Onto different matters regarding fighters;
I remember years back I asked about a squadron of standard Ramparts verse standard Type-S scouts. In my head I had it that the scout ship, because it had a turret, might have some kind of advantage in space. Loose analogy; a B-17, B-24 or 29 with its many turrets doesn't have too much of an advantage with its gunners because it's essentially relying on mark-1 eyeballs. A scout ship on the other hand has a gunner, but has advanced targeting hardware equivalent or better than an F-15. But, according to the rules, the fighters come out on top. The counter to that is that the Ramparts also have the same hardware/software running. But, the Rampart is only armed with pulse lasers.
The point here is that, in my opinion, the rules tend to breakdown a little. The truth is we don't know what's actually happening. Maybe the Ramparts are constantly out maneuvering the scouts by staying on their bellies. I'll note that, so far as I can remember, TL was not an issue because both were assumed to be the same TL.
So, what I saying with this? Fighters, in my opinion, have yet to be fully addressed in Traveller.
In your example here I'd say the fighter v. scout worked correctly... because the fighter could come in at all different angles at the same time and engage the scout that way. Using your B-17 analogy that would be how it was done in WW2, too. B-17's may have been tough to shoot down, but they were shot down in droves early on when they weren't escorted by fighters, or in large, tight formations to cover each other - and even then they had heavy losses (compared to very few by the RAF night bombers) because the US bombers attacked during the day and were big (although heavily armed and hard to kill) targets.
Flak accounted for a lot of them, too, but the fighters were the worst and always accounted for higher kills in all theaters by all nationalities. The reason wasn't the targeting - if it was then the bombers had the advantage of firing from a steadier platform with often heavier ammo, and a lot more ammo than a fighter could carry.
But, the fighter had the advantage of higher agility, greater speed, and could disengage and then reengage from a position of advantage at will, where the bombers could not. The fighters would also co-ordinate their attacks on the more vulnerable areas of the bombers (like diving from the 12 o'clock high position to strafe along the top of the cockpit of B-17's) and the bombers couldn't do anything to get out of the way to avoid it.
They could shoot back, but with fighters coming from different angles all the time and then others co-coordinating diving attacks (check on the Sturmbock and WildeSau units for how the dedicated bomber hunting units did it...the JG 50, too) where they knew the guns were least likely to cover the bombers the tiny, more lightly armed fighters could kill unescorted bombers like flies. That changed completely when thee P-47 and especially P-51 showed up.
So your analogy might seem loose, no super heavy armor on the bombers, but not wrong - its precisely why there is a good argument for effective fighters to available at ALL tech levels. And maybe why agility for really big ships is overdone, especially ones that have stay in their line of battle.
Speaking of which - why not toss the rule that ships can't break that line to attack the reserve "behind" it when fast, small, agile fighter squadrons operating at high speed in a 3-D environment ought to have a chance of getting past the main line to attack the vulneralbe ships in the reat: tankers, battlerider tenders, the rule how reserves not getting to shoot back on the t round they are attacked, etc..? Now THAT seems like a perfect role for fighters.
o:
