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Ninja Discusses His F-35 Flight Across the Atlantic: The
Right Stuff Italian Style

On Feb. 5, the Italian Air Force’s first F-35, AL-1 with code “32-01” and markings of the
32 Stormo Wing landed at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, at the end of
the JSF’s first ever transatlantic flight.

The aircraft was piloted by “Ninja,” an Italian Air Force test pilots, belonging to the
Reparto Sperimentale Volo (Test Wing) from Pratica di Mare, and who had successfully
completed his initial F-35 flight training at Luke AFB in November 2015.

To put this in perspective, the pilot had only 50 flight hours of F-35 flsying experance.
And the Lightning II Ninja flew across the North Atlantic in winter had only 15 flight
hours on before he took off on his historic flight. 32-01was the first plane to came off of
the Italian assembly line at Cameri Italy..

And this was done in the middle of winter, flying in and out of cloud layers over the
turbulent North Atlantic against 120 knot headwinds. It was remarkable flying.

After his 7 hour flight he sat down with reporters to discuss the flight and what he sees
as the way ahead for the F-35 program.

“We started from Cameri. We had bad weather. For the first day, we went from Cameri
to Lajes AFB in the Azores via Palma de Mallorca. This was the first time the F-35 had
landed in Portugal. We had to wait out the weather for a day and then flew the 2000
plus miles past St Johns to Halifax to the Boston area and then we arrived in Maryland.

For safety and security reasons, we had four air refueling during this second leg, and
given how bad the weather was the fourth refueling was done close to Pax River again
for safety and security reasons. The flight lasted 7 hours.

We had to go through a Cold Front and heavy headwinds (120 knots). Five out of seven
were flown in difficult conditions.”

Question: You flew in formation and through heavy clouds, we understand?

Second Line of Defense Lessons Learned at Pax River
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