Maybe then, just maybe, if you hit a hollow Curtiss-type blade centrally, the edges which are essentially two steel ‘angles’ will be rigid enough to hold the thing together while the centre ‘explodes’ spectacularly? Of course we may not be seeing the hundreds of non-central strikes, with blade outers twisted off and a subsequent catastrophic effect? Just the three lucky ones that caught the blade centrally? And I guess it might only work like this with these Curtiss hollow blades – forged alloy solid blades might well react differently – hence the predominance of P-47 examples? Maybe I was too cynical initially.