RIP: Captain 'Barehands' Bates

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...Bates was exasperated after the war by the way he
was regularly depicted as "Barehands Bates", holding live electrical wires
together, in comics and on the backs of cereal packets...


Captain 'Barehands' Bates
(Filed: 11/05/2006)

Captain "Barehands" Bates, who has died aged 89, played a vital
role in sinking the German battleship Scharnhorst by climbing the mast of his
ship to adjust its radar aerial.

On Boxing Day 1943 Bates was electrical officer in Duke of York,
the flagship of Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser, when Scharnhorst slipped out of the
Norwegian fjords to attack Russian convoy JW55B, off the North Cape.

It was blowing a force 8 gale in the bitterly cold permanent dark
when Bates, whose action station was high in the ship under the tripod mast,
reported the echo of Scharnhorst, which had been trapped by Fraser's tactical
manoeuvring while being shadowed by the cruiser Belfast.

Bates's report enabled Fraser to close within visual range at
8,000 yards, enabling Duke of York to surprise Scharnhorst with a first salvo.

German near-misses were soon falling around the British ship
when, with a sudden whoosh, the radar failed.

Bates and his two operators were thrown in a heap to the deck,
and when he picked himself up the radar, though seeming to work, showed no
echoes.

Puzzled, Bates climbed two-thirds the way up the swaying mast.
Feeling about in the dark, with the aid of a small torch between his fingers, he
found that the aerial was pointing skywards: the shock wave of a German 11-inch
shell, which had passed though the tripod mast and under Bates's feet, had blown
it out of alignment.

Bates returned the aerial to the horizontal and restarted the
gyro-stabiliser so that within a few minutes the radar was working again, thus
restoring to Fraser the advantage of a clear tactical picture in the prevailing
low visibility.

When Duke of York's guns re-commenced firing in radar-control, 25
of 44 salvoes were near-misses, 16 of them within 200 yards; at least three hits
were seen, one of them starting a fire on the after superstructure.

At about 18:20, Duke of York scored a direct hit, which
penetrated Scharnhorst's starboard side and put a boiler-room out of action,
thereby reducing the speed so that she was was sunk a few hours later.

Radar was still a complete mystery to most people, and the story
of its restoration was therefore all but incomprehensible.

Afterwards the ship's company believed that Bates, a strong man
standing six foot three inches tall and weighing 19 stone, had climbed the mast
to hold together the radar antennae; but the public was told that he had
repaired wireless leads.

He was awarded the DSC for great gallantry, determination and
skill while his radar operators, Able Seamen Horace Badkin and Geoffrey Whitton,
were awarded the DSM.

Nevertheless, Bates was exasperated after the war by the way he
was regularly depicted as "Barehands Bates", holding live electrical wires
together, in comics and on the backs of cereal packets.

Harold Raymond Kingsmill Bates, always known to his friends as
"King", was born on November 3 1916, the first son of the rector of Horsington,
Lincolnshire.

He was named after two uncles, Harold and Raymond, who had
already been killed in the First World War. Young Bates was educated at St
Michael's, Tenbury Wells, Worcestershire, and as a choral scholar at Magdalen
College, Oxford.

He never lost his love of church music. But after building his
first crystal wireless aged 10, he joined the Merchant Navy as radio officer,
and transferred to the RNVR in 1939.

Bates saw service in the Battle of the Atlantic and Mediterranean
convoys in corvettes and destroyers, and was in the battleship Malaya at the
North African landings.

Later, he witnessed the surrender of the Japanese from the
quarterdeck of the battleship King George V in Tokyo Bay in August 1945.

As commander of a landing party, he was commended for his
initiative and compassion in searching for and releasing large numbers of allied
prisoners of war, some of whom were held in secret camps.

After the war Bates transferred to a regular long-service
commission and served in the cruisers Jamaica and Cumberland.

For a generation he specialised in the radar control of guns and
missiles, including a spell as the weapons and electrical officer in the cruiser
Tiger, where he supervised trials of the Medium Range System Mark 3 (MRS3), a
fully automatic radar control system for her guns.

MRS3 became widely fitted in the fleet and, working closely with
Sperry's of Slough and the Short Brothers of Belfast, Bates extended its
application to short-range missile defence, using the Royal Navy's Seacat
missile system.

Claiming to be the only man who understood MRS3, he delighted in
writing the handbook, which, unusually, was a model of clarity.

As a captain Bates was assistant director of Naval Intelligence,
and then deputy director of the Admiralty Underwater Weapons Establishment at
Portland, before retiring in 1969.

Bates then bought and ran a filling station and shop at Yarnbrook
crossroads, Trowbridge, Wiltshire, where he was assisted by an ex-chief petty
officer, known only as "Mr Fido", who was vigilant in guarding the sweet counter
from small boys.

Bates enjoyed a beer at the Long Arms opposite, from where he
could view the forecourt and sally forth as necessary to serve customers.

Bates had a passion for motor cars, owning a Rover Speed 20
drophead coupé, a Jaguar XK120 and many later models of Jaguar.

He also bought one of the first Mini Coopers, which he had to
drive with his large frame doubled-up. In his spare time he was usually head
under the bonnet, stripping down engines and maintaining cars for family and
friends - not always an easy task with his huge hands.

Sometimes described as "tall, dark and some hands", family legend
had it that he inherited these from a miller grandfather, John White of East
Redford, Lincolnshire, who was said to be able to throw a bag of flour further
than any man in the county.

He preferred the company of woman and enjoyed being at the centre
of things, never more so than at a good party. Latterly, with his second wife,
he became an incurable traveller by cruise liner and by jet, usually to the
Mediterranean.

In 1978 Bates returned to the county of his birth, and for the
last two years lived in a Skegness nursing home, where the staff suffered his
dictatorial and eccentric tendencies with tolerable good humour.

King Bates, who died on May 6, married Peggy Browning in 1942.
She died in 1969 and he married, in 1987, Gwen Champion (née Hakes); she died in
2004.

A daughter also predeceased him and he is survived by a younger
daughter of his first marriage. His son-in-law became a captain in the Royal
Navy, and a grandson is a lieutenant-commander in the carrier Illustrious.

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