Called “King” by his friends, at 10 Bates built a crystal radio, and was so fascinated with radio that he joined the British Merchant Navy as a radio officer. In 1939, as his country geared up for World War II, Bates transferred to the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve.
On Christmas Day 1943, he was the electrical officer on the flagship Duke of York when it sailed after the German battleship Scharnhorst, which was trying to sink Russian ships in the Arctic; they engaged it north of Norway. At one point an 11-inch German shell exploded near Bates’ perch near the antenna mast. The explosion flipped the ship’s radar antenna out of alignment — it was pointing skyward. They were in the arctic, it was December, it was dark, and there was a force-8 gale blowing: they needed that radar.
Bates climbed the mast, realigned the antenna with his bare hands, and restarted the radar. The Duke of York was able to sink the Nazi ship, and Bates was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. He was dubbed “Barehands Bates”, and the radio man was a hero of the British. Since few had any idea what “radar” was at the time, Bates was depicted in the popular media holding two live electrical cables together with his bare hands, a notion which rather irritated him.
As the war drew to a close, Bates was the commander of a landing party which found secret prisoner of war camps, and released the allied inmates. Later, as a Royal Navy captain, he was assistant director of Naval Intelligence, and then deputy director of the Admiralty Underwater Weapons Establishment. He retired in 1969. Bates died in a British nursing home on May 6 at age 89.