Things were done differently in the US up through the 1960's. Different company but yesterday I learned that a P-47 Thunderbolt landed carrying a 500 lb bomb wh

Things were done differently in the US up through the 1960's. Different company but yesterday I learned that a P-47 Thunderbolt landed carrying a 500 lb bomb where there was a malfunction and the bomb exploded. Not only was the pilot okay, but though the tail was obliterated, the wings stayed on. That was one of the things about the P-47: the wings never came off. Those things were built incredibly tough. This is a part of the reason why the P-47 had such great dive performance. (Only late model Spitfires could beat the P-47 in a dive, and only in a narrow altitude range.) There was another incident where a FW-190 pilot came across a P-47 limping home, with its canopy stuck. So the P-47 pilot had no choice but to go back and land at his airbase. The FW-190 pilot emptied all of his magazines into the P-47, but it just kept on flying. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCNt3J65UqE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCNt3J65UqE Greg's airplanes and automobiles is a great channel. Another thing I learned from watching it: Logistics in the form of better fuel refining actually was responsible for a big part of the performance advantage of allied planes in WWII. The allies could supply better quality higher octane fuel, which meant they could run their superchargers and turbochargers at higher pressures to get more horesepower from smaller engines. (Which is why late in the war, BF-109s were using water and methanol injection to try and keep up.)