Hi all, I am definitely getting into the weeds here I have been saved from confusion about "ammunition boots" in reading Dick Taylor's book about tank crews. (I had not understood "ammunition" to basically mean "military issue".) What I actually wanted to ask is whether boot sizes were the same as civilian sizes? Would what I saw described as a "Number 9 ammunition boot" in a source fit a man who took a UK size 9 shoe? (Apparently that's US/Canadian size 10.)
Not sure on Artillery boots (what are they?), but ammo boots (and other WW2 military footwear that I'm aware of) sizes are standard UK sizing - I wear size 10 usually and in ammo boots wear 10's
Blast, I meant to write "ammunition boots". I'm going to edit my post. I shouldn't post before coffee! And, thank you AB64, that helps me visualize the situation a bit better. You would have had an awkward time firing an Archer with the foot pedal because the pedal wasn't made wide enough to fit size 9s. Honestly I do wonder sometimes about faults in the Archer... couldn't they have seen that in advance?
Standardised shoe sizes began to be introduced in the 1850s with the development of mass production of footwear. They were based on the length of the foot. British sizes (originally copied in the US) were based on a measurement known as a barleycorn which equated to about a quarter of an inch but European sizes were based on centimetres. However there was no standardisation on width and a US officer's handbook on the military shoe published in 1912 shows that most modern armies had their own particular sole shape. Some were broader than others and allowance for foot width was quite basic. This situation appears to have persisted until post 1945. Since then the Mondopoint system has been gradually introduced which takes into account breadth of foot as well as length and an international standard ISO 9407 (1997) has emerged which has been adopted by most NATO forces although civilian footwear continues to be based on the old barleycorn and metric length measurements
