Particle‐induced displacement damage effects in silicon bipolar transistors, including those due to electrons and to fission neutrons, are correlated on the basis of the nonionizing energy deposited in the lattice by the primary knock‐on atoms. Deviations from linearity between damage effects and energy deposition are in a direction opposite to those expected from defect cluster models but can be accounted for in terms of the fraction of vacancy‐interstitial pairs initially formed that survive recombination.