I had a sort of inverse situation with flying suits and badges.
Picture a group of men in their 20-40's freshly hired at a US carrier going through DC-10 groundschool about 30 years ago.
It's Saturday we're hungover a few puke splashes remain on our shirts from last nights drinking.
We fell behind the schedule for INS training, due to the sim being broken, our former Navy instructor insisted we come out to class on the weekend, so we could make up the schedule.
During the past weeks we had no doubt our instructor was ex-military and a Navy pilot he said all the right things and had some good stories but never made clear he was on an actual aircraft.
He turns up replete with flight suit and jacket badges all over the place. We tried to pay attention but were distracted by the costume as he tried to teach us the basics of inertial navigation systems.
Come to find out eventually once we were flying and on the line, he was a member of a crash crew fire rescue squad on a Navy ship.
Nice enough guy in his later years, but boy did he take himself too seriously !