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The Legend of Abraham Wald – solving problem of armoring planes
- Animats 10y agoThe key data:[1] Probability of surviving a single hit: Entire aircraft .851 Engine .588 Fuselage .940 Fuel system .973 Others .939 That's pretty clear. The A-10 Warthog, however, has most of its armor around the pilot, who sits in what's called a "titanium bathtub". This is very popular with pilots. So was armoring the back of the pilot's seat in WWII. [1] http://people.ucsc.edu/~msmangel/Wald.pdf http://people.ucsc.edu/~msmangel/Wald.pdf
- skmurphy 10y agoMore of the British pilots parachuted into friendly hands because majority of the air battle in the "Battle for Britain" was over Britain. The Germans started to face a pilot shortage. Arguably the British should have focused on pilot and crew survival (vs. aircraft survival) at least for the fighters. The US rotated pilots back from front to train the next generation while the Germans continued to fly missions leading to more German aces but arguably better trained US pilots (on average).