While St. Padre Pio never visited the United States, the famous stigmatist did have some interesting interactions US servicemen during and after World War II. During the Allied aerial bombing campaign in Italy, the Nazis had placed one of their ammo dumps close to San Giovanni Rotondo, Padre Pio's monastery, and the nearby town and the people of the town begged the pious monk to save them from the bombs.

From that point, whenever an Allied bombing mission targeted the Nazi base, the American planes would develop malfunctions of various sorts that prevented them dropping their payloads or would encounter unexpected bad weather right over the target. Eventually, pilots began reporting seeing a "little man in a brown robe" flying through the air, waving their planes off! After the Allies liberated Italy, some of the pilots visited the monastery and recognized Padre Pio as the little man in the air.

In another incident during the War, but this time over the Pacific Ocean, one particular American pilot had his plane shot up by Japanese fighters. He had to bail out of the plane, but his parachute malfunctioned and he began plummeting to the ocean and his certain death. But then, literally out of the blue, a "little man in a brown robe" flew up to the pilot, grabbed him, and deposited him just outside his home base on a nearby island. He didn't recognize the man, but when he returned home after the war, the pilot's mother told him that she'd prayed that Padre Pio would protect him with his prayers and then seeing a photo of Padre Pio, the pilot said that this was the little man who saved him!