Wouldn't be surprised if USAF had similar or maybe he was issued an RAF pair for having difficult feet. :)
[0] https://www.historicflyingclothing.com/en-GB/ww2-raf/raf-194...
[1] http://www.oldnautibits.com/assets/images/aeronautical/image...
My grand-father was born in Strasbourg in 1919, the capital of Alsace, one of the two disputed areas between France and Germany. He was born in what was then France, but would have been considered German by the Third Reich. With his medical training, he would most likely be sent to the Eastern front, or worst.
The residents would have been even worst: they had found a way to use hospital resources to host one of their resident friend away from German attention, a Polish jew named Minkowski. He later became a key figure in neonatalogy (and his son is a well-known orchestra conductor). Any time I hear about a baby being born early, I feel something odd.
The only person in the family suspected was my great-grand-mother. She spent some time being interrogated in Fresnes, the nearby jail, with the bulk of the network. She was told that her name was on a notebook; she knew that it was crossed out. She testified that “that man” did knock on her door, asking about her political affiliation and she asked him to leave a widow alone; and that she remembered seeing him striking her name. Truth was: she knew very well this was the whole cell. Her name was stroke out because she did agree to host pilots, but the list was for food (which was rationed) and she said that she didn’t need extra. Based on my grand-mother’s cooking skill, I think those pilots probably went quite hungry, but dodged a bullet.
All her stories have those incredible near-miss and I learnt a lot about OpSec from her.
In one instance, it was really difficult because one of the pilots was so tall. The only way they could find something that barely fit was a cassock, the long black dress a priest would wear. (How my furiously anti-religious grand-mother, my Protestant grand-father and their best friend, the son of the Pastor from the Church of Sweden, found a Catholic cassock was never part of the story.) They did agree that he was too young, and had to be a seminarist -- therefore couldn’t celebrate sacraments, and had to stay quiet. Once again: they probably should have known the cassock had to be different than a priest’s. That was less a problem than the two inches missing at his ankles. Late growth spur was anyone’s guess.
The problem was: he had giant feet and no one could find shoes that fit, so he had to keep his Air Force issued shoes. They didn’t seem to look out of place, as the story goes: one day, to keep the cabin-feverish pilots busy while waiting for the green light from the coyotes, they all went to Montmartre. My grand-mother wanted to pretend they were friends visiting, and tried to take a photo of them on the steps. A German officer, willing to oblige, apparently suggested that my grand-mother stand with them while he took the photo. Thank God he never noticed the shoes: not sure my grand-mother would have found the inspiration to explain why the US Armed Forces was the appropriate source of footwear for freakishly tall seminarist.
My grand-mother only regret: that she didn’t dare ask the officer to stand with the “priest” and keep the photo for historians to admire the shoes.
--- Epilogue:
I later found a store selling replicas of WWII memorabilia and I checked to see what the shoes looked like (the German officer was a terrible photographer and had framed the photo below the stem, showing some leg but without the feet). I expected something very distinct, like ranger boots: check for yourself, US Air Force officers’s shoes would not look out of place on any civilian in 1940.