Why were the Torumekian airships so fragile?

Question

In Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, the Torumekians abruptly arrive in Nausicaa's peaceful kingdom in giant flying vehicles described as "airships", although they appear more like ordinary jet-turbine aircraft on a large scale. They load goods into their airships, along with some hostages and leave.

On the way back, they fly in a bunched formation and seem very tense and edgy. One of the hostages comments that they seem fearful of attack. And that fear proves to be well-founded: shortly they are attacked by a small fighter aircraft called a "gunship" which strafes them with what appears to be machine gun fire.

Although their airships bristle with weapons they seem remarkably fragile, bursting into flames and exploding almost immediately. "Those are some flimsy ships" is heard, showing that this is not only an out-of-universe reaction. Very soon all but one of the five airships are destroyed, and that escapes only because Nausicaa briefly distracts the pilot of the attacking craft.

In a later scene, another large aircraft of a different nation is also attacked by a gunship. Although it is certainly vulnerable it seems more robust and survives being strafed by gunfire: the enemy has to board it to subdue the crew.

The Torumekians are described as "warlike" and seem to be a militaristic society given to aggression. So why are their craft so fragile? Is it that they normally only attack non-technological nations that don't pose a serious threat to them, or could it be the director's comment on militarism, that it is fragile despite a fearsome appearance? Is there some other known reason?

Answer 1

It's been 9 months now, so I'm not sure if you've already found yourself an answer, but here's my take on it.

These airships seem to be transport aircraft primarily, and very heavy ones at that; they can even load two or three tanks into the things, for goodness sake. Therefore it'd be reasonable to assume that they would require an enormous amount of fuel aboard, just to keep the things in the air; effectively making the airship a ticking time bomb. Perhaps the Torumekians sacrificed armour protection so that the airships would still be light enough to take off with a full load, meaning that if they got hit, that fuel would ignite and turn the aircraft into a burning hulk in seconds. There are examples of many aircraft like this in real life, such as the Mitsubishi G4M, which had a notorious reputation for easily bursting into flames when hit, due to little to no armour.

I may not be correct, maybe the ammunition used by the attacking aircraft was just too powerful, but that's my take on it; I hope I helped.

Answer 2

Hayao Miyazaki wrote the manga series the movie is based on. It goes into a lot more depth and the story is much longer. Spoilers below:

You briefly see Torumekia. It’s a collapsing, horribly mismanaged empire with terrible selfish and corrupt leaders. The population is collapsing due to war and plague and crops are rotting in the fields for lack of people to harvest them. They are actually declaring wars on their neighbors to bring in slaves to try and repopulate their country.

Kushana is actually one of the few competent leaders who is popular with her troops, so her step-brothers and step-father (the emperor) are constantly attempting to sabotage her, even get her killed.

Answer:

So there are two possible answers 1) Torumekia is unable to maintain or perhaps even build it ships to the quality they need to because of how much their society is collapsing. 2) the emperor purposefully gave Kushana flimsy ships in the hope it would undermine and kill her.

Both are probably true.