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Lieutenant Colonel Charles C. Bates,
USAF (ret.) after graduation for DePaul University with a degree in geology, he went to work helping to design oil rigs for
a company that would later become Exxon. In 1941, he was drafted into the US Army. The
military sent him to Scripps Institute of Oceanography where he earned a Master’s degree. According
to the DePaul University website, “By June 6, 1944, 1st Lt. Charles C. Bates had evaluated dozens of charts and diagrams,
had compared weather forecasts from different spots of the English Channel and had spent hours at the shore watching the waves
roll in," recounts the Daily Star. "As a member of the Army in World War II, he specialized in oceanography, forecasting
and analyzing sea, surf and swell conditions. Around 3 a.m. that day, he entered the underground war room at the Admiralty
Forecast Center in the London Citadel and saw British captains and commanders jumping around like teenagers. He knew then
his work had paid off.”
According to seismic.seg.org, “In
1960, Dr. Bates joined the Advanced Research Projects Agency, Office of the Secretary of Defense as chief of the Underground
Nuclear Test Detection Branch (Project VELA Uniform). During the next five years, he directed the most massive effort in applied
geophysics that America has yet mounted. In the words of Dr. Harold Brown, the past Secretary of Defense, he "...created
an essentially new field of seismology, more vigorous and more intellectually exciting than the old seismology." Some
of these results were summarized in the 1964 VELA Uniform series published in Geophysics. During these years, he was able
to forge strong links between government and industry that provided the foundation upon which today's active cooperation
is based.”
Lieutenant Colonel Charles C.
Bates is the author of Hydro to Navoceano: 175 Years of Ocean Survey and Prediction by the U.S. Navy and Future
Trends in Transporting Methanol via the Marine Mode. He is also a co-author of Geophysics
in the Affairs of Mankind and America's Weather Warriors, 1814-1985.
The MOAA said of Hydro
to Navoceano: 175 Years of Ocean Survey and Prediction by the U.S. Navy, “This candid narrative describes
the complex interplay leading to today’s state of the art in military hydrography, oceanography, and geophysics at what
is now the Naval Oceanographic Office (NAVOCEANO). Included are many sea stories by those who worked during wars both “hot”
and “cold” form the Equator to the Poles.”
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