A-10A 'Warthog' from the 442FW AFRES, AFB Whiteman, Missouri. #90-122. Lt.Col. Roger Disrud won the US Air Force's '91 Worldwide Fighter Competition at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev. He won the "Top Gun" award by defeating 54 other A-10, F-16, F-15, F-111 and A-7 pilots by one point in the closest margin in the competition's 14-year history. At 47, he also was the oldest pilot to win the award. And he was the first A-10 pilot to win. He score perfect on two out of three profiles. A profile is a route each plane flies during which the pilots drop bombs on and shoot at various targets. Flying a total of three profiles, the pilots fly each profile twice and take the best score of the two. The first two profiles involved dropping bombs and shooting at targets from low altitude. The third profile involved dropping two 500-pound bombs on a plane in an airfield from 18,000 feet in the air. During this profile, pilots are given two seconds from the time they are assigned a target on the ground to the time they drop their bomb. If they take more than two seconds to complete the task, they are assessed a penalty.
Photographed on July 25, 1992