Authors: Ben Ruhe
Date Submitted: February 28, 2006
Article Type: Journal

An oddity showed up a while back on an Internet auction site—-a classic Gibson Girl kite of World War ll fame. Associated with the Allied cause, the kite on offer was strikingly different from the usual. Instead of assembly instructions in the usual English, they were in German—-the enemy at that time. How could that be?

The Gibson Girl kite was famously linked to emergency life rafts used by American fliers and seamen. England and other Allies used the rig too. The rafts with their rescue equipment were made in the tens of thousands. The kite aboard was a very basic cloth-covered Boxkite with umbrella opening mechanism. It was about one meter by onehalf meter in size and easy to assemble. The kite raised the aerial of an emergency radio to summon help. The Gibson Girl nickname actually described the portable transmitter used with the kite because its shape—-rectangular box with narrow waist—-suggested a full-skirted Victorian Age woman, the beauty drawn by illustrator Charles Dana Gibson.

Frank Schulz, of Buxtehude, Germany, discovered the kite on Ebay browsing the Web and, anticipating a high purchase price, got four of his pals to form a consortium so they would have sufficient funds if the bidding went too high for him. All are interested in historical kites and are members of a mostly German, informal group devoted to researching, restoring, and building kites dating from the start of the aviation age. Kites were used then to test gliders, study high altitude weather, lift men for military observation, take photographs.

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