Authors: Ben Ruhe
Date Submitted: August 31, 2002
Article Type: Journal

Paul Garber, late curator of aeronautics at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, was perhaps best known in the kite world as the inventor of the highly successful World War II Target kite, used to train military antiaircraft gunners.

An inveterate story teller, Garber was happy to tell how he, then a Navy commander, was informed by the admiral in charge of the project that an additional 50,000 kites were needed. “Okay sir,” as Garber told it, “the Spalding Sporting Goods Company in Springfield, Massachusetts, has been making them and can readily add that many to its contract.”

The admiral replied that although the company was doing good work, he had been ordered to give the contract for the extra kites to a little town in West Virginia named Arthurdale. It seems Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of President Franklin Roosevelt, had visited the impoverished village and decided it needed financial help. A war contract would be just the ticket.

PDF Link: Journal Issue