Bill Shatzer wrote:

ArtKramr ) writes:

You mean it had no protective armor? None?

Yup, he means zilch, zippo, three fifths of five eighths of f*ck all.

Sheesh !

Why would you suppose otherwise?

Armor may be of some use against 13mm rounds but of little use against
SAMs and AAMs. And those were the principal weapons which concerned
its designers.

Armor can be of use against SAMs and AAMs as well, as they tend to use
proximity-fused warheads which do their damage with fragments if the target
is outside the radius of the blast zone. Most of them (especially in that
generation) weren't going to score direct hits. Again, it was a question
of the Buff's intended 'one combat sortie and "we'll meet again some sunny
day"' mission, combined with the high, fast and far design flight profile
that made armor not worth the weight. It's not as if the crews would be
bringing a damaged a/c back to anything, even assuming they weren't already
killed by blast or dying of radiation sickness.

Guy