I see pictures and hear stories of aircraft struggling back to base with hundreds of bullet holes or missing engines/parts of wings or shrapnel inside the wings. How did they stay in the air after all that anti air fire and why are modern aircraft weaker than them (Iran shot down one easily)?
In: Engineering
I mean, over 12 thousand bombers were shot down during WWII, so I’d be hesitant to act like they were somehow resistant to anti-aircraft fire.
Some aircraft were hit less critically, and were able to limp home. But, like I said, 12,000+ were destroyed and hundreds of thousands of people were killed, so…
Bullets and flak can tear a plane up, but the plane can still be aerodynamic enough to fly to safety as long as its fuel lines or vital systems aren’t taking direct damage.
These days there are missiles with a lot more explosive power than bullets that are guaranteed to do more damage to planes if they land a direct hit.
Well, Iran shot down a plane with a surface to air missile. Which is 1000s of times more powerful than bullets and flak. (and im probably still off by a few orders of magnitude)
Bullet, unless they hit something super important just punch holes in stuff.
A missile explodes and destroys the craft.
Fun fact, there’s a lot of survivorship bias here. *A lot* of bombers *did* get shot down, and the ones that survived were the ones where important parts didn’t get hit. You really never saw a craft that hit the cockpit (which kills the pilot) or hit the engines return.
[Here is a great video about that by Eddie Woo.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9WFpVsRtQg)
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