The Brown Shoes

OBJECTIVE: To establish a permanent interactive website dedicated to those United States Naval Aviators who served during the Korean, Viet Nam, and Cold Wars during the 1945-1975 generation — and those who supported them.

This is the generation the historians forgot to write about. Most of these stories have never been published — stories from the “Forgotten” War and Cold War eras that were just that — forgotten. It is our desire for these great guys and their deeds to have a bit of recognition and to add to or correct the written history of that era. Here are their stories — the early years, the Navy years, the later years.

This project also contains historical comments and documents from this era — from primary sources, if possible — to fill in explanatory and background information.

This generation was in “the golden age” of aviation. The earliest trained in burlap and bailing wire N2S trainers. The last flew supersonic aircraft. Some spanned both eras. Many stayed in Naval Aviation. Many of those who left active duty also stayed in aviation — in the Naval Reserve, as airline pilots, test pilots, cropdusters; they flew powerline patrols, forest fire support, commercial and private passengers; some were aircraft company representatives; some simply owned an aircraft for pleasure.

These men are now passing into history — their stories are recorded in these pages.

Most documents on this site are in a file format called Acrobat PDF from Adobe. If your browser does not already have the capability to display these files, you may obtain and install Acrobat Reader here.