Originally Posted by
MG23
If I remember correctly, the existence of Schräge Musik weapons on German night fighters was deduced by Bomber Command statisticians who noticed that the loss rate for experienced crews had risen close to the same level as inexperienced crews, and therefore there must be something shooting them down other than the kind of flak and fighter attacks earlier in the war that experienced crews could better avoid (at least on the flight to and from the target, if not the actual bombing run).
The other interesting statistical observation involved working out when the aircraft landed, was observing where on the airframe they were getting hit. Say if the vast majority were getting hits in the wings then the statisticians recommended that the tail and fuselage was armoured. This initially sounds bizzare - if the aircraft were getting hit in the wings - why wouldn't you armour plate them rather than the untouched fuselage and tail? The logic was that if your wings were peppered full of holes and you still made it back to base then that was OK. Obviously if your aircraft was hit in the fuselage or the tail, they were not making it back to bese to be counted - ergo the seemingly strange logic.