Tanker boots are military boots closely associated with soldiers who serve on tanks. The tanker boot was "designed by Dehner's own H. E. Ketzler and General George S. Patton Jr. in 1937" who "wanted something easy and fast to get on." Regular combat boots are laced through metal eyelets in the leather upper, but the tanker boots are fastened with leather straps which wrap around the upper and buckle near the top. This benefits the wearer in several ways:
The leather straps are advantageous specifically to those working inside tanks. The problem with laces is that they can become undone easily and then entangled in the many exposed moving parts of a tank, and drag the wearer or part of his body into the machinery.
Many boots have nylon or canvas panels in their uppers and also nylon laces which will melt if exposed to fire. Melting boots and laces will serve to further injure a crewman and make evacuating him out of the vehicle more difficult.
Tracked crewmen typically find themselves working in very muddy environments. Another advantage of tanker boots is that they are much easier to loosen than a regular laced boot when caked in mud.
Today's modern tankers are exposed to many harmful chemicals - Flame-Resistant Hydraulic Fluid, turboshaft engine oil, grease, oils and various fuels. The all-leather construction of tanker boots stops these chemicals from soaking into the boots and thus coming into close and prolonged contact with the wearer's skin.
Tanker boots allow for improved circulation to crew-members' feet, as they may be sitting or immobile for long periods of time. Tank crewmen during the Gulf War reported remaining seated at their gunners', drivers', and commanders' stations for up to the entire 14 hours of ground combat.
The tongues of tanker boots, unlike with most traditional combat boots, are sewn into the boot up to about shy of the top of the boot, to better waterproof the boot. Up to of water depth can be stood in without entry of water when sealed/waxed properly, depending on the height of the boot design. The tongue is made with excess leather left and right that does not need it to separate to remove the foot. However, the new desert tanker boots are not waterproof at all.
Tanker boots are normally equipped with steel toe guards, steel or plastic shank/heel guards, and in at least modern variants, steel or other protective metal inserts in portions of the sole as well, as befit a boot intended for an operating environment filled with potentially injurious hazards, as opposed to the traditional combat boot designed for a sandy or muddy battlefield environment. When the desert tanker boots came out, it was not authorized to have steel toe inserts for fear that the crewman may have his toe cut off if too much weight was put on the boot.
Tanker boots have a significant disadvantage over traditional lace-up combat boots in that they provide comparatively little ankle support; however, for troops that fight sitting in an armoured vehicle, this is relatively unimportant. An unauthorized variant of the tanker boot is the cavalry boot, or 'cav boot', which is higher above the ankle and might be worn by soldiers assigned to armored cavalry squadrons and scout units. The cav boots are more commonly seen being worn by officers in armored cavalry units.
