No, it was almost a hit, but it was in fact a miss; and it was not a distant miss, so it was a near miss.
There are plenty of phrases in English that make no sense compositionally, but "near miss" is not one of them.
There are plenty of phrases in English that make no sense compositionally, but "near miss" is not one of them.
Near | Adverb
1. Close by
2. Almost
1. near (adj) miss (n) - it was a miss, but a near one (i.e. a close miss)
2. nearly (adv) hit (v) - they almost collided, but didn't
3. nearly (adv) missed (v) - they collided, but it was almost avoidable (the Carlin joke "oh, they nearly missed ...)
4. was nearly (adv to was) a hit, that nearly (adv) hit (v) us, ...
5. near (adj) hit (n) - doesn't really make sense, should be 2 or 4.
Change "near" to "almost" and see how it sounds to you: Two planes "almost hit" vs "almost missed".
I'm familiar with the claim that "near hit" ought to make more sense (and with the Carlin sketch that either originated or popularised it). But in practice, people use the phrase "near miss", not "near hit" (unless actively making the George Carlin joke), and they don't use "near miss" to mean what you claim ("almost missed, but didn't" i.e. hit). So this, again, isn't really a claim about what the phrase can mean, but about what you'd logically want it to mean. Such claims are a bit counterproductive at the best of times—language doesn't always follow compositional logic, and sometimes we just have to live with that—but here it's especially odd because the phrase means exactly what the component words say it does: a "near miss" (noun phrase) is a miss (noun) that is near (adjective).
I strongly suspect that isn't true. Can you link to an example of someone using it that way?