Survivorship bias and WW2 Bombers

When we focus only on what has survived, or successes, this is what is referred to as survivorship bias. This is a distorted view because we should look at everything, including what did not survive or succeed. Consider how we all hear about entrepreneurs that succeed in business, but you never hear stories of the people that went bankrupt and lost everything.
During World War Two, researchers were tasked with figuring out how to further armor American bombers so they set about analyzing those bombers that made it back successfully from missions. What they noticed were the bullet holes tended to be in certain areas. There are two ways to view this. First, the holes could be understood to be areas that need further reinforcement with armor plates. However, this is a misguided analysis because we must consider the bombers that did not return from missions. The spots actually represent areas that planes can sustain bullet holes and survive. The planes did not return were most likely hit in areas that could not survive bullet penetration, and those bullet holes would likely not show up on bombers that successfully returned from their missions.
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