July 5th, 2024

Everything you've been told about the 'Chickenpox bomber' is wrong

The 'Chickenpox bomber' story involves mathematician Abraham Wald correcting military officers' armor placement misconceptions during World War II. Lessons on critical thinking and source verification are underscored for future conflicts.

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Everything you've been told about the 'Chickenpox bomber' is wrong

The story of the 'Chickenpox bomber' has been widely misunderstood and misrepresented. The tale involves mathematician Abraham Wald, who corrected military officers' misconceptions about where to add armor on bombers to increase survivability. Wald pointed out that the officers were analyzing the bombers that survived, not the ones that were shot down, leading to a more effective armor placement strategy. However, the story has been embellished over time, with various versions circulating, including a simplified drawing that became popular. While Wald's recommendations were implemented during World War II, the lessons learned were not consistently applied in later conflicts like Korea and Vietnam. The importance of accurate information and critical thinking is highlighted in this narrative, emphasizing the need to question and verify sources before drawing conclusions.

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By @cafard - 5 months
I have been told nothing about the 'Chickenpox bomber'. This is the first time I encountered the term, and I think I'll quit while I'm ahead.
By @onion2k - 5 months
Ah, the curse of knowledge. The author is clearly very experienced in his domain, so when a daft-but-useful meme happened to stray across into an area he knows about he felt empowered to refute it. The problem is that the meme, like most memes, is a wildly simplified abstraction for something else, not really a story about planes, and the story at its heart is more like a parable than a factual statement. Everyone who hears about the plane and the dots and the armour eventually understands it's about looking at a piece of evidence and realizing you need to look at the whole picture instead of what's immediately apparent (eg "planes that get shot" versus "planes that get shot and survive").

The author knows more about plane survivability than most, but couldn't see past the facts to understand the meaning.

By @invalidname - 5 months
I've known this story for years and was told about it by an aviation expert. Heard it later from multiple sources. Pretty surprised this was made up.