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Gaijin take note. A more realistic damage model that includes a module for the uplock system, so if damaged, it releases the landing gear.
This is a textbook example of survivorship bias. The whole logic here is that you found some pictures of battle damaged B-17s and have extrapolated that because they made it back to base with X amount of damage that it was the norm, and therefore WarThunder should implement it as the norm.
Look at how many photos you have been able to find of B-17s returning in poor shape. Now realize that something like 4,000+ B-17s were shot down in the European theater alone.
Especially in regards to 30mm hits…what you have shown in most cases is consummate with single round damage, which by US Strategic Bombing Survey figures results in a 25% chance of bringing the plane down.
A bomber in 1944 was basically twice as likely to be brought down by a fighter than a similar bomber in 1943, provided that it was actually engaged by a fighter. The employment of longer ranged escort fighters starting in Dec 1943 is what drove bomber loss rates from enemy fighters down.
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Well, wish WT had more than 3 wing sections + flaps and ailerons that once destroyed become forcefields. Then a hit to the middle and the back of the wing could result in completely different results and work in a reliable way.
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You do realise it’s quite clear that certain areas can be destroyed without compromising the ability to stay in the air, but a contrario there are plenty of spots where a hit is way more dangerous. In that MK108 clip I posted it’s pretty clear the bomber is absolutely a goner. Of course according to our village idiot, all the explosives in these shells combined would maybe punch a basketball-sized hole in B-17 (as it’s tougher than the 2nd mightiest object known to man - tailgate of murrican joystick extender Ford F250), but I digress
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Look, I get why people jump straight to “survivorship bias” whenever this topic comes up—it’s an easy hand-wave. But you’re mixing up statistical attrition with actual structural physics here.
Nobody is claiming the B-17 was an invincible tank, or that the 4,000+ bombers lost over Europe didn’t happen. WWII air defense was brutal. But survivorship bias explains sample selection; it doesn’t magically rewrite static load-path engineering.
1. Luck vs. Actual Airframe Physics Luck determines where a shell hits you. If a 30mm or Flak burst catches a single-point failure node—the cockpit, a primary fuel manifold, or the main wing root joint—the plane goes down. End of story. But engineering determines what happens when the shell doesn’t hit a vital node.
When a shell detonates in a non-critical area, the B-17’s multi-spar wing design and heavy longerons kept the airframe intact. Planes making it back with 50%+ of their outer skin ripped off aren’t just “statistical anomalies of luck”—they’re physical proof that the frame had redundant load paths. Luck got them past the gunners; the airframe physics kept the tail from snapping off on the way home.
2. The USSBS Data and 30mm Minengeschoss The ~25% single-round lethality figure for the 30mm MK 108 Minengeschoss is well known, but you have to look at how that round actually works. It was a thin-walled, high-explosive blast shell designed to strip aluminum skin via overpressure, not punch through heavy steel.
Because the B-17 fuselage wasn’t pressurized, that shockwave vented rapidly outward through the skin instead of trapping pressure and blowing the airframe in half. Unless that HE burst directly severed the internal steel longerons or main spar webs, the underlying skeleton held the load. The USSBS data reflects what happens when critical vs. non-critical nodes are hit, which completely aligns with the damage photos.
3. The 1943 vs. 1944 Escort Argument Bringing up the 1943 vs 1944 fighter escorts actually proves my point. P-51s reduced the frequency of fighter interceptions; they didn’t magically change the metallurgy or structural limits of the B-17. Fewer fighters meant bombers took fewer total hits, which gave heavily damaged planes the breathing room to actually limp back to England. All that did was give us a larger sample size of photos showing what the airframe could physically survive when it wasn’t being continuously chewed up.
4. What This Means for War Thunder’s DM At the end of the day, no one is asking for WT to turn B-17s into health-bar sponges that swallow endless 30mm rounds. The complaint is about War Thunder’s simplistic Damage Model, where structural components act like rigid HP pools that trigger a clean geometric tail or wing snap the second a threshold is hit.
Real structural engineering doesn’t work like a binary switch. The B-17’s multi-spar wing network and redundant longerons were built to handle massive local structural degradation without instant catastrophic failure—and that’s what a realistic DM should reflect.
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Holy chat gpt generated argument.
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Yes, English is not my native language; I use artificial intelligence to better and more meaningfully convey my thoughts and knowledge to you.
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However, this does not change the validity of my argument.
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Yes, it is survivorship bias, but also remember these B17s had to fly hundreds of miles from germany all the way back across the channel to england in THAT state, imagine the shape of B17s that were still flying, but didnt quite make it back across the channel, how many 17s were so shredded that they could barely fly 50 more miles? Thats a loss irl, but in war thunder thats being able to cross the entire air rb map and then some. B17 mizpah is a great example.
THERES NO WAY THIS MADE IT HOME, THOSE PILOTS ARE DEAD. And yet, it stayed airborne long enough for someone to notice “holy shit, that b17 has no nose” and then whip out a camera, get it in focus, and take this picture.
Bomber durability in war thunder may match irl, but the actual survivability will always be higher, because our bombers dont need to fly as far, and our nigels have no will to live
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Now this I can agree with, we do need more detailed damage models.
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Is it wrong though? 😂
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This is not your knowledge and it’s regurgitated LLM slop. It’s not worth entertaining an argument with people that cannot formulate their own thoughts or even critique the slop that comes out of their own AI prompt.
It actually does. It makes no sense for me to debunk your AI generated claims when you are going to just keep filtering the same response to AI in order to generate similar claims.
For instance this point is complete gibberish nonsense. Cockpit pressurization has no bearing on the average lethality of a cannon shell in Europe.
This point is entirely your AI prompt misinterpreting fact. A B-17 was more likely to be shot down in 1944 by a factor of 2 if it happened to be engaged by a fighter. This was due to increasing armament on German fighters.
The bombers that did get hit didn’t take fewer hits; they took more hits from cannons and were more likely to go down.
Read this and think about it for a second.
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There is no plane that made it back with 50%+ of it’s outer skin ripped off. This is especially true if you look at 50% of the lifting surface.
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Yes…by it’s definition it would be a statistical anomaly.
This part of your prompt ignores all of the footage we have posted of the above happening and the B-17 not being brought down in War Thunder.
So yes…your whole argument is garbage.
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Well, that’s all from me. I don’t think I’ll do any further research due to the language barrier, because I don’t see how I can make any real progress with people who disrespect my ideas. Yes, as you mentioned, AI helped expand on certain parts—I agree with that—but it did so strictly based on the sources I provided. Anyway, I guess those who actually wanted to get my main point have already understood it
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However, I still have one final report in the works, and I’m confident that once I complete it, no one will be able to find a single objective flaw in it
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By the way, while my friends and I always speak with documentation, why don’t you? For instance, would you like to share the documentation or proof of Germany’s recent increase in armament, or the records showing the ratio of fighter jets and air defense systems destroyed despite this increase?
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One could argue your arguments isnt your knowledge, but regurgitated lead paint and asbestos huffing old man slop, an LLM is a tool to save time, an unbiased tool, give it a document and a good prompt in your native language, and it can read it in seconds and translate it instead of an hour and tell you what youre looking for and even where to find it in the document. And then ask it to make a summary in english so a language barrier isnt an issue
So how much of your arguments in this thread have been filtered through using LLM to make the argument for you? Is this why you are incapable of reading the actual reports?
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