Originally Posted by
oldchina
No need for hindsight. There had been five previous events of fuel tank penetration.
And zero previous events of fuel tank burst due to hydrodynamic ram effect - which is effectively what this was. The damage was orders of magnitude greater than anything seen before. [ allegedly the effect
was known, at least in theory, in military aviation but any tests and calculations or models were classified ].
The previous incidents are just no comparable, like saying that multiple previous events of car windscreens smashed by stone chips should have lead them to be designed to withstand a concrete block dropped off a bridge - it happens, it can be fatal, but one could not predict the other.