Lusche and spikes both nailed it, each in their own way.
Hangers went from 500lbs to 2500 lbs of ord required to destroy a long long time ago.
As a direct result of some people who thought it was fun to make it impossible for the other side to defend their fields. They would roll 10 + bombers or more and shut down both fronts. As a result settings were changed to make that harder.
Towns used to be smaller, with fewer acks, so that 1 or 2 people could take a field if it was undefended.
So HT made the towns bigger, with more acks, made it harder to roll fields single handed.
There is a long long history of change in order to balance Gameplay in AH. However, if there is a current problem with gameplay in AH it is that there are not enough bombers, not too many.
As a result there is not enough teamwork, people flying escort. People flying interception cap.
Perking the bombers is not the answer, in fact its headed in the exact wrong direction.
If your going to do that you might as well do away with field capture and winning the war.
And we really don't want to see the mains that one sided do we?
Aces High Main arena's need a "Balance" of many different options all in play at one time.
Remove too much of any one side of those and gameplay suffers as a result.
Remember its about "Combat" and there are many many different flavors of that.
But there is no "combat" in rolling an undefended base with an old style NOE attack.