Your bomber story is steeped in urban legend. The closest real, substantiated event is a paper published by Abraham Wald, an Austro-Hungarian who immigrated to

Your bomber story is steeped in urban legend. The closest real, substantiated event is a paper published by Abraham Wald, an Austro-Hungarian who immigrated to the USA, in which he applies the correct statistical analysis accounting for survivorship bias. I can find no evidence that anyone ever published the "opposite" conclusion, or added any armor to real planes either way. The story is also attributed, without evidence, to Patrick Blackett, who was indeed British. https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/30078/did-the-center-for-naval-analysis-recommend-that-the-damaged-areas-be-reinforced https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/30078/did-the-c...