P & S Machine Company

P & S Machine Company was a Chicago Electromechanical manufacturer active from 1943 through 1947, and its catalog is almost a textbook example of wartime conversion culture. The company’s best-known games, including Bombardier, Eagle Squadron, Paratroops, Production, Shangri’La, and Torpedo Patrol, were not wholly new machines but reworked versions of earlier Genco tables, repainted and rethemed for a World War II market hungry for patriotic imagery.

That strategy gave P & S a distinctive place in pinball history. Rather than competing as a large-scale original manufacturer, it specialized in extending the commercial life of existing games through topical conversions, often with military or aviation themes. By 1947 the company appears to have pushed further toward original work with Shooting Stars and the unusual Tom Tom, but its reputation rests primarily on the conversion era. Few firms illustrate more clearly how the wartime pinball business adapted to material constraints, fast-moving themes, and operator demand.