Popcorn machines and Swifts

When the Second World War ended, Robert McCulloch was running North American Aviation’s plant at Grand Prairie, near Dallas. Rather than see it close, he and fellow NAA executive Bert Howard formed the Texas Engineering and Manufacturing Company in 1946, with a management team made up entirely of former NAA men. Bankers were sceptical, so they took anything going: popcorn vending machines, Venetian blind clips, mailboxes, and sub-assemblies for the C-82, B-47, F-101 and F-104.

The trainers nobody bought

Subcontracting the Globe Swift two-seater went so well that supply overtook demand and Globe went bust; Temco took over the design in late 1947 and built Swifts until 1951. Its own trainers were less fortunate. The T-35 Buckaroo, a tandem Swift, lost to the Beechcraft T-34 and sold 10 to Saudi Arabia; the TT-1 Pinto jet trainer, first flown on 26 March 1956, reached only 14 for the US Navy. Employment collapsed to 500 in 1954 before electronics and missiles rescued the firm.

The T in LTV

By 1958 electronics brought in half of Temco’s income, and it developed the Corvus anti-radiation missile for the US Navy. In 1960 Temco merged with Ling-Altec, and in 1961 the combination absorbed Chance Vought to form Ling-Temco-Vought, with McCulloch as chairman. Temco’s Greenville electronics plant later became E-Systems, then part of Raytheon and today L3Harris. Through the 1970s LTV sold off its aviation holdings one by one, so the Texan company that once made mailboxes to keep its doors open survives only as a link in that long corporate chain.

Factories

• Grand Prairie plant · Grand Prairie, Dallas, Texas — Former NAA wartime plant; Navy work
• Majors Field plant · Greenville, Texas — USAF overhaul; later E-Systems

People

• Robert McCulloch · co-founder, president — Chairman and CEO of LTV until retirement in April 1970
• H. L. “Bert” Howard · co-founder, executive vice president