safety foam

could that have saved the lives of the RAF crew that crashed due to gun fire?
it said because of the foam the US air force was able to land an aircraft safely even when it was badly hit

news.bbc.co.uk...

1. Without foam: Explosive mix of fuel vapour and air above liquid fuel ignites easily. Once this ignites, a compression wave pressurises the remaining gas, increasing the explosion.
2. With foam: Foam expands to fill space in tank as fuel level drops. Vapour ignition is confined to the area close to spark, stopping explosion.

[edit on 2-5-2006 by bodrul]

Well, according to the MoD it may not have saved lives. Anyway the foam does prevent fuel tanks from exploding, and has been in use for decades now.
Some A-10's had half of their wings blown off, but still made it back to base thanks to the foam in the fuel tanks (and tripple back-up flight control systems). The BBC article also states this:

The explosive-suppressant foam stops fuel tanks from exploding when pierced by bullets. One US plane fitted with it managed to land safely after being shot 19 times in Iraq.

So I guess the foam surely must have increased the survivability of that incident...