I've read this story before, but asserting it was the RAF rather than the USAAF, which triggered my urban-legend detector. In fact, the mathematical work was d

I've read this story before, but asserting it was the RAF rather than the USAAF, which triggered my urban-legend detector. In fact, the mathematical work was done by Abraham Wald¹, a Jewish refugee from Romania, at Columbia University in 1943. A reprint of his memos is available², as is a more accessible article about his work³; the specific one is Part V Subdivision of the Plane⁴ Into Several Equi-Vulnerability Areas: “Thus, for the observed data of this hypothetical example [italics added], the engine area is the most vulnerable in the sense that a hit there is most likely to down the plane. The fuselage has a relatively low vulnerability.” I haven't seen evidence that his work was applied to actual aircraft design using real data. ¹ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Wald http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Wald ² http://cna.org/sites/default/files/research/0204320000.pdf http://cna.org/sites/default/files/research/0204320000.pdf ³ http://people.ucsc.edu/~msmangel/Wald.pdf http://people.ucsc.edu/~msmangel/Wald.pdf ⁴ the flying kind