Luckiest Air Force Pilot Retires After 180,840 Rounds of Brrrt

Capping a 37-year career, Lt. Colonel John “Karl” Marks retired last month and hung up the title of the A-10 Thunderbolt pilot with the most flight time.

Kansas-born Marks entered the Air Force in 1987 and flew the big "Warthog" in combat for the first time in the 1991 Gulf War, chalking up 23 Iraqi tanks over three missions shared with his flight lead Capt. Eric “Fish” Solomonson.

Then-1st Lt. John Marks poses with an A-10 Thunderbolt II at King Fahd Air Base, Saudi Arabia, during Desert Storm in February 1991. (Photo: 442nd Fighter Wing / Lt. Col. Marks)

Since then, Marks has deployed overseas at least a dozen times and responded to 48 troops-in-contact situations over 358 combat sorties.

As noted by the 442d Fighter Wing in a release, Marks flew 1,161 combat hours during which he expended 39,340 rounds of 30mm ammunition, dropped nearly 350 bombs, and fired 59 Maverick air-to-ground missiles. Going past that, his trigger time on the Warthog's hulking GAU-8/A Avenger 30mm cannon included another 141,500 rounds, bringing his career total to 180,840 30mm rounds.

GAU-8/A Avenger — The GAU-8/A, made by General Electric, is a 19-foot long 7-barreled rotary cannon that fires huge 30x173mm shells — each bigger than a full-sized ketchup bottle – as fast as 3,900 rounds per minute. Unloaded, the gun weighs more than 600 pounds.

Marks was the first A-10 pilot to log more than 6,000 flight hours in the type in 2016 and never looked back, going on to spend most of the past several years as an instructor.

In all, he has logged 7,500 hours in the aircraft, a record, with the Air Force noting, "With the clock inching toward midnight on the divestiture of the A-10 Thunderbolt II attack aircraft, there are no pilots close enough in hours behind the Warthog’s stick to even come close to the bar set by Lt. Colonel John 'Karl' Marks."

Banner image: Lt. Colonel John Marks stands in the cockpit of an A-10 Thunderbolt II attack aircraft and pumps his fists in a sign of victory after his "fini" flight Aug. 23, 2024, on Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo. Marks retired after 37 years with more than 7,500 hours in the A-10. (Photo: Mr. Bob Jennings/U.S. Air Force)

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