Saturday, December 22, 2012

Joe Copalman wins AirForces Monthly's photo competition

By Joachim Jacob, Warthog News Editor

With an incredible A-10C shot, aviation photographer Joe Copalman from the United States has won the recent photography competition of AirForces Monthly. On their official Facebook page AFM wrote: Congratulations to Joe Copalman for winning our photography competition. We chose the image for its 'In your face' factor and for being a great dramatic shot. Well done

And here's the winning picture:


Joe's photo capture: Competition Entry - ANG/AFRC Test Center A-10C making a show-of-force pass at the Goldwater Range. (Photo by Joe Copalman) Full size

Note: Pictured is A-10C 81-0954 from the 47th Fighter Squadron, 917th Fighter Group, Barksdale AFB, Louisiana. Anybody who can explain the fuselage comic art? A close-up shot would be great.

4 comments:

  1. There characters from the "dogpatch" comic strips. daisy ma,etc. ALL the A10Cs from Barksdale have a differant character on it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Awesome photo, its to bad the 47th has been one of the units to possably been selected to draw down.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks! I don't have a print-worthy close-up of the nose art, but it's an illustration of "The Wrecker" from the old Li'l Abner comic strip. We talked with a crew chief at Hawgsmoke who mentioned that all the Barksdale Hawgs are personalized with characters from Li'l Abner and that this practice goes back many years, with the squadron receiving Al Capp's blessing. There's probably more to that story, but that's all I recall.

    Thanks again!

    -Joe

    ReplyDelete
  4. It's a Razorback Hog. A wild Feral hog from the souther part of the United States.

    ReplyDelete