nugget
n.— «The Greyhound, which looks as if it sprang from the womb of Howard Hughes’s Spruce Goose, is 50,000 pounds of flying metal that must set itself down on the pitching deck of a ship at 120 knots and come to a complete stop in two seconds and 200 or so feet. Our pilot made the “trap” on the first try. But tonight Adm. Gortney will watch from his seat on the bridge as freshly minted pilots (“nuggets,” in Navy parlance) miss their traps and “bolter” off the deck to try again.» —“Naval Gazing: A Top Gun Fantasy Comes True” by Bret Stephens Wall Street Journal July 13, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
A Navy vet recalls learning the slang term gundeck, meaning “to sign off on checks or reports without fully completing them.” A possible origin involves a ship’s gun deck, either as a place where sailors hid to avoid duties or where navigational...
Greg in Mena, Arkansas, says that when he was learning to be a professional pilot, one of his instructors would say, You thought like Nelly if someone had thought they were doing something correctly, but failed to. Although the phrase is not that...