What is the strangest damage to an aircraft that you have ever seen?

I once did an emergency extract of a Recon team in VN, There was no place to land so I backed the aircraft into a hillside and let down until I felt solid enough for the team to jump on the ramp. During the loading process, I was mentally congratulating myself on the stability of the hover. When the team was all aboard, I lifted and returned them to their base. On the post flight inspection, we found an 18 inch hole in the underside of the aircraft where a tree trunk had punched through during the landing. Gave some extra stability in the hover and the metal shop had a good time with it.

SSgt (Join to see), the B-17 "All American" sustained some of the most significant damage that I've seen to an aircraft, yet was able to continue flying and return to base. Occurred in 1943. I've attached a link to the story.

http://www.warbirdsnews.com/warbird-articles/wwiis-b-17-all-american-separating-fact-fiction.html

Being a "tin Bender" for 24 years I have seen all kinds of damage. When I was a reservist at Wright- Pat in the early 90s a F-4 hit two deer. When stationed at Davis-Monthan we had a A-10 strike and kill a coyote. When stationed at Travis I have had not bird strikes but Pterodactyl strikes on C-141s and C-5s. When you investigate the "possible bird strike" and you see the talon still wedged between the pylon and wing and the talon is bigger than your hand, all you can do is just stand back and say "damn!" As for extensive damage we discovered extensive corrosion on a C-141 were 40 square feet of skin had to be replaced as well as the stringers and ribs. One of the dumbest things we had to fix on our "off time" was when a F-86 pilot practicing for an airshow bloody forgot to put his landing gear down and decided it would be really cool to belly land a perfectly good aircraft. Lucky for the aircraft owner my sheetmetal guys were dying to get their hands on his aircraft and fix it for gratis. Many more stories are out there!!!!!!!

SSgt (Join to see) great question. Well there I was in Baghdad, Iraq in April 2003. After the Airport (BIAP) was secured. I was delivering supplies to BIAP, I notice a bombed out transport aircraft cut in half. I couldn't believe it. U.S. Forces took it to the Republican Guard.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq

Stationed at Kirtland AFB, NM. We had a C-130 hit what I assume is a couple of Vultures. One put a dent about the size of a bowling ball above and left of the wind screen. The other hit right below the center of the windscreen, punched through the fuselage, and disintegrated through the flight gauges spraying the flight crew with carnage. Plane landed safely. Fixed at Kirtland.

This happened in 2001 at Eglin AFB. Security Forces troop ran his squad car under an F-15 on the ramp. The rumors on how he did it flew. Some say he was hotdogging the car, others say he dropped his cell phone.

No injuries, besides the car and the F15 that was just minding its own business.

"Heavy Rain" damage on engine intake lips on an EA-6B Prowler. More commonly referred to as hail.

Made the intakes look like Swiss cheese.

I have 3 stories. While deployed to Pakistan a Navy F-18 landed with his canopy smashed and the hose still attached to his refueling point. When the hose would not detach the pilot had to get it to break off the C-130. When it broke off it smashed the canopy making for a long cold flight to Jacobabad. Same location a CH-47 came in with no front wheels due to an accident in Afghanistan. Our Fire Trucks provided light for the Soldiers to hold up a stack of pallets for the CH-47 to land on. It was quite the thing to watch. While stationed at Cannon an F-16 went to take off and had to abort takeoff due to panels, parts and pieces falling off. This jet was just put back into service and someone did not do their job to ensure the jet was air worthy. A lot of heads rolled for that one.

I just remembered another one. I was Security most of my career, but had about 2 years mid-career as a Firefighter at Eglin AFB. We got a call that an F15 was landing with damage. When the plane landed, there was part of an ejector seat hanging out of a hole it had punched in the bottom fuselage, and a very small dent. The seat part was a rail or something, was sort of an "I" beam about 2 in in cross-section and what I could see was 2 or 3 ft long, but no idea how much was up inside the plane. Here ends what I actually know about this incident, we were told there were 2 F15's dogfighting over the Gulf and one of them ejected and hit the other one. Anyone heard of this and know what actually happened?

While I was in Afghanistan last year they moved the T-Walls so they could repair parts of the runway. One of the C-10 units didn't read the NOTAMs and I'll leave the rest to your imagination. Luckily they didn't shut down the entire airfield for too long.

If you consider UAVs aircraft, we launched one when the parachute deployed and it nose dived right off base. Another time we had a faulty fuel pump, landed in a soccer field and somehow it was in a perfect pile with the booms crossed, everything sweep up tightly and started on fire.