John Scott Dove

Commander (retired) John Scott Dove, O.B.E., R.N. (7 April, 1893 – ) served in the Royal Navy. He proved an gifted inventor and tinkerer.

Life & Career

The son of William Dove, Esq., a gentleman.

Though the mechanism was not adopted, on December 1912, he demonstrated "zeal and ingenuity" in inventing a new type of Pioneer.

On 8 October 1913, he was appointed to the armoured cruiser Defence. While in this appointment, he would work with other officers, including Hugh Cecil Robert Feilding, to implement an extempore director firing installation in the armoured cruiser Defence, for which the Admiralty thanked him in June 1915.

Dove was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant on 15 April, 1915 and awaited his next assignment in Portsmouth. On 4 May, he was appointed to join the newly-completed light cruiser Cleopatra. Dove would otherwise serve in Cleopatra until being appointed to the flotilla leader Parker as gunnery officer in August 1916. On 12 October, he was ordered to report to the Admiralty, where he was directed to join Royal Sovereign on 10 November 1916. He would serve in the battleship until February, 1919. He continued his work in solving outstanding problems of naval warfare, including devising a system to allow a ship to fire through a smoke screen in 1917-1918. It appears that he did this work in concert with Lieutenant R.N.V.R. Hugh Clausen, and that this was perhaps an early version of what would eventually become known as Gyro Director Training Gear.

His innovations had become known widely enough that Beatty would suggest that a follow-on effort to design fire control tables from the ground up after the Grand Fleet Dreyer Table Committee should include Dove and Clausen. In 1922, he and Clausen were awarded a patent, and were later each awarded £2,000 for their development of G.D.T. gear.

Dove was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-Commander on 15 April, 1923. He was granted permission to become an aide-de-camp to Admiral of the Fleet Viscount Jellicoe in August 1923, and was to be placed on half pay upon leaving England. He returned from New Zealand at some poin in 1924, via the Suez, arriving in London on 24 January 1925. In May 1925, Dove was appointed to H.M.S. Emperor of India.

In May 1927, Dove was again appointed to Royal Sovereign.

In 1930, he assisted the Royal Commission in evaluating invention claims of Sir James Blacklock Henderson, who would eventually be awarded £12,500 for his inventions, which included the Henderson Firing Gear.

On 2 December 1930, Dove was admitted to Haslar Hospital for mental observation and was allotted two months. He was granted sick leave until 11 July 1931. However, when this period elapsed and he was further evaluated, the decision was made to place Dove on the Retired List as medically unfit on 16 July 1931. He was promoted to the rank of Commander on 7 April, 1933.

World War II

Dove saw some service in the war, but his mental fragility soon limited him to shore service only when he was diagnosed with hypomania at Royal Naval Hospitals, Chatham and Barrow Gurney. He finally found himself at Augusta, assisting the Resident Naval Officer.

See Also

• Service Records