[stefco_]

Dirac and Bohr were both theorists, not experimentalists! But you're right that it varies within disciplines.

I'm an experimental physics Ph.D. student working on LIGO, and I have also found that experimental physicists are often very good at motivating engineering from top to bottom. I think having depth of knowledge is part of it. My advisor has told me that some of the best experimentalists have sufficient depth of expertise to be theorists. I can't comment on how this compares to other fields (since I haven't worked outside of academia) but I have been very satisfied with how eloquent and deeply informed experimental physicists usually are.