black shoe

English

Noun

black shoe (plural black shoes)

1. (US, naval) A person who works on an aircraft carrier but is not involved in flights.

   Coordinate term: brown shoe

   • 2016, James E. Wise, Jr., Scott Baron, At the Helm of USS America, page 57:

     Hayward served aboard the aircraft carrier USS Antietam (CV-36) as a “black shoe” engineer until he entered flight training at Pensacola, Florida, […]

   • 2022, Craig L. Symonds, Nimitz at War: Command Leadership from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay, page 189:

     Towers attributed the whole catastrophe to the decision to put the carriers under the command of a black shoe like Kinkaid. As a result of that, he said, the United States was now without a single fully operational aircraft carrier in the whole of the Pacific Ocean.

References

• Black Shoes and Brown Shoes: Beyond the Flight Deck of an Aircraft Carrier