Because I frequently look up military aircraft a lot on Wikipedia, and time and time again, I keep hearing how bombers are slower and less maneuverable than either fighters, attackers, or multirole aircraft. So does that mean that bombers are more heavily armored than the other three types of military aircraft? If not, and armor just weighs down *any* plane, why are bombers the largest, slowest, and leave maneuverable of the military aircraft, anyway?
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Nope. More armour means more weight, which means lower bomb-load.
Hell, the only place that was armoured on the WWII heavy bomber the Lancaster was the area right behind the pilot. The rest was roughly the thickness of a tin can to save weight.
Putting any extra weight on a plane is tricky and a bomber is basically a flying box.
I remember reading an interview with an expert on ww2 bombers. He said the smartest designers analyzed the bullet damage on the planes they had available for study.
Those planes being the ones that made it back. They were trying to figure out the best place to put extra armour and were focused on the parts of the planes with holes in them.
One guy pointed out that these were the planes that made it back, so nothing really vital was hit and they should armour up the parts that had no bullet holes instead.
“why are bombers the largest, slowest, and leave maneuverable of the military aircraft, anyway?”
Well, because they are carrying a lot of bombs. Bombs are heavy. In WWII, they would drop 500lb – 1000lb bombs, so a plane capable of carrying them will be very large and the cargo it is carrying is very heavy. Then to protect it because it’s such a large slow moving target, you add gun turrets to it and that makes it even heavier.
The better solution was to make longer range fighters that could escort and protect the bombers, rather than loading down the bombers with extra guns and armor.
Not in most modern bombers. Most fighters aren’t very heavily armored at all. The A-10 famously has a titanium bathtub around the pilot, but that’s not necessarily going to keep the plane flying longer, though you could argue that 1 piece of shrapnel in the cockpit will make the plane a smoking hole in the ground. Planes today mostly rely on air defenses being taken out first, speed, countermeasures and range as their primary methods of defense. They aren’t more heavily armored than they were during WWII. If you hit a modern MBT with a WWII anti-tank weapon even in the most vulnerable areas it would probably just tickle the tank crew. If you hit a modern fighter with a WWII style AAA round in the right place you’d instantly disable it.
time to learn about the [Survivability onion](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EHQakMQXYAEbgDL?format=jpg&name=small)
Don’t be there
if you have to be there, don’t be seen
If you are seen, don’t be targeted
if you are targeted, don’t be fired upon
if you are fired upon, don’t be hit
if you are hit, don’t be penetrated
if you are penetrated, don’t die.
In order to die, all these things need to happen. increasing protection of one of these things increases your chances of survival. In real life, changes to a system typically causes increases and decreases in different layers, and the algebra is to make the entire onion as big as possible.
Armor in planes is non-existent in modern times. because armor weighs you down. This makes you slower, which makes you easier to be seen, targeted and hit. While it helps to not be penetrated, you’re total “onion” is smaller, and therefore it isn’t worth it. We make planes “safer’ by adding speed (harder to see, target & hit), stealth (harder to see, target & hit), altitude (harder to hit), because these have little negative tradeoffs as opposed to adding armor.
edit: formatting change.
The B17 was, in my humble opinion, a poor performer. It was designed in a short amount of time for a specific job, using a certain doctrine. They would fly round-trip from England to Germany and back. At the time that they were first used, there were no fighter craft that could fly along side them for the entire trip to provide cover from enemy interceptors.
It was designed with up to 13 of the 50-caliber machine guns, and they flew in groups to provide mutual support. That also means that they had a lot of crew-members that operated the machine guns.
After D-Day in June 1944, fighter escorts could operate from bases in France, and every available fighter could assist.
However, in 1943 the P-51 Mustang was modified with additional internal and external fuel tanks to allow it to make the full round-trip. The D model had better high-altitude performance and could fly at the altitudes the bombers flew at.
If enough high-altitude long-range fighter escorts could have been provided earlier in the war, the bombers could have had fewer machine guns, and a smaller crew, and as a result it could carry more bombs.
An exception is the Short Stirling bomber. It could out turn fighter planes but had other compromises.
Basically the greater the wing area, the more lift is generated. It will climb faster (generate more lift) but the compromise is slower horizontal speed and slower turns
The answer to that question will heavily depend on the era (and by proxy the doctrine) the aircraft were designed in (or under).
If you look back to WW2, you’ll see massive formations of aircraft composed of bombers and their fighter escorts, being met head-on by interceptor aircraft. Combat took place at short range, bombers were slow, and sometimes weren’t even escorted by fighters at all (oftentimes the escort didn’t have the range to cover the full distance). Naturally, big plane is also less nimble than small plane.
So you respond to that by armoring your aircraft, and by adding gun turrets to them. They’re heavier by default and can carry more fuel, so it’s actually less difficult to do compared to a small aircraft, relatively speaking.
This is fine if you’re operating under the assumption that you’ll meet enemy aircraft head-on, and that they’ll try to fight you up close. That’s not true today.
A modern fighter or SAM site can fire a missile over the horizon, lock onto you and destroy you before you even figure out you’re even under attack. They will destroy you outright and will always outmaneuver you. Which is why the name of the game is instead to try and avoid detection altogether through stealth (a la F35 or B2), with less stealthy aircraft only being brought out en masse when air superiority is assured. Speed and maneuverability are almost non-factors here past a certain point.
They’re not “armored” at all, really. Strategic bombers are used leveling large asset areas (airfields, bases, trench lines, etc) only after they can do so relatively safely. That’s why multirole strike fighters and air superiority fighters always go in first: to clear out enemy aircraft threats and conduct suppression of enemy air defences.
In some cases there are few differences between a light bomber and any other plane of a similar class other than the mounts and mechanisms required to store, transport and release the ordinance in question.
But imagine I tell you to run an obstacle course, dodging, jumping and crawling. You’ll likely do fine. Then imagine I hand you a bowling ball. Now do it again. Don’t drop it.
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