I'm not but the Lancaster tailgunner who told me this survived 2 tours and he
reckoned that was a statistical fluke akin to winning the lottery


That was one of the things I liked about the series "Piece of Cake". Some of
the pilots are obsessed with preparation and skill, and they are the ones who
last the longest, but by the end you realize that the odds are neutral, and
that even the best are killed if they keep going up. There is no luck, only the
hope of being ignored by chance.