Bruce Austin Fraser, First Baron Fraser
Admiral of the Fleet Bruce Austin Fraser, First Baron Fraser of North Cape, G.C.B., K.B.E., Royal Navy (5 February, 1888 – 12 February, 1981) was an officer of the Royal Navy.
Early Life & Career
was born in Acton, London, 5 February 1888, the younger son (there were no daughters) of General Alexander Fraser, CB, of the Royal Engineers, and his wife, Monica Stores Smith. He was educated at Bradfield College before passing into HMS Britannia in September 1902. He completed his cadetship with distinction, and was appointed a midshipman in HMS Hannibal, a battleship with the Channel Fleet, in January 1904.
In the years that followed, Fraser served in a succession of battleships and destroyers in home waters, being promoted sub-lieutenant in September 1907. In 1911, having determined to become a gunnery specialist, he was posted to HMS Excellent at Whale Island. Fraser passed out top of the course. He acted as gunnery officer in the cruiser Minerva (1914–16), and saw action in the Dardanelles. He spent some months of 1916 on the senior staff of HMS Excellent, thus missing Jutland. At the end of the year, he was posted to the new battleship Resolution, in which he became commander in 1919. Ironically, for an officer who had shown exceptional leadership and technical capabilities, Fraser was obliged to end the war without experiencing a major action in a modern warship.
In April 1920 he suffered a bizarre misfortune. Because he was on poor terms with his captain in Resolution, he sought escape by responding to a call for Mediterranean Fleet volunteers to travel to Baku and assist the White Russian fleet against the Bolsheviks. He arrived in command of his detachment of thirty-one men, just in time to be caught up in a local Bolshevik coup. The British party was imprisoned in wretched conditions until freed in November, when Fraser came home to spend a further two years on the staff of Excellent.
Despite favourable reports and widespread acceptance as a popular and able officer, Fraser's career thus far had been sluggish. But from 1922 onwards he was plainly marked for high rank, earning the commendation of the Admiralty Board in 1924 for his work on a new fire control installation. As fleet gunnery officer in the Mediterranean (1925–6) and as a captain in the Admiralty tactical division (1926–9), he worked close to the heart of the navy's gunnery development. From 1929 to 1932 he held his first seagoing command in the cruiser Effingham in the East Indies. As director of naval ordnance (1933–5), he devised the armament for Britain's last generation of battleships, the 14-inch King George V class.
In 1936–7 Fraser commanded the aircraft carrier Glorious. In January 1938, just short of his fiftieth birthday, he was appointed rear-admiral, and chief of staff to Sir A. Dudley Pound [q.v.] , C-in-C Mediterranean. It was in this role that he forged the close relationship with Pound that continued in World War II, when Pound was first sea lord.
In March 1939 Fraser became controller of the navy and third sea lord. In this role, for three testing years he bore responsibility for the navy's construction and repair programme, perhaps above all for the creation of the corvette, the mainstay of the Atlantic convoy escort system. He also played an important part in the development of warship radar. In May 1940 he became vice-admiral.
Fraser won the confidence of (Sir) Winston Churchill in this period at the Admiralty, and never lost it for the remainder of the war, despite periodic differences of opinion, for instance when the controller opposed Churchill's enthusiasm to build a new battleship. In June 1942 Fraser was sent to sea once more, as second-in-command of the Home Fleet under Sir John (later Lord) Tovey [q.v.] . He arrived just before the tragedy of convoy PQ17, one of the darkest naval episodes of the war.
By 8 May 1943, when Fraser was appointed to succeed Tovey as C-in-C Home Fleet, he could claim wide experience of both naval operations at sea, and their strategic direction ashore. A bluff, cheerful, straightforward officer with much shrewdness and technical knowledge but no pretensions to intellectualism, he was committed throughout his career to making inter-service co-operation a reality. He had shown remarkable gifts for winning the confidence of his peers and political masters at home, while commanding the affection and loyalty of subordinates afloat. Essentially a simple man who used to declare without embarrassment that he had never read a novel in his life, a bachelor who had made the Royal Navy his life-work, he was acknowledged as one of the outstanding naval professionals of his generation. His elevation was widely welcomed.
Yet in the strategic situation in the summer of 1943, it seemed unlikely that Fraser would be granted the opportunity to conduct a major fleet action. The Russian victory at Stalingrad, and the consequent shift in the balance of advantage against the Germans, diminished the importance of the western Allies' Arctic convoys. These now offered a lure to the three German capital ships based in Norwegian waters—Tirpitz, Scharnhorst, and Lützow—but it seemed unlikely that the Germans would consider the bait worth the hazard to their remaining fleet. Correspondingly, the British Home Fleet had been weakened by the transfer of ships to the Mediterranean. Anson and Duke of York—in which Fraser flew his flag—were now the only British battleships at Scapa.
Yet in September, to the surprise of the British, Tirpitz and Scharnhorst sortied for two days to bombard Spitsbergen. This was a negligible feat, yet sharply reminded the Royal Navy of the difficulties of keeping effective watch on the German ships. A fortnight later, a substantial British success was gained, when midget submarines successfully crippled Tirpitz in Kaafiord. She was rendered unfit for active operations for six months. Four days afterwards, Lützow escaped into the Baltic. Scharnhorst was now alone.
As a succession of Allied convoys sailed to Russia that autumn, almost unmolested but shadowed by units of the Home Fleet, Fraser, having declined an offer by Churchill to become first sea lord, continued to believe that Scharnhorst would sooner or later come out. Earlier in the war, the German battle cruiser had inflicted major damage upon British shipping. On 19 December British Ultra decrypts revealed that Scharnhorst had been brought to three hours' readiness for sea. Fraser's Force 2, led by the cruiser Jamaica and the Duke of York—the only British ship with the armament to match that of Scharnhorst—sailed from Icelandic waters at 23.00 hours on 23 December. Fraser had carefully briefed his captains, and carried out repeated exercises in identifying and engaging hostile ships by radar, given the almost permanent Arctic darkness.
On the afternoon of 24 December 1943, in atrocious weather, the British convoy JW55B was ordered to slow to eight knots because Force 2 was 400 miles behind, too distant for comfort when the convoy was only the same distance from Scharnhorst in Altenfiord. Scharnhorst sailed to attack JW55B at 19.00 on 25 December, commanded by Rear-Admiral Erich Bey.
Eight hours later, this news was passed to Fraser, whose ships were still struggling through mountainous seas to close the gap with the convoy. Fraser accepted the risk that Scharnhorst would turn away if he broke wireless silence, and ordered JW55B to turn northwards, away from the Germans. Bey was still searching in vain for the convoy at 07.30 on 26 December, when the 8-inch cruiser Norfolk, a unit of Force I, led by Vice-Admiral (Sir) R. L. Burnett [q.v.] , located Scharnhorst on radar at 33,000 yards. The British ship, with her 6-inch consorts Belfast and Sheffield, opened fire at 09.29. They strove to close the range speedily, and avoid the sort of mauling Graf Spee had inflicted upon a British cruiser squadron four years earlier. At this early stage, Norfolk damaged Scharnhorst's radar. Bey, as the British had expected, at once withdrew at 30 knots.
The British now suffered almost three hours of acute apprehension, having lost touch with Scharnhorst, and being fearful that she might break away into the Atlantic. Only at 12.20 did Belfast triumphantly report the battle cruiser once more in sight. Bey had turned north, still searching for JW55B. Burnett's cruisers and destroyers lay between the Germans and the convoy.
In the second twenty-one minute cruiser action, the British ships suffered significant damage before Scharnhorst broke away unscathed. Yet Bey now hesitated fatally. He knew that a British battle group was at sea. But he believed it was too distant to harm him. Only at 14.18 did he abandon the attempt to engage the convoy and turn for home, independent of his destroyer escort.
Fraser was now racing to cut across Scharnhorst's southward track. At 16.17, Duke of York's 14-inch guns opened fire at 12,000 yards, and straddled their target—clearly illuminated by starshell—with the first broadside. Critics subsequently suggested that Scharnhorst might have been destroyed at this stage of the battle, had Fraser not delayed ordering in his destroyers. He was fearful that a premature torpedo attack would drive the German ship away north-eastwards, beyond his grasp.
Under fire from Duke of York, Scharnhorst turned away at full speed first north, then east. By 17.13, when at last Fraser loosed his destroyers, he had left it too late. The enemy was outrunning both the British cruisers and destroyers. Only Duke of York's guns were still within range. At 18.20, an 11-inch shell from Scharnhorst temporarily severed the flagship's radar cables, blinding her gunners. For a few terrible minutes, Fraser believed that victory had been snatched from him.
Yet just before the British ship was hit, although Scharnhorst had succeeded in opening the range to 20,000 yards, a shell from Duke of York burst in her number 1 boiler room, abruptly cutting the ship's speed to eight knots. Power was restored soon afterwards. But the brief crisis allowed three of Fraser's destroyers to close. Four of the twenty-eight torpedoes which they launched hit Scharnhorst, drastically reducing her power and ensuring her destruction. At 19.45, after enduring concentrated gunfire and torpedo attacks for almost three hours more, Scharnhorst sank. Her guns continued firing almost to the last. Out of her complement of 1,803, thirty-six survivors were plucked from the Arctic darkness.
Duke of York's gunnery had plainly been the decisive factor in the victory. For all the undoubted British advantage of strength, the entrapment and destruction of Scharnhorst had been a considerable achievement, ensuring Fraser's perpetual celebrity in the annals of the Royal Navy, alongside that of the Norwegian North Cape beyond which the battle was fought.
Fraser's remaining service with the Home Fleet was dominated by the conduct of further Russian convoys. But with the shift of strategic attention from the Mediterranean to north-west Europe, force was now available to provide massive escorts, and Allied losses declined steeply. On 16 June 1944 Fraser relinquished command. He was now assigned to become commander-in-chief, Eastern Fleet. In November he became C-in-C Pacific Fleet.
Fraser's task in the Pacific was delicate. The US navy dominated the theatre, and the Royal Navy's contribution seemed not merely modest, but even unwelcome. The Americans were deeply suspicious of British imperial motives in the eastern hemisphere. It is a tribute to Fraser's competence and transparent good nature that he achieved an amicable working relationship with the Americans. He believed passionately in the need to develop—and to perpetuate post-war—Anglo-American co-operation. Such gestures as volunteering to adopt US navy signalling procedures went far to encourage trust.
His command continued to suffer from lack of resources, and it was only in the last weeks of the war that its forces achieved real weight. The British were hampered by the acute discomfort of their ships in tropical conditions. But the fleet made a useful contribution to the last stages of the Pacific war. It was Fraser who signed the Japanese surrender document for Britain, aboard the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay on 2 September 1945.
On his return home in 1946, Fraser was saddened to be denied the succession as first sea lord. He was appointed C-in-C Portsmouth in May 1947, and at last gained the first sea lordship in September 1948, together with promotion to admiral of the fleet a month later.
Fraser's tenure at the Admiralty embraced a series of cold war crises, and finally responsibility for British naval participation in the Korean war. For all the affection and respect that he commanded as an old ‘sea-dog’, Fraser was considered by some critics to possess too limited an intellect to distinguish himself at the summits of power. He retired from the Royal Navy in April 1952, and passed the next twenty-eight years in almost uneventful retirement.
A barony was conferred upon him in 1946. He was appointed GCB in 1944 (KCB 1943, CB 1939); KBE in 1941 (OBE 1919). He was first and principal naval ADC to the King (1946–8), and held honorary degrees from the universities of Oxford (DCL 1947), Edinburgh (LLD 1953) and Wales (LLD 1955). He held the American DSM. He was a member of the Russian Order of Suvarov and of the Grand Order of Orange Nassau (Netherlands); was a chevalier of the Legion of Honour and holder of the croix de guerre with palm (France); and held the grand cross, Order of St Olav (Norway).
A lifelong bachelor, he died in London 12 February 1981. The barony became extinct. A portrait of him by Sir Oswald Birley hangs in the Royal Naval College, Greenwich.
Footnotes
Bibliography
- "Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fraser of North Cape" (Obituaries). The Times. Friday, 13 February, 1981. Issue 60851, col F, pg. 16.
- Humble, Richard (1983). Fraser of North Cape. London: Routledge.
