[Milsurplus] Gibson Girl

[Hubert Miller]

The BC-778 ( Is that number right ? ) according to histories was copied from the German "Notsender' ( "Distress Transmitter" ) captured by U.K.  I am really surprised it took that long to be incorporated into the Pacific war.
I came across in a wartime Radio News mag a mention of some kind of "Gibson Girl club" where your team got a certificate of some kind if such radio had been instrumental in your rescue from the sea. I never saw any other mention of this 'club' or certificate. I think any of us would be so happy to actually find one. Of course we could photocopy it and fill in the particulars with our own name.
I recall decades ago reading an account of U.S. survivors of ship sinking in Pacific in a lifeboat, and they, according to account, had some kind of radio, come to think of it, must have had no trans capability, but they could copy U.S.N. radio traffic. Come to think of it now, that tfc would have been encrypted too. Hmmm....after years of trying to name that book...maybe, maybe the account was somewhat.  fictionalized.... I just now, after decades, downgraded it in my "must research" list.

Around 1961 my family went to some open house at Sand Point N.A.S. Seattle. My brother and i were temporarily on our own, and we discovered a hangar with a couple displays. One display was a mannequin in a one-man rubber raft, equipped with a 'Gibson Girl'. The antenna line led up to a kite suspended from the rafters above. There was no one in the building besides we two. I couldn't resist; i went under the display rope and at the raft, started cranking the transmitter. After some indeterminate time of this, we saw some Navy vehicle pull up to the hangar. We exited the other direction and stepped into a nearby C.A.P. truck, like it was an event display, which it really wasn't, and the couple guys in the back of the truck were surprised to see us, but didn't evict us youngsters, let us look around. I remember there was a BC-348 type receiver in there, didn't recognize anything else. After we figured enough time had elapsed since the Gibson Girl incident, we left the truck. I think now, maybe i didn't crank it long enough to warm up the filaments; and there was no sea ground. Maybe the arrival of that Navy vehicle was just coincidence ? But the airfield tower was less than a block away, not DX. I did not get a "Gibson Girl Club" certificate for this episode, just a story to bore people with.
I recall also visiting there a tugboat. I asked a fellow in the wheelhouse what frequencies the tug's big Northern Radio AM voice set worked on, and he recited a list of marine band freqs which totally overwhelmed me.

When this Navy activity was closed and surplussed, it must have been a real field day for the real estate people. Primo property.
-Hue Miller



Sent from my Galaxy


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