When I started ag flying I looked all over for a suitable pair of boots (steel toes, reasonably flat soles to slide over the rudder pedals constructed of heavy leather and soles durable enough to let you run through a fire.
I could not find any boots meeting all three requirement from the usual new boot sources, so I looked for new surplus boots.
You need reasonably smooth soles to allow your foot to slide over the rudder pedals, so lug soled combat boots don’t cut it and that severely limited the options. I looked for a pair of US Navy Flight/Deck boots as they worked well for me in the 1990s.
eBay was the quickest and best way to find what I needed, but I discovered the Navy had changed their specs on how the boots were made. The recent production Belleville and Addison boots both had a much heavier sole. The Addison boots weighed 42 oz per boot in my 9.5W size, we’re much stiffer and had a lot less feel. The Belleville boots were a bit lighter at 38 oz per boot, but have a sole molded to the boot making it a throw away item when the sole wears out.
Eventually I found a couple pairs of new old stock flight boots made in 1994 by Wolverine with the previous thinner soles weighing 34 oz each for $99 per pair. 8 oz less weight per boot and thinner soles makes a huge difference.
“Old” 34 oz Wolverine boot on the left, “New” 42 oz Addison boot on the right:
The bottom of the soles on the Wolverine flight boots. The nice part about the older boots is the ability to get them resoled as the sole isn’t molded into the boot as is often the case with a new boot like the current Belleville boots.
A pair of the “old” Wolverine boots:
