FRASER (OF NORTH CAPE), BRUCE AUSTIN FRASER, 1ST BARON

born Feb. 5, 1888, Acton, near London died Feb. 12, 1981, London British admiral in World War II and chief of the naval staff (194851). Fraser entered the Royal Navy in 1902 and served as a gunnery officer in World War I. He continued his interest in gunnery after the war and in 1933 became director of naval ordnance. At the start of World War II he was controller of the navy and was in large part responsible for directing its expansion during the 193941 period. Fraser then became commander in chief of the Home Fleet and was chiefly concerned with the protection of convoys to the U.S.S.R. On Dec. 26, 1943, aboard his flagship Duke of York, he fought and sank the German battleship Scharnhorst off Norway's North Cape in an engagement conducted largely at night with the aid of radar. As admiral in 1944 he was appointed commander in chief of the British Pacific fleet and on Sept. 2, 1945, signed the Japanese surrender papers for Great Britain in Tokyo Bay. Fraser was made a peer in 1946 and admiral of the fleet in 1948, and from 1948 to 1951 he was first sea lord of the Admiralty.