[_heimdall]

My grandfather flew in WWII and had many stories of both his planes and those in his group making it back with what mechanics would have thought was catastrophic damage.

Shooting down any aircraft with a rocket is likely to take anything down. Planes can handle damage much better from what I understand.

[jordanb]

Anti-aircraft weapons have gotten better. In WWII the Axis didn't have proximity fuses so the shells would explode at a predetermined range and throw shrapnel.

Now anti-aircraft weapons explode at a very specific distance and create a rapidly expanding ring of metal which slices the aircraft in two.

[stouset]

And they are actively guided onto their targets. Even bullets are aimed by radar and a computer plotting a solution involving the trajectories of the target, your own aircraft, and the bullets themselves.

[_heimdall]

For sure. I wasn't raising 80 year old flights as a direct analog to today's weapons, I'm just pointing out a direct example I have of planes landing safely after some really serious damage. Helicopters aren't nearly as likely to make it back with similar levels of damage.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

The Bloody Hundredth (Masters of the Air was based on that) had the highest casualty percentage of any combat unit in the war.

[mysterydip]

Still being used in training today: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

[_heimdall]

Survivorship bias is related to how you respond to the data though, in this case reinforcing the wrong parts of the plane based on where you saw holes in planes that returned.

I do believe it is still true that planes can take more damage and still land safely compared to helicopters.

I can't find any good data to support it now though, maybe someone going by here will have a good link to data that shows real world data either way.

[HideousKojima]

An anecdote, but in 1983 an Israeli F-15 famously landed successfully with one of its wings almost completely sheared off after a midair collision during training exercises.

[mysterydip]

Yeah agreed, I was making a connection to the parent's "the planes could survive hits the mechanics didn't expect"