Originally posted by Batz
Karnak those planes are the "miracles". You can't claim they are representative of anything, either toughness or "randomness", unless there is a detailed study that not only includes those that "made it home" but those that didn't.
Oh, I agree absolutely. That is what I was talking about at the end with the Ju88 downed by one Hispano round.
It usually cannot be determined how many hits and of what kind brought an aircraft down because the aircraft is so thoroughly destroyed by its subsequent interaction with the ground.
Those aircraft that make it home after taking heavy hits tend to create a myth about how durable their type is. Look at how frequently that P-47 that came home after being shot up by the Fw190 comes up and how it is used to claim that a P-47 should always take that much damage. What you don't hear about is the P-47 that was hit by a single MG151/20 round and had its elevators jammed or the cables severed, consquently not making it home.
In one of my books I have an account of a Mosquito bomber that had a flak burst go off near it. After returning it was found that one piece of shrapnel hit it and severed all but one strand of one wire of the elevator runs. Now that doesn't say that the Mossie was tough, it says that the crew got lucky in that the shrapnel wasn't a milimeter more on target. If it had been nobody would have ever known what had downed that aircraft, it simply wouldn't have returned. As it was the ground crew's comment when telling the crew was that they'd "Virtually bought it".
Now, due to the Mosquito's construction and the way in which the MK108 does damage I do think the structure of the Mosquito is significantly more durable than a similarly sized aluminum aircraft would be. However the above examples are not what lead me to think that. It also must be said that even if the Mosquito's skin and spars are better able to take an MK108 round that hardly assures survival.
