgently applied surgery saved his life and after convalescence in England he stated his wish to become a technical staff officer. As volunteers were in short supply, he was finally granted a regular commission and began his specialist career with the Ministry of Supply’s technical staff.
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Fraser Scott was the son of Major WF Fraser Scott and educated at Marlborough, where he received an anthology by Anthony Trollope as a prize for chemistry, and at Christ Church, Oxford. The girl to whom he had proposed while up the ladder, Bridget “Biddy” Williams, was known to him since childhood. They were married in 1945.
His wife predeceased him. He is survived by a son Adam, who is an Anglican priest, lawyer and engineer, and two daughters: Francis, an orthoptist at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, and Kirstie, a former researcher at Bristol Medical School.
Scott’s postwar career was devoted to research. From artillery he branched out into small arms, tank guns and ammunition and free-flight rockets.
While in London for a technical conference in the early Sixties, Scott called on the MoD branch responsible for the issue of a new range of radios. Finding the officer concerned away on leave, he checked the filing cabinet to see “Not to be issued” pencilled against the name of his regiment. He had no compunction in substituting “Issue as soon as possible”. His regiment received the equipment within a month.
Later, as the colonel responsible for the acquisition of artillery and fire-control equipment, he achieved a coup in a mission to Italy. He gazumped a bid by Indonesia, which was then confronting the Federation of Malaysia, a member of the Commonwealth, in Borneo, to buy the Italian 105mm pack howitzer, an example — as he liked to put it — of counter-battery work at the earliest possible stage.
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Brigadier Fraser Scott, soldier and innovator, was born on September 9, 1919. He died on July 15, 2015, aged 95