This collection consists of biographical information, correspondence, photocopies of diplomas, speeches, reprints and other material documenting the career of oceanographer Charles Carpenter Bates. It includes material on the U.S. Army Air Force's Technical Command course in meteorology taught by Harald Sverdrup at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 1943. The papers include items documenting Bates experiences as an oceanographer on Operation Crossroads, 1946, and Bates work as a scientist at the U.S. Navy and at the U.S. Coast Guard. There is also a small amount of material documenting his consulting firm, Bates & Glenn. The papers include a few items, including a 1982 letter from Cecil H. Green, commenting on Bates book, Geophysics in the Affairs of Man (1982).