Flying Tigers: Claire Chennault's military records

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Philco and the Flying Tigers

During the Second World War, like most American manufacturers, the Philco company stopped building radios, record players, and home appliances in order to support the war effort. Instead, it turned out tank radios, radar sets, proximity fuses for anti-aircraft guns, and wave meters for the Signal Corps. Even its advertising was war-related, in terms that today might have to include a trigger warning (see below). So it went for nearly five years. Then came May 1945 and the heady excitement of VE (Victory in Europe) Day, followed by VJ Day three months later . In shifting back to the civilian market, it wasn't alone in leveraging a connection with the AVG Flying Tigers in Philco News, company broadside, (A tip of the virtual hat to Joe Rossi, who found this article on the World Radio History website.)

Wearing a topcoat at far right is Robert ("Duke") Hedman of the AVG 3rd Squadron "Hell's Angels," famed for achieving ace status in a single day, December 25, 1941, when he was credited with shooting down four Ki-21 Sally heavy bombers and a Ki-43 Hayabusa fighter. He was later credited with two shared air-to-air kills for a total of six victories. That actually put him in a tie for eleventh place among the Flying Tigers with five or more air-to-air victory credits.

On the left in the photo, wearing what looks like a military flight jacket is Leon Colquette, formerly a crew chief with the same AVG squadron.

Colquette left the AVG in March 1942 on a medical discharge and worked for civilian airlines during the war. Hedman remained in China as a pilot for CNAC, the paramilitary Chinese airline.

Philco chartered three Budd Conestoga cargo planes to fly ten tons of radios from its Philadelphia factory to dealers in the "Far West" of the country in time for the 1945 Christmas season. Built for the US militray, the Conestoga was covered with thin stainless steel in order to conserve aluminum, which was critically short during the war. The Budd company had manufactured railway cars, so was adept at welding stainless steel. The ailerons and tailfeathers were surfaced with fabric.

Postwar, the military sold twelve Conestogas to National Skyway Freight, a "nonscheduled" airline founded by former Flying Tigers pilots including Duke Hedman. This was the beginning of the Flying Tiger Line, the most successful of the "nonscheds" started by military veterans. The company was later absorbed by FedEx. Colquette presumably worked for National Skyway Freight in 1945 as well.

Two DC-3 transports were also in the Philco charter fleet.

"Philco recently announced that $7,000,000 is being invested in its reconversion program, which will double its pre-war production of radio receivers and refrigerators," boasted the company newsletter. "Great interest has been expressed in such new inventions as the Philco Advanced FM, a revolutionary new FM circuit which ignores natural and man-made static; the Dynamic Reproducer which is said, for the first time, to bring broadcast studio standards of record reproduction into the home, and the Philco Automatic Record Player, replacing the manually operated radiophonograph with an entirely new automatic system. Today's large-scale air shipments of post-war Philco radios are an indication of the speed with which the Company has achieved mass production, and gives hope that the quantity deliveries necessary to supply public demand may not be long delayed."

Or so the company hoped. In fact, Philco never regained its prewar eminence, and was acquired by Ford Motor Co. in 1961, and now exists only as a brand name used by Philips in the US and by Electrolux and other companies elsewhere.

To keep their names before the US public, American manufacturers during the war kept advertising, usually showing their own products in military service, but sometimes just to pound the war drums. Here a burly American worker confronts an enemy tank commanded by Germany's Adolf Hitler, Japan's Tojo Hideki, and Italy's supine Benito Mussolini. The Philco name appears at lower right. (Cartoon courtesy of the Philco Radio Historical Society website.)

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