Solar panel broken when closed

[Space Nerd]

Hi, when I am return my SSTO, I found that I'm going land on water, so I quickly fired up my engines and pulled up to fly to land, that's about the time I got the messege that says my solar panels are broken due to aero forces, but they're retracted before entering the atmosphere, is that normal?

[OHara]

I don't think it is normal for solar panels to be destroyable by air forces when retracted. 
At least, I've never managed to destroy any, even when doing low-altitude gravity turns.

[Space Nerd]

The case of the broken solar panels is still intact, so that can probably rule out the possibility of I forgot to retract them.

[Fraktal]

Don't know if it's the same, but retracted parts aren't immune to collision damage. Back in... 1.7.1, I think?... I had a decoupled nosecone lightly bump against a DTS-M1 antenna and break it off despite the fact that the antenna wasn't extended at the time. I had to scrap my first mission to Duna because of it.

[Cavscout74]

I've had similar issues like Fraktal mentioned - where debris or a clumsy Kerbal hit retracted antenna or panels & broke them.  But I've never encountered aero forces breaking retracted panels

[Space Nerd]

Well, the exact same thing happened today when I accidently pressed on the toggle solar panel action group button while flying in the lower atmosphere, so I probably pressed that button unnoticed the day before yesterday.

[AHHans]

2 hours ago, Space Nerd said:

Well, the exact same thing happened today when I accidentally pressed on the toggle solar panel action group button while flying in the lower atmosphere, so I probably pressed that button unnoticed the day before yesterday.

Well, you aren't the first one to do this. And probably aren't the last one...