Fighters were ships instead of weapons before v0.8a. They could be deployed without carriers, but you wanted carriers to support them.
Before v0.6a, wings were lost permanently, but carriers could rebuild the wings in mid-battle at the cost of supplies.
Before v0.8a, starting at v0.6a, wings could not be destroyed permanently as long as there was a carrier in the fleet. Also, fighters had CR, which represented how many reserve fighters were in the wing. Carriers were needed in battle to replace lost fighters until the wing ran out of CR. Immortal fighters were very important during the days of rare ships, when most ships were too rare and getting them was hard, and boarding was a crapshoot with odds no better than 37.5% in the best case. Losing ships (and weapons too back then), hurt.
Since v0.8a, fighters became regenerating missiles and a huge OP sink for carriers. (And Expanded Deck Crew became a tax for carriers and ruined the warship-lite role they used to have.)
Before 0.7a, everyone except the fleet commander did not have skills. While there were no skills for fighters, it did not hurt too much because only one ship in the fleet had skills to begin with. Then officers came in 0.7a, and player could have ten of them, and skills were stronger. Warships with officers made carriers and fighters obsolete. Fighters died off after about a minute of fighting. v0.7x releases was the reign of the godship Onslaught with full skills.
Today, with weakened carriers and current skills, fighters (at least without skills) are about as gimped as they were during the 0.7x releases.