History Main / ArmoredCoffins

** Even the ships got in on this. In the Imperial Japanese Navy, the more important a ship was the worse its safety features were. At the extreme end of the spectrum was the ''Yamato'' class which had ''no'' life boats or rafts. She had a very limited supply of life vests and they were only intended to be used during storms in case of a "man overboard" scenario, not if the ship actually sank.

** The Clan Hunchback IIC is deliberately designed to be this; it has meager armor and poor endurance, as they are usually piloted by older solahma warriors (above 35) so they [[CannonFodder can die in the next fight]]. Its even shaped like a coffin with arms and legs.

* The B-24 earned the nickname the flying coffin, though this was actually a result of improved durability compared to its predecessor. B-24s can soak up tremendous amounts of damage and keep flying, and were designed with crew safety in mind unlike the B-17. In practice however, this meant that anyone bailing out a B-24 would have to do so under extreme circumstances. With other bombers the crew usually bailed when engines gave out the control surfaces were damaged to much to allow a safe landing. In a B-24, these are the last things to go and their crews often found themselves bailing out of ''disintegrating'' aircraft.

* The Messerschmitt Me 321/323 Gigant would count as an ''un''armored coffin. The original 321 was built as an assault glider capable of landing tanks or anti-aircraft guns behind enemy lines, so the floor of the cargo area was fairly solid. The rest of the Gigant was made of fabric stretched over a framework. Despite the lightweight construction, it was so heavy that getting it into the air called for three tow planes '''plus''' booster rockets mounted to Gigant's wings, and even that proved insufficient sometimes. Finally, the Germans bolted six engines to Gigant, renumbered it the 323, and used it as a transport plane ... but kept the fabric construction of the glider version. German soldiers promptly dubbed it the "Sticking Plaster Bomber", and prayed they'd be transported to the front in a nice metal Junkers 52 instead. During one trip to the North African front, 21 out of 27 Gigants were shot down by the Allies for a loss of three Allied planes to the Gigants' escorts.

* Being a Ball Turret Gunner meant this trope applied. Most of the crew of the B-17 got parachutes. The ball turret gunner didn't, as there was not enough room in the turret to wear one. Statistically speaking, the ball turret gunner was just as likely to die as any other member of the crew (having the same amount of armor protection, which is to say none at all), but being suspended in a cramped glass ball beneath the plane left one feeling particularly vulnerable. Additionally, if the motors that controlled the turret were damaged during combat, this could prevent the gunner from being able to exit the turret as it could only be opened when properly aligned with its access hatch. And if the plane's landing gear were also damaged, that would mean the plane was forced to perform a belly landing that would assuredly kill the gunner. There is more than one instance where this did indeed happen. This was the main reason why Creator/HarryHarrison, having served ([[CaptainObvious and survived]]) a full tour of duty in this very position, came to hate all things military with a passion. Which is where all the snark and ridicule in his writing comes from.

** Imperial Titans, despite having a forward mounted head unit that act as the cockpit, lack ejection systems as well. This is for two reasons. First, the main pilot (the princeps) is usually neurally wired into the Titan and thus violently ejecting him from the cockpit will usually kill him via brain damage anyways. Second, Titans are usually durable enough that nothing short of a core meltdown (or taking out the pilot) will put it down, and when these things go nuclear they can craterize entire cities, even the smaller titans.

* The first fighter plane used by the Americans, the French-built Nieuport 28, was loved for its ability to launch quickly (the engine required little in the way of warm-up) and climb quickly, paired with excellent agility in dogfights. However, the Gnome Monosoupape rotary engine was prone to catching fire if the pilot wasn't careful (due to an unusual throttle design), the fuel tanks could occasionally leak (also leading to a fire), and during intensive maneuvering, the upper wing could delaminate, which is to say, the upper portion would rip loose, usually leading to a crash. The US Army Air Service would go on to replace the Nieuport 28 with the (also French-built) SPAD S.VII and SPAD S.XIII.

* Escort carriers were notoriously fragile, even with excellent damage control practices. A single torpedo, bomb, kamikaze, or shell was often all the was needed to make them explode. American sailors used to joke that their "CVE" designation stood for "Combustable Vulnerable [[WeHaveReserves Expendable]]."

** The trope name was invoked for the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brewster_F2A_Buffalo Brewster Buffalo,]] even though it came with standard safety procedures, because of its immense uselessness in the Southeast Asian and Pacific theatres of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII against the [[CoolPlane Zero fighters]]. It was redesigned in the later phases of the war and ended up ''even worse'' as its weight had been severly increased. That said, the Finns used them to good effect during the UsefulNotes/WinterWar as Soviet aircraft and pilots weren't as good. It also didn't help that the VMF-223 pilots at Midway were green rookies straight our of flight school.
*** The problem with the Buffalo was that it was surprisingly poorly suited to carrier operations, mainly due to issues with the landing gear collapsing. Modifications to the aircraft increased its weight, which exacerbated the landing gear issues. All this on top of having relatively modest performance and the fact that Japanese pilots in the early months of the war were better trained and more experienced than their American counterparts and often had the element of surprise. By the time the Americans had adapted their strategies to exploits flaws in Japanese aircraft and tactics, the Buffalo had been phased out of service in favor of more powerful aircraft, along with many other early-war aircraft such as the Douglas Devastator, Vought Vindicator, and the Curtiss Hawk. In Finnish use as ground-based planes, the Buffaloes not only had heavy naval equipment removed, they were also stripped of their armor and self-sealing fuel tanks. The top speed and manoeuvereability increased dramatically. While this rendered them far less capable of taking a hit, the Finns felt it more important to reduce the odds of ''getting'' hit in the first place. [[CrazyEnoughToWork It worked]] - Finnish pilots achieved 477 victories with Brewsters while losing a mere 10 of their own in aerial combat.
*** Finns used also the equally obsolete Curtiss P-36 Hawk with success, gaining [[{{Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond}} 202 victories for 8 lost]] in aerial combat. The plane was affectionately known as ''Sussu'' (a pun on code letters 'CU' for Curtiss), meaning "Sweetheart".
* The [[UsefulNotes/BritsWithBattleships Royal Navy]] County class heavy cruisers were called ''tinclads'' as they had [[GlassCannon good armament, but poor armour]].
** Contemporary USN heavy cruisers were frequently accused of being "eggshells armed with hammers" for similar reasons. Namely, the tonnage limits established by the naval treaties of the time. In the attempts to squeeze the most warship possible into the allowed weight, compromises were all but unavoidable -- and decent armor is actually quite heavy. While Japan had been subject to the same restrictions, they were in the habit of simply [[NotCheatingUnlessYouGetCaught made their cruisers as much as 50% larger than allowed and lying about the size]].
*** Ironically, Japanese wound up lying more because they were trying to follow treaty limits. The ''Mogami'' class cruisers were designed to carry heavy armament on a lightweight hull that was treaty-compliant. The result was a dangerously unbalanced and structurally unsound design that needed expensive refits that left the ship well over the treaty limit (this was common problem among Japanese warships built in 1920s, several of which suffered accidents with heavy loss of life due to design flaws arising from trying to pack in too much in too light hulls). The subsequent cruisers were definitely not treaty-compliant, but by then, Japan had abrogated the treaties.
** A British observer said of the Japanese heavy cruisers: ''Either they lie or they are made from cardboard''. Turned out both assumptions were correct.
** On a similar note, the US Navy nickname for Destroyers is "Tin Can", after the generally weak protection that WWI and WWII destroyers had against the capital ships they were often tasked with [[LiveActionEscortMission protecting]] or [[ZergRush attacking]].
*** "Tin Can" was more specifically used in reference to the American destroyer escorts, which were even ''smaller and less armored'' than full-sized destroyers. How can you have less armor than a destroyer that has virtually none at all? Simple: while destroyers had little in the way of armour plating, they did incorporate some armour over essential areas and made significant use of hardened steel alloys in their construction. Destroyer escorts, designed to be cheaper and more disposable, had absolutely no armour at all and thinner hulls of made of mild steel. It's like substituting cheap plywood for seasoned oak.
** Italian torpedo boats (effectively light destroyers), destroyers and light cruisers of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII were built for ludicrous speed and adequate range and armament, resulting in them being lightly armoured. While they were ''devastating'' against lighter ships (they were designed to hunt down the immediately smaller type of warship, having matching or superior speed and heavier armament) and had more chances of attacking battleships and survive by simply not getting hit, they were in trouble when facing ships of the same type and not having enough space to turn and run, leading to engagements like Cape Spada (where the Australian light cruiser HMAS ''Sydney'' took on two Italian light cruisers, each of them outgunning ''Sydney'', and won, disabling one and forcing the other to retreat while shrugging off the one hit she received) and one embarrassing incident where the Italian torpedo boat RN ''Sagittario'' rammed the submarine HMS ''Protheus'' and nearly sank.
*** Except that there weren't torpedo-boats and destroyers of any nation that were meant to have any meaningful way to protect against shellfire, aalthough the Italians did emphasize for these ships high speed over robustness. And for the light cruisers, while it's true that the first six light cruisers of the ''Condottieri'' series were little more than oversized destroyers that proved to be horribly unbalanced and unsuited to fight similar ships, other than their speeds not meaning anything as they had been obtained on artificially light displacements, the following six were significant improvements in terms of protection, and were much better fighting units (two of them did quite a number on the convoy of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Harpoon_(1942) Operation Harpoon.]] Also, it should be noted that the ''Proteus'' maneuvered to avoid the ramming, and struck the ''Sagittario'' with its hydroplanes.
* Even proper battleships weren't immune to this trope, particularly during the later Victorian era, where none of the designers had any real idea what they were doing. The massive topweight of armored turrets, and the fact that they were frequently combined with full sailing masts, meant that many ironclads were either horrendously unstable, dangerously unseaworthy, or both. French ships were the worst of the lot, due to long build times, designs changing on the slipways, a bad habit of adding extraneous superstructure, and tumblehome, where the hull tapered as it reached the main deck.
** Tumblehome is problematic from a stability standpoint because, unlike with conventional hulls, when heeling on its side the ship loses waterplane area and so ''capsizes faster''. Obviously not a good thing.
** The five half-sisters Charles Martel, Carnot, Bouvet, Massena, and Jaureguiberry take the cake, though. In addition to being pierced with many hull ports and having far too much unarmored hull, not to mention ugly as sin, their stability was egregiously, outrageously bad. A modern expert, looking at capsize simulations, said that his [[NightmareFuel hair stood on end]] and called the designers "chair-leg-chewing, baying-at-the-moon bonkers". Their stability was so bad that any underwater damage would capsize them within minutes before their tumblehome even became a factor, and indeed Bouvet sank in two minutes from a mine hit at the Dardanelles, taking all but fifty of her men with her. British contemporaries Ocean and Irresistible, meanwhile, took hours to sink from the same damage, allowing most of their crew to be evacuated.
*** Their seagoing properties were equally bad. Their inverted, [[RammingAlwaysWorks ram]] bows meant they were wet like sponges - they had a nasty tendency to ''dive'' under the wave instead of taking it, and likewise, their sterns were abysmally wet. Björn Landström, in his ''The Ship'', calls these vessels as the "ugliest and worst battleship class ever designed".
*** The Imperial Russian ''Borodino'' [[FromBadToWorse class design was based]] on the Charles Martel class. Of the five built, four were lost in action, three in [[CurbStompBattle Battle of Tsushima Strait]] during the UsefulNotes/RussoJapaneseWar and one in Battle of Moon Sound in WorldWarOne.
** Misguided maintenance practices did these ships no favors, either. The Royal Navy trended so much towards aesthetics and the necessary spit and polish behind them during this era that it was a not-infrequent occurrence to have watertight doors ''not be watertight'' due to the amount of polishing they went through.

** This issue was simply compounded by many Starfighter customers buying the plane as a ''low-level'' supersonic strike plane, which at the time often meant brushing the treetops at Mach 1. The Canadian Air Force called the plane "Lawn Dart".

** Shermans earned a number of derogatory nicknames (most notably "The Tommycooker", [[BlackHumor after a WWI portable field stove]]) for their propensity to catch fire, leaving the crew with only seconds to get out of the tank after a penetrating hit. This was due to both the fact that early versions of the M4 didn't have water jackets for the ammo storage and fuel tanks, and that British crews using lend-leased tanks tended to use them like their own "cruiser" tanks: they haphazardly stuffed tons of extra ammo AND fuel into their tanks wherever it would fit. They increased this way both the range and ammunition capacity, but also increased the odds of it getting set off when taking a hit. They should have learned the [[{{Made of Explodium}} lesson]] of the [[UsefulNotes/BritsWithBattleships Battle of Jutland 1916]].

* American built escort carriers were notoriously fragile, even with excellent damage control practices. A single torpedo, bomb, kamikaze, or shell was often all the was needed to make them explode. Sailors used to joke that designation "CVE" stood for "Combustable Vulnerable [[WeHaveReserves Expendable]]."

** To be fair, this is a common problem for most light APC types, especially those designed to be amphibious and air portable. The American M-113 gained a similar reputation in UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar, for example. While many modern Western [=IFVs=] are better protected, they are also too heavy to be amphibious or carried by light transport aircraft.

* Older ''Franchise/{{Gundam}}'' series have this, without any real way of escaping from an exploding mobile suit.

** Both play straight and subverted in ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamIronBloodedOrphans'', while there are escape pods for the [[SuperPrototype Schwalbe Graze]], it doesn't protect the pilots from being impaled by melee weapons. And for the mass produced Graze and Gundam Frame suits, escape pods are completely non-existent.

** The Japanese military was (in)famous for an [[WeHaveReserves absolutely callous treatment of its own troops]] (Soviet commanders at least got similar reputation because of [[IDidWhatIHadToDo sheer desperation]], but for the Japanese, it was a ''standard operational practice''). Its command wasted the whole prewar cadre of highly trained {{Ace Pilot}}s in fruitless attacks in God-forgotten places such as Rabaul, and only by the very end of the war did Japanese commanders realize that training an experienced pilot is actually a much longer, expensive, and difficult process than building them a plane. By then, there was simply not enough resources or the time to properly train pilots, even if they ''had'' considered them irreplaceable.

See SelfDestructMechanism for when the thing takes itself out enough so its tech cannot be discovered by the enemy. For another typical cause of dead tank crew in fiction (and related to the [[IThoughtItMeant another more common]] use for the phrase), see TanksForNothing.

*** The Imperial Russian ''Borodino'' [[FromBadToWorse class design was based]] on the Charles Martel class. Of the five built, four were lost in action, three in [[CurbStompBattle Battle of Tsushima Strait]] during the RussoJapaneseWar and one in Battle of Moon Sound in WorldWarOne.

** Shermans earned a number of derogatory nicknames (most notably "The Tommycooker", [[BlackHumor after a WWI portable field stove]]) for their propensity to catch fire, leaving the crew with only seconds to get out of the tank after a penetrating hit. This was due to both the fact that early versions of the M4 didn't have water jackets for the ammo storage and fuel tanks, and that British crews using lend-leased tanks tended to use them like their own "cruiser" tanks: they haphazardly stuffed tons of extra ammo AND fuel into their tanks wherever it would fit. They increased this way both the range and ammunition capacity, but also increased the odds of it getting set off when taking a hit. [[UsefulNotes/BritsWithBattleships They should have learned the lesson of the Battle of Jutland 1916]].

*** Finns used also the equally obsolete Curtiss P-36 Hawk with success, gaining 202 victories for 8 lost in aerial combat. The plane was affectionately known as ''Sussu'' (a pun on code letters 'CU' for Curtiss), meaning "Sweetheart".

* The Handley Page Victor strategic bomber had the crew hatch immediately ahead of the jet turbine. Attempting to bail out would result in [[TurbineBlender crew salsa]].

* The 4th Edition of TabletopGame/{{GURPS}}: Spaceships had a severe "eggshells armed with hammers" issues. In fact it was basically impossible to design a ship that couldn't instantly obliterate another ship of the same size even if the other ship were made almost entirely of armor. The damage calculation rules were revised so that it was at least ''possible'' to balance ships against each other, however the underlying assumptions of the book (in particular how kinetic energy translates to damage) still make combat insanely lethal.

* The 4th Edition of TabletopGame/{{GURPS}}: Spaceships had a severe "eggshells armed with hammers" issues. In fact it was basically impossible to design a ship that couldn't instantly obliterate another ship of the same size even if the other ship were made almost entirely of armor. The damage calculation rules were revised so that it was at least ''possible'' to balance ships against each other however the underlying assumptions of the book (in particular how kinetic energy translates to damage) still make combat insanely lethal.

* The RoyalNavy County class heavy cruisers were called ''tinclads'' as they had [[GlassCannon good armament, but poor armour]].

** Shermans earned a number of derogatory nicknames (most notably "The Tommycooker", [[BlackHumor after a WWI portable field stove]]) for their propensity to catch fire, leaving the crew with only seconds to get out of the tank after a penetrating hit. This was due to both the fact that early versions of the M4 didn't have water jackets for the ammo storage and fuel tanks, and that British crews using lend-leased tanks tended to use them like their own "cruiser" tanks: they haphazardly stuffed tons of extra ammo AND fuel into their tanks wherever it would fit. They increased this way both the range and ammunition capacity, but also increased the odds of it getting set off when taking a hit. [[BritsWithBattleships They should have learned the lesson of the Battle of Jutland 1916]].

** For that matter, the older BTR-40 and BTR-152 armored personnel carriers also acquired a similar reputation and nickname in the Middle East. Up until recently, these vehicles were fairly common in Arab service; several of them ended up being captured by the [[IsraelisWithInfraredMissiles Israel Defence Force]], which made use of them as well. Israeli troopers gave the vehicles a backronym in Hebrew: "Bo Tizrok Rimon" ("Come, throw a grenade"), due to their invitingly-open tops. It didn't help that the sides of the vehicle effectively boxed the occupants in.

** The trope name was invoked for the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brewster_F2A_Buffalo Brewster Buffalo]], even though it came with standard safety procedures, because of its immense uselessness in the Southeast Asian and Pacific theatres of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII against the [[CoolPlane Zero fighters]]. It was redesigned in the later phases of the war and ended up ''even worse'' as its weight had been severly increased. That said, the Finns used them to good effect during the UsefulNotes/WinterWar as Soviet aircraft and pilots weren't as good. It also didn't help that the VMF-223 pilots at Midway were green rookies straight our of flight school.

*** Except that there weren't torpedo-boats and destroyers of any nation that were meant to have any meaningful way to protect against shellfire, aalthough the Italians did emphasize for these ships high speed over robustness. And for the light cruisers, while it's true that the first six light cruisers of the ''Condottieri'' series were little more than oversized destroyers that proved to be horribly unbalanced and unsuited to fight similar ships, other than their speeds not meaning anything as they had been obtained on artificially light displacements, the following six were significant improvements in terms of protection, and were much better fighting units (two of them did quite a number on the convoy of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Harpoon_(1942) Operation Harpoon]]. Also, it should be noted that the ''Proteus'' maneuvered to avoid the ramming, and struck the ''Sagittario'' with its hydroplanes.

** On the positive side if a Sherman was was hit, it was relatively easy to escape. The Soviet equivalent, T-34, was notoriously cramped and unergonomic, and difficult to escape. It is estimated some 85% of the Sherman tankers whose tank was hit were able to escape, whilst only 18 of T-34 tankers could. [[DidNotThinkThisThrough Having the entry hatch on glacis]] (in the middle of the inclined frontal armour) certainly did not increase the odds of survival.

** The trope name was invoked for the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brewster_F2A_Buffalo Brewster Buffalo]], even though it came with standard safety procedures, because of its immense uselessness in the Southeast Asian and Pacific theatres of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII against the [[CoolPlane Zero fighters]]. It was redesigned in the later phases of the war and ended up ''even worse''. That said, the Finns used them to good effect during the UsefulNotes/WinterWar as Soviet aircraft weren't as good.

* While the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter had an ejection seat, the ejection seats were often too weak to lift the pilot clear of the ''gigantic'' tail fin. Early versions of the plane had an ejection seat that ejected ''downwards'', but that would create obvious [[ComingInHot problems when landing]]. Given that the Starfighter also had a well-earned reputation for being difficult to fly (in West Germany, for example, they were nicknamed "lawn darts" and it was said that the best way to acquire one was to buy a random plot of land and wait for one to fall from the sky), this was a major problem.
** This issue was simply compounded by many Starfighter customers buying the plane as a ''low-level'' supersonic strike plane, which at the time often meant brushing the treetops at Mach 1.

** Shermans earned a number of derogatory nicknames (most notably "The Tommycooker") for their propensity to catch fire, leaving the crew with only seconds to get out of the tank after a penetrating hit. This was due to both the fact that early versions of the M4 didn't have water jackets for the ammo storage and fuel tanks, and that British crews using lend-leased tanks tended to use them like their own "cruiser" tanks: they haphazardly stuffed tons of extra ammo AND fuel into their tanks wherever it would fit. They increased this way both the range and ammunition capacity, but also increased the odds of it getting set off when taking a hit. [[BritsWithBattleships They should have learned the lesson of the Battle of Jutland 1916]]. (A "tommycooker" is a WWI portable field stove).

** The Clan Hunchback IIC is designed to be this, it has meager armor and poor endurance, as they are usually piloted by older solahma warriors (above 35) so they [[CannonFodder can die in the next fight]]. Its even shaped like a coffin with arms and legs.

* Played absurdly straight with the Brotherhood of Steel's Vertibirds in ''VideoGame/{{Fallout4}}''. They're swatted out of the air by enemy fire with ridiculous ease and always kill everyone on board when they crash. [[DiabolusExMachina And then they home in on you while crashing]] regardless of whether they're hostile to you or not.

*** The problem with the Buffalo was that it was poorly suited to carrier operations, mainly due to issues with the landing gear. Modifications to the aircraft increased its weight, which exacerbated the landing gear issues. All this on top of relatively modest performance and the fact that Japanese pilots in the early months of the war were better trained and more experienced than their American counterparts. By the time the Americans had adapted their strategies to exploits flaws in Japanese aircraft and tactics, the Buffalo had been phased out of service in favor of more powerful aircraft, along with many other early-war aircraft such as the Douglas Devastator, Vought Vindicator, and the Curtiss Hawk. In Finnish use, the Buffaloes not only had heavy naval equipment removed, they were also stripped of their armor and self-sealing fuel tanks. The top speed and manoeuvereability increased dramatically. While this rendered them far less capable of taking a hit, the Finns felt it more important to reduce the odds of ''getting'' hit in the first place. [[CrazyEnoughToWork It worked]] - Finnish pilots achieved 477 victories on Brewster while losing 10 of their own in aerial combat.

* The Douglas A3D Skywarrior, a carrier based jet bomber designed as a nuclear strike aircraft, received a morbid take on its designation of "A3D": All Three Dead. The aircraft had a crew of three in a cockpit with no ejection seats and a single exit hatch under the nose; should the aircraft go into the water, none of the crew would be able to escape. This coupled with the difficulty of flying the aircraft around the carrier led to a bad reputation.