Shortround6
Major General
Unfortunate it seems to have been mental attitude.I think it's better to think of it not as "military flying is supposed to be dangerous", and more that "when someone is shooting at you, being able to run away before they can shoot you is armor in itself". Making an aircraft safer and easier to fly, even before considering structural strength often involves sacrifices being made to performance. For example, strongm dihedral makes a plane very resistant to rolling, which makes it very stable… and also makes it very resistant to the pilot trying to start a rolling maneuver.
The tradeoff when trying to shave a few pounds is "how many pilots we risk dying in an accident who wouldn't have before, vs how many pilots survive the mission who wouldn't have before"
yes they tried to make planes stronger.
But look at the criminally dismal record of planes like the Gloster Meteor in the late 40s and early 50s. let alone planes flying in the 1920s.
A total of 890 Meteors were lost in RAF service (145 of these crashes occurring in 1953 alone), resulting in the deaths of 450 pilots.
Crash 145 Cessna 172s in one year let alone even 14 twin engine airliners and look at the government investigations, regulations and uproar.
Military personnel are going to get injured or die in training, but the goal is to reduce the numbers as much as possible. Not brush it aside with excuse that military training is dangerous and they knew that when they signed up so we (the military) don't have to fix anything.
It is not macho to die because they couldn't be bothered to figure out that the canopy could not be opened at certain speeds or attitudes.
Military aircraft should be able to fly and fight within certain limits without the plane breaking in flight, Problems should be noted in the manuals, and vary according to type of planes and or missions. Bombers should not be flown in steel dives and such.