The planes also used to do crash tests. Here’s what they looked like

Exactly like the cars that go out on the road, Regulators have intentionally crashed airplanes for 75 years to better learn how to better design aircraft to increase occupant survivability. However, every new airplane model it can’t be slammed into the field for a star rating like a new showroom-bound crossover. Large-scale test crashes were conducted sparingly with specific objectives in mind and are essentially extinct today.

The practice of impact testing aircraft first took off after World War II. Commercial airline passenger numbers grew rapidly in the late 1940s and 1950s. Federal regulators, aircraft manufacturers, and airlines wanted to ensure that the growing number of flights were as safe as possible. According to NASA, the first large-scale accidents occurred in 1949 on the grounds of a US Army arsenal. Berlin Airlift’s much-used cargo planes descended a runway in choreographed crashes via remote control. The tests were done in hopes of learning how to mitigate accidental fires.

The original purpose of crash testing was to discover how fires start during crashes and how aircraft fuselages rupture during impact, and that mission evolved as the industry entered the Jet Age: