October 3

What happened on October 3 in aviation and space history.

• October 3, 2011

  The F-35B lands aboard a ship for the first time: sea trials on USS Wasp

  Milestone — Test aircraft BF-2, flown by Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Fred Schenk, made the first vertical landing onto a ship's deck, that of the amphibious assault ship USS Wasp, off the Virginia coast. The campaign ran for eighteen days, during which two aircraft, BF-2 and BF-4, completed seventy-two short take-offs and seventy-two vertical landings, meeting every planned shipboard envelope-expansion objective.