September 7

What happened on September 7 in aviation and space history.

• September 7, 2015

  First flight of an F-35 outside the United States

  Milestone — Italian F-35A AL-1 made its maiden flight from Cameri with Bill Gigliotti at the controls, the first by a Lightning II outside U.S. territory. The sortie validated the work of the European assembly line, which until then had only shown it could build the aircraft, not fly it off. Italy thus became the second country able to produce and test the airframe.