“The famous survivorship bias image is a ‘loose reconstruction’ of methods used on a hypothetical dataset” by Lao Mein
Description
File:Survivorship-bias.svg - Wikimedia Commons
A later reprinting of the "unillustrated report" referenced:
A_Reprint_Plane_Vulnerability.pdf
Even a 20mm autocannon round only has a ~50% chance of destroying a plane on an engine hit, as opposed to the ~100% assumption used for the illustration (I think the flak round statistics were per-fragment-hit and not per-shell)! Weird how few people were suspicious about a 100% loss rate for engine hits to a two-engine plane.
Speaking of which, there is no source for the example data, which is noted as "hypothetical" in the report. The hypothetical data set was for a 1000-plane raid on a single objective, which implies a strategic bombing mission context, and thus that the planes were 4-engine strategic bombers like the B-17 instead of the 2-engine bomber in the illustration (this is a nitpick, but I thought it was neat). There is also no exact hit location data, with [...]
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First published:
September 30th, 2025
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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