What are some examples of military units (e.g. tank, airplane…) that withstood a lot of battle damage and yet were still functional?
One of the most famous examples was Robert Johnson’s P-47.
He’d been escorting bombers, and his flight got bounced by FW190s. His plane was literally shot to bits, his canopy shattered and jammed, he couldn’t bail out, his tail was nearly shot away by 20mm cannon hits, his windscreen covered with oil and fluid sprays, and his engine on fire. And he kept flying. The fire, fortunately, flamed out.
An FW190 piloted by the famous ace Egon Mayer looked him over, settled in behind him, then pumped his plane full of lead as Johnson hunkered behind the armor plate, and Johnson tried to throw it off and got it briefly in front of his guns, but missed. The FW190 pulled alongside, saluted him, then fell to the rear again and shot it up some more.
Finally, incredulous that the Thunderbolt was still kicking, the FW190 pilot pulled alongside again, waved at him, appraised the plane yet again, fell behind one more, and shot at him even more from close range. Mayer finally pulled alongside one final time, shook his head in amazement, waggled his wings in salute, then, since he was over the Channel, flew off. He’d run out of ammo.
Johnson discovered his radio was working, got instructions to his base in England, then landed safely despite having no flaps or brakes. His face was burned, he had glass and metal splinters in his hands, he had two bullets in his leg, and a cannon shell had nicked his nose.
His plane had over 200 bullet holes in it with five holes in the propeller blades alone.