[Milsurplus] Little known fact - Gibson Girl

[Nick England]

I've been reading a transcript of a trial involving Hoffman Radio work
during WW2.
I'll dig up the links and post in case anyone else has insomnia.

But testimony from Mr Hoffman and from Mr Harmon (chief engineer) has
been interesting.
Hoffman got the chance from Bendix to build the kite antenna for the
SCR-578 Gibson Girl transmitter. The small Hoffman team went 72 hours
with no sleep to deliver the initial quantity to Bendix - they got the
contract.
They had to do a fair amount of creative engineering to make a kite
that would float, was lightweight, would break down into a small
enough package, etc. One problem they faced was the specification for
thin wall chrome-moly tubing which was in short supply. They
discovered a large stock of stainless steel tubing and had it redrawn
to spec - The stainless tubing was originally intended for Coc-Cola
dispensers :-)