black shoe

plural black shoes

1. USgovernmentA person who works on an aircraft carrier but is not involved in flights.

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

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

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   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.

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