[saxmaninmo]

Actually in thinking about all of it believe I figured it out on my own.   Without the benefit of Philco service bulletins during WWII years of course there is no way to tell what they may have put into modifications. The radio was built in late 41 and the schematic would have come out with it.  At any rate what they were apparently doing was putting the grounds of the 41 outputs about 200 ohms above ground (plus the transformer winding) by passing back through the plate via the transformer and through the negative bias dividers to chassis ground.  I am not sure what this would accomplish with no information available.  The only thing I see that could happen is it might stabilize the negative bias by the load of the output tubes. If so directly grounding pins 5-6 on the 41 outputs might change the bias voltages on the divider. Nothing is stated on the schematic as to what these voltages are supposed to be.  Removal of the feed through the plate of the rectifier would cause those to be off.  The original divider failed mechanically on the first resistance.  I have replaced it with 3 resistors.  Interestingly one schematic version I have shows 3 resistors of lower values penciled in.  This might indicate something.  I was hopeful when I posted this that someone would have already encountered the modification.  All I can say for sure is it apparently worked this way for decades as the wiring was undisturbed other than some filter caps being replaced.

And sorry for posting 2 threads.  I didn't see how to put a photo directly on a reply.  Not much else to say at this point.