In July 1942 Charles Coke joined the large fleet aircraft carrier Victorious, flagship to Admiral A. L. StG Lyster, in the rank of commander and as an aircrew observer specialist. Although he was only the second senior airman on board, it was he who was awarded the DSO for his intelligent management of the force’s air defence and fighter direction during the most hard-fought of all the Malta convoys, Operation Pedestal, in August that year.

In May 1941 he had been appointed to an air station at Craill in Scotland to instruct pilots in air tactics. In conversation with others who had fighter direction experience, he conceived the idea that there should be a School of Fighter Direction in order to pool experience and standardise technique. Although the idea was new and suspect, it caught on, and Coke was sent to the naval air station at Yeovilton to set it up.

Borrowing a radar set from the RAF and using fighter school aircraft, he set to work. Soon it became apparent that there were not enough aircraft to be spared, so Coke set up a ground training system that he had seen used by Fighter Command, and adapted it for naval use.

It consisted of Walls’ ice-cream tricycles fitted with aircraft radios, which were to be pedalled around the airfield as ordered by trainees, their positions recorded as if by radar. Much ridiculed, it turned out to provide splendid elementary training, although, if manned by muscular and overzealous young officers, the “fighters” tended to pedal too fast for realism when the “bomber” to be attacked was a Wren. Perhaps more important was Coke’s insistence that fighter directors should be recruited from the mentally quickest and sharpest, not a few of whom were RNVR officers who had formerly been university lecturers, doctors, lawyers and musicians.

Malta — sometimes cited as the “Verdun of the Mediterranean campaign” — was, by reason of its garrison of aircraft, ships and particularly submarines, a vital base for offensive operations against Axis supply lines. Recent convoys supplying Malta from both east and west had suffered terribly. By August 1942 the island was in desperate straits and a strenuous effort was required. The force set off from Gibraltar on August 10, with 14 merchant ships and an escort at various times of two battleships, three aircraft carriers, six cruisers and 14 destroyers.

At 5pm that day a French civil aircraft flying from France to Algeria obligingly broadcast an accurate composition of the force with its position, course and speed — the Italian Official History dryly remarking that “This interesting information proved of the greatest usefulness later. . .”

The carrier Eagle was the first ship to be sunk — by a U-boat — and it was followed by nine merchant ships, two cruisers and a destroyer, with numerous other ships being damaged.

Victorious and Indomitable had exchanged most of their well-behaved but slow two-seater Fulmar aircraft for American Martlets and Sea Hurricanes, as the Fulmar was no match for German and Italian land-based fighters. These different types had to be allocated to the most suitable height regime and Victorious’s new height-finding Type 79B radar was especially valuable.

Deck operations were complicated by the fact that the Sea Hurricane could not fit down Victorious’s flight deck lifts to her hangars. Later in the operation, Indomitable was bombed and part of her flight deck “rolled up as with a tinopener”. Thus some dozen of her aircraft had to be recovered to Victorious, who herself had only been saved by her armoured flight deck from a daringly aimed Italian 100lb bomb. Keeping Victorious’s air group active was therefore a major challenge, requiring minute-to-minute decisions about, for example, which damaged aircraft to push overboard. Under Coke’s organisation, carrier aircraft did their best against waves of Heinkels and Stukas, but only five merchantmen, including the famous tanker Ohio — strapped between two destroyers — made it into Malta.

Coke joined the Indomitable after repairs in December 1942 and next summer took part in Operation Husky, the landings in Sicily, leaving her for a post in the plans division of the Admiralty in December 1943. Here his brains and acumen earned him a place at the Allied conference at Quebec in 1944 and with Churchill’s delegation to meet Stalin and Roosevelt at Yalta in February 1945.

Before the war, Coke served as a young lieutenant for two years from late 1930 in the sloop Shoreham in the East Indies, then in the carrier Furious on the Home station. Inspired to become an aviator himself, he qualified as an observer in 1935. At one point he was lent to the RAF and the School of Naval Cooperation at RAF Ford in Sussex.

Shortly after the war, he was second-in-command of the cruiser Nigeria, flagship of the South Atlantic station, and was lucky to survive being washed overboard while leading a team securing moveable gear on deck. In weather too rough to lower the lifeboat, brilliant shiphandling enabled him to be fished out directly, little the worse except for “swallowing a couple of gallons of Indian Ocean”.

During an enjoyable two years on the naval staff in Washington, as well as his professional qualities, he was noted for his Cadillac convertible and his taste for soft-shelled crabs.

He was promoted to captain in 1951 and appointed deputy director of the navigation and direction division of the Admiralty followed by a tour as captain of the fast minelayer Apollo in the Mediterranean. Here he was rewarded for diplomatic success in Morocco by appointment as Commander of the Order of Ouisson Alaouite.

Returning to the plans division as deputy director in December 1954, Coke was heavily involved in the extraordinarily difficult decisions of the day, concerned with the affordable size and shape of the fleet in the budgetary aftermath of the Korean War, the carrier programme and how to accommodate the threat of nuclear weapons into naval strategy.

His diligence was rewarded by appointment in 1957 to perhaps the best seagoing command then available — the Victorious, then emerging from refit as the only armoured hangar carrier to receive a full rebuild with a fully angled deck, steam catapults, updated communications and the conspicuous “dustbin” three-dimensional Type 984 radar. She was thus capable of operating the new generation of powerful jet aircraft, the Scimitar fighter and the Buccaneer nuclear-capable bomber. Much of her programme under Coke involved the assimilation trials of these aircraft.

Officers working for him describe him as “the best captain they ever served with” and “the last gentleman in the Royal Navy”. His reputation as a cultured “foodie” continued; he so galvanised the Victorious’s commissariat that, when alongside in harbour, it was noticeable that ratings wearing other ships’ cap tallies seemed (illegally) to gravitate towards Victorious’s dining halls at meal times.

Although these matters are confidential and Coke was an extremely private person, given the quality of his latter appointments it does seem likely that the belief that he refused promotion to flag rank is true.

His wife Denise Heywood, who he had married in 1939 and who died in 1982, was becoming profoundly deaf and Coke may have taken the view that his own personality was not suited to the cut, thrust and ruthlessness of the higher reaches of the service.

He retired to Spain in 1960 and lived near Málaga until his death, occasionally returning for Navigation and Direction reunions at Yeovilton. For many years he made his home on his yacht Pleiades, before eventually settling on a “land yacht”. In later years he became absorbed in his rare books, his painting, the music of J. S. Bach and the study of Christianity — although he never embraced the faith.

He is survived by his companion, Peggy Jennings.

Captain Charles Coke, DSO, naval aviator, was born on July 17, 1909. He died on February 6, 2003, aged 93.