A Royal Norwegian Air Force pilot flew one of the service’s F-35 Lightning IIs this week at Luke AFB, Ariz., logging the first all-Norwegian training sortie. “The way Luke AFB and the 56th Fighter Wing have handled … the overall training of our pilots is extraordinary,” Royal Norwegian Air Force chief of staff Maj. Gen. Per-Egil Rygg, who observed the flight, said Dec. 14. “This partnership is very important to Norway, and I’m very proud today to have seen the first time a Norwegian F-35 has been flown by a Norwegian pilot,” he added in a release. Luke stood up a second F-35 squadron—the 62nd Fighter Squadron—responsible for training US, Italian, and Norwegian pilots, earlier this summer. Norway plans to purchase 52 F-35As, the first of which arrived at Luke to begin training in November, before domestic flying operations begin in 2017.
Dirty hydraulic fluid and freezing weather led to the loss of an F-35 stealth fighter in Alaska this winter when its landing gear froze and convinced the aircraft’s computer that it was on the ground rather than in-flight.
