Security Aviation Togs

[Skyhawk]

Hey guys, I have been researching SAT for quite some time. I make some jackets that are attributed to them and I am currently working on the 1932 A-2 contract.

The question I have not been able to find an answer for is, when did they start making jackets? I have discussed this with some well known repro makers. The conclusion has been sometime in the early 1930's. With a fair amount of civilian flight jackets produced in the mid 1930's. I have not found any jackets produced before 1930. What are your thoughts on this subject?

 

[33-1729]

According to the “Catalogue of Copyright Entries” Part 1, Group 2, Volume 28, No. 9, 1931, page 46097 it shows Security Sportswear Co. of Chicago, Il copyrighted the new “Aviation Togs” on Dec. 2, 1931 with the affidavit of copyright occurring on Dec 5, 1931.

 

[Skyhawk]

Thank you so much! You are awesome.
That lines up pretty well with what I had found through my research. This proves it on paper though and that is really cool!

 

[33-1729]

In addition, on page 72 the “Aero Digest” dated Jan 1932, a bulletin issued by Security Sportswear Company of Chicago describes the new flying clothes offered by Security Aviation Togs.

 

[zoomer]

Anyone have access to the Chicago public library system? They'd be likely to have such promotional material from local companies. (I know New York did in the mighty NYPL...in fact had holdings for the entire nation.)

 

[ausreenactor]

According to the “Catalogue of Copyright Entries” Part 1, Group 2, Volume 28, No. 9, 1931, page 46097 it shows Security Sportswear Co. of Chicago, Il copyrighted the new “Aviation Togs” on Dec. 2, 1931 with the affidavit of copyright occurring on Dec 5, 1931.

View attachment 58712

View attachment 58713

That's awesome work!

 

[Skyhawk]

We know now that Security Sportswear was a sportswear Mfg Co in Chicago that was contracted to make a two piece flying suit for the USAC in 1931. They then copyrighted the Security Aviation Togs name in late 1931 (Dec 2nd). It seems their dealings with the flight suit and the Army set them up to also win the contract for the A-2 in 1932.

As we know, SAT also put out a lot of civilian flight gear including jackets, throughout the early to mid 1930's. It is my thought that the flight gear line of products came right after they produced the USAC 2 piece flight suit in 1931. It would make sense because right after that, you see the Copyright name late 1931, and the announcement of the new flight clothing products in 1932.
It seems like a viable market was discovered By Security Sportswear though the work for USAC. It appears they capitalized on this by creating the new SAT aviation division to enter the growing aviation boom happening in the USA at the time.

This is another good reason for them to want to put the SAT label into the contract A-2. Great advertising for the upcoming civilian flight gear products they were developing. Also bragging rights because they were good enough to be picked and trusted by the USAC to make gear for the military.

 

[33-1729]

While looking for other items I found a few references that spoke about Security Sportswear Co. and its various divisions, such as golf, aviation clothing, etc. Security Togs was simply a division they made to fill another market in their portfolio. No reason to speculate as their efforts were well documented at the time. Check out the various journals from 1931 on for their history.

EDIT: Since the A-2 spec documents were declassified this information was out there, but since I haven’t seen it mentioned I thought this would be a good thread for it.

The 1932 fiscal year was from 1 July 1931 to 30 June 1932, Security Sportwear Co. had an early fiscal year order number of 32-485, and the US government documented the contract being with the Security Sportswear Co. and not Aviation Togs (below). It’s possible the US government dealt with the main company directly instead of the Aviation Togs division and/or that Aviation Togs wasn’t entirely formed in time when the contract was originally made with Security Sportswear Co. Given Security Sportswear Co. was promoting their new Aviation Togs brand I suspect a review of the aviation magazines and journals from 1931 through 1932 would provide what happened. Narrowing down when the contract was made by the order number would provide a more focused timeframe to search.

 

[mulceber]

Hi all, sorry to resurrect a thread that’s been quiet for almost a year now, but @Nnatalie and I have been looking into Security Aviations Togs, and we have a bunch of new information.

First of all, a little bit of background that delves into the uncomfortable history of anti-Semitism. One thing that we don’t talk about very much is the fact that a majority of the companies whose jackets we go gaga over were owned by Jewish families. This isn’t some antisemitic conspiracy theory or any of that garbage. It’s just a simple result of the fact that, in Europe, working with dead animals was regarded as “unclean,” and so, as a trade, leather work was foisted on marginalized groups of people. When Jewish immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe came to America, they brought their skills with them, and started leather garment companies.

This is at least part of the reason why comparatively few early leather jacket companies are named after the founder or owner: in the early 20th century, America was less virulently anti-Semitic than Europe, but a lot of middle class Americans would still turn their nose up at a company that had a Jewish name. But if you hid the name, nobody would bat an eye at buying from you. So Fried-Ostermann of Milwaukee produced garments under the (really WASP-y) label of “Albert Richard.” I haven’t looked into Rough Wear, Star Sportswear, or Aero, but I bet at least a few of the big A-2-making companies had generic names because the owners wanted to avoid discrimination. There were some exceptions, like Buco, which proudly bears the name “Joseph Buegeleisen” on the label, and I can only imagine that Joe must have been a gutsy man to put his name on the label, when he lived in a city basically run by America’s most notorious anti-Semite (Detroit; Henry Ford). But a lot of these companies deliberately chose not to advertise who owned them.

All of this was at the back of my mind when I started looking into Security Aviation Togs/Security Sportswear. Going off of what @33-1729 discovered, I was hoping that, if I could figure out the name of the people who owned SAT, then I could more easily track the company’s history. Given that SAT is a company that appears out of nowhere in a major US city right around the time that things were turning ugly for the Jewish community in Europe, my suspicion was that we were looking at a German Jewish family who pulled up roots in Europe at the end of the ‘20s, and, to judge by how quickly they got a government contract, evidently hit the ground running when they got to the States. It turns out I was only partly right however.

So I started looking for newspaper clippings that mentioned Security Sportswear, in the hopes that some people’s names would come tumbling out. It didn’t take me too long before I found this in the Ironwood Daily Globe from March 9th, 1946:

Ironwood, Michigan (about a 6 hour drive from Chicago, where we know SAT was located) seemed a little far afield to be the same company, but I decided to look into the name Louis Horwich. It was at this point that @Nnatalie jumped in, and I turned what I’d found over to her, because she’s much faster than me at this. She found some really cool stuff, which I've attached below.

So, first off, Louis Horwich of Security Sportswear was indeed based in the Chicago area, at least in the early part of the 20th century. Security Sportswear was actually a label owned by H. L. Friedlen & Co., a company named for Horwich’s brother-in-law. The Friedlens had actually immigrated to the US from Russia in 1888, on the heels of a nasty wave of pogroms in the Russian Empire. Herman Louis Friedlen married in 1905 and was probably already a garment maker by that point, and probably established his company, H. L. Friedlen & Co., soon thereafter. Like Joseph Buegeleisen, he insisted on putting his name on the company label. As survivors of the pogroms, the Friedlens seem to have been tough customers. One newspaper article preserves a story where a fellow member of the Jewish community in Chicago was making a speech in public attacking the family patriarch, and the women of the family went home, retrieved a pair of horsewhips, and proceeded to beat the shit out of him (see attachment below).

In the nineteen-teens and into the roaring twenties, the company name seems to have still been H. L. Friedlen & Co. The names “Security Sportswear” and “Security Aviation Togs” seem to have come a bit later. @33-1729 points out that SAT was copyrighted at the end of 1931. In April of 1932, H. L. Friedlen & Co. was taken to bankruptcy court. It seems likely therefore that the various “Security” labels were part of an effort to broaden their customer base as the Great Depression started creating financial woes for the company. This bankruptcy might also explain why they never received another contract from the Air Corps (although they would receive a couple contracts from the Army late in the war): Friedlen’s financial difficulties were coming right as he was working on the SAT A-2 contract. Not really a great way to inspire confidence!

Security Sportswear seems to have kept producing garments through the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s. By the ‘40s they also appear to have had a factory in Iron Mountain, Michigan. Natalie recalled seeing articles mentioning the company from as far afield as Arkansas. There are a bunch of newspaper article from Ironwood (not to be confused with Iron Mountain), however, that mention the Security Sportswear plant in Iron Mountain. Chicago appears to have remained their base of operations, however. The last reference to them that I can find comes in 1962. The two proprietors, Horwich and Friedlen, both died in the mid-1960s.

 

[Chandler]

@mulceber Ironwood or Iron Mountain? The byline on that first article is Iron Mountain.

I'm only asking because my family is from the IM area (sort of) and never knew any FJs came from up there.

To my question, Ironwood & Iron Mountain aren't that close (Ironwood is at the northwest corner of the U.P., and Iron Mountain is southeast) and I wonder which one had the manufacturing.

 

[mulceber]

@mulceber Ironwood or Iron Mountain? The byline on that first article is Iron Mountain.

I'm only asking because my family is from the IM area (sort of) and never knew any FJs came from up there.

To my question, Ironwood & Iron Mountain aren't that close (Ironwood is at the northwest corner of the U.P., and Iron Mountain is southeast) and I wonder which one had the manufacturing.

D’oh! You can tell I don’t really know the Upper Peninsula. It’s Iron Mountain. The newspaper was from Ironwood, and I assumed they were close together, when they’re about 2 hours apart.

 

[B-Man2]

Kudos to both you and Nat.
That’s a great piece of information on a jacket we don’t know much about .

 

[Chandler]

D’oh! You can tell I don’t really know the Upper Peninsula. It’s Iron Mountain. The newspaper was from Ironwood, and I assumed they were close together, when they’re about 2 hours apart.

Nevertheless, it's amazing that a company so far out in the sticks (especially in those days) attracted the attention for a government contract (if I'm reading it correctly).

I can't count the times I've driven through and around Iron Mountain, it's not at all a big town by any definition.

FWIW -- ISO an army-issue makinaw made in Iron Mountain!

 

[mulceber]

Yeah, I was kinda surprised as well to see a government contractor that far outside of the big cities. But apparently once they got through the financial ups and downs, they were good enough the receive multiple contracts.

 

[Nnatalie]

Nevertheless, it's amazing that a company so far out in the sticks (especially in those days) attracted the attention for a government contract (if I'm reading it correctly).

I can't count the times I've driven through and around Iron Mountain, it's not at all a big town by any definition.

I got the impression that the Iron Mountain location was more like a satellite location of the main company. Though that still raises the question of why Iron Mountain of all places was chosen. Maybe it was just cheap property, or there was a family connection?

 

[Chandler]

I got the impression that the Iron Mountain location was more like a satellite location of the main company. Though that still raises the question of why Iron Mountain of all places was chosen. Maybe it was just cheap property, or there was a family connection?

All good questions considering IM's remote location from any major populated area -- closest being Green Bay, and that's not a big city either, then or now.

I haven't been through IM in a long time, but my curiosity is very piqued. Is there any record of an address for the facility?

FWIW -- the biggest attractions in Iron Mountain, back in the 70s thru the 90s, were the iron mine, the tall ski jump, the deer park, and the Big Boy.

 

[Spitfireace]

Hi all, sorry to resurrect a thread that’s been quiet for almost a year now, but @Nnatalie and I have been looking into Security Aviations Togs, and we have a bunch of new information.

First of all, a little bit of background that delves into the uncomfortable history of anti-Semitism. One thing that we don’t talk about very much is the fact that a majority of the companies whose jackets we go gaga over were owned by Jewish families. This isn’t some antisemitic conspiracy theory or any of that garbage. It’s just a simple result of the fact that, in Europe, working with dead animals was regarded as “unclean,” and so, as a trade, leather work was foisted on marginalized groups of people. When Jewish immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe came to America, they brought their skills with them, and started leather garment companies.

This is at least part of the reason why comparatively few early leather jacket companies are named after the founder or owner: in the early 20th century, America was less virulently anti-Semitic than Europe, but a lot of middle class Americans would still turn their nose up at a company that had a Jewish name. But if you hid the name, nobody would bat an eye at buying from you. So Fried-Ostermann of Milwaukee produced garments under the (really WASP-y) label of “Albert Richard.” I haven’t looked into Rough Wear, Star Sportswear, or Aero, but I bet at least a few of the big A-2-making companies had generic names because the owners wanted to avoid discrimination. There were some exceptions, like Buco, which proudly bears the name “Joseph Buegeleisen” on the label, and I can only imagine that Joe must have been a gutsy man to put his name on the label, when he lived in a city basically run by America’s most notorious anti-Semite (Detroit; Henry Ford). But a lot of these companies deliberately chose not to advertise who owned them.

All of this was at the back of my mind when I started looking into Security Aviation Togs/Security Sportswear. Going off of what @33-1729 discovered, I was hoping that, if I could figure out the name of the people who owned SAT, then I could more easily track the company’s history. Given that SAT is a company that appears out of nowhere in a major US city right around the time that things were turning ugly for the Jewish community in Europe, my suspicion was that we were looking at a German Jewish family who pulled up roots in Europe at the end of the ‘20s, and, to judge by how quickly they got a government contract, evidently hit the ground running when they got to the States. It turns out I was only partly right however.

So I started looking for newspaper clippings that mentioned Security Sportswear, in the hopes that some people’s names would come tumbling out. It didn’t take me too long before I found this in the Ironwood Daily Globe from March 9th, 1946:

Ironwood, Michigan (about a 6 hour drive from Chicago, where we know SAT was located) seemed a little far afield to be the same company, but I decided to look into the name Louis Horwich. It was at this point that @Nnatalie jumped in, and I turned what I’d found over to her, because she’s much faster than me at this. She found some really cool stuff, which I've attached below.

So, first off, Louis Horwich of Security Sportswear was indeed based in the Chicago area, at least in the early part of the 20th century. Security Sportswear was actually a label owned by H. L. Friedlen & Co., a company named for Horwich’s brother-in-law. The Friedlens had actually immigrated to the US from Russia in 1888, on the heels of a nasty wave of pogroms in the Russian Empire. Herman Louis Friedlen married in 1905 and was probably already a garment maker by that point, and probably established his company, H. L. Friedlen & Co., soon thereafter. Like Joseph Buegeleisen, he insisted on putting his name on the company label. As survivors of the pogroms, the Friedlens seem to have been tough customers. One newspaper article preserves a story where a fellow member of the Jewish community in Chicago was making a speech in public attacking the family patriarch, and the women of the family went home, retrieved a pair of horsewhips, and proceeded to beat the shit out of him (see attachment below).

In the nineteen-teens and into the roaring twenties, the company name seems to have still been H. L. Friedlen & Co. The names “Security Sportswear” and “Security Aviation Togs” seem to have come a bit later. @33-1729 points out that SAT was copyrighted at the end of 1931. In April of 1932, H. L. Friedlen & Co. was taken to bankruptcy court. It seems likely therefore that the various “Security” labels were part of an effort to broaden their customer base as the Great Depression started creating financial woes for the company. This bankruptcy might also explain why they never received another contract from the Air Corps (although they would receive a couple contracts from the Army late in the war): Friedlen’s financial difficulties were coming right as he was working on the SAT A-2 contract. Not really a great way to inspire confidence!

Security Sportswear seems to have kept producing garments through the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s. By the ‘40s they also appear to have had a factory in Iron Mountain, Michigan. Natalie recalled seeing articles mentioning the company from as far afield as Arkansas. There are a bunch of newspaper article from Ironwood (not to be confused with Iron Mountain), however, that mention the Security Sportswear plant in Iron Mountain. Chicago appears to have remained their base of operations, however. The last reference to them that I can find comes in 1962. The two proprietors, Horwich and Friedlen, both died in the mid-1960s.

Levi Strauss

 

[mulceber]

Levi Strauss

Yup, another good example of a company that chose to embrace its Jewish heritage. They definitely did exist. Levi Strauss is an interesting example though, because middle class people didn't start wearing blue jeans in any real numbers until the company had been around for over a hundred years. Miners needed the jeans, and they couldn't afford to turn their nose up at really durable clothing. Plus, from my (layman's) knowledge, mid-19th century San Francisco was a melting pot of people from all over the place. A name like Levi Strauss wouldn't have stood out as much.

 

[Nnatalie]

I did find a couple articles that touch on the Iron Mountain factory and its origins. The first one suggests that an "Iron Mountain Industrial Committee" was involved and that there was an "Iron Mountain industrial fund" that was helping with finances. So maybe it was a case of the area needing employment for its residents? The second one talks mainly about the early setup of the factory, but the last paragraph says that Louis Horwich visited the city on "routine business," "during which he mentioned that his company might be interested in locating here if a site could be obtained."

Also, I haven't got an exact address yet, but it was in the former Branz building on East Grand Boulevard Circle.

 

[Chandler]

Yup, another good example of a company that chose to embrace its Jewish heritage. They definitely did existed.

FWIW -- the two men's clothing stores in my hometown, both opened in the late 30s or early 40s, were Lindberg's and Fineberg's.

Fitted for my first, and a few subsequent, suit at Lindberg's. Even found my old credit card from them buried in a desk drawer.

Sadly, both have closed due to changing times, but I hold the memories.