Chapter 324 - 20. Bishop and the Young Man (9)

The reason why Earth's large-scale aviation weapons chose to develop multi-engine monstrosities for operations like "thousand-plane bombing" is due to the fact that aircrafts, by their nature, have limited carrying capacity and range. Apart from some special transport aircrafts modified for ground attack missions, the maximum caliber weapons carried by fighter aircrafts for combat purposes do not exceed 50mm. With the advent of long-range missiles, both in terms of payload and mission selectivity, these far surpass large-caliber guns, making it increasingly unnecessary to develop aerial forces equipped with them. The even older notion of airships with large guns was consigned to the dustbin of history.