...so my oldest son is really into Star Wars these days and while watching ROTS the other day he asks me... ...Hey Dad, why do they have Y-wings in 'The Clone Wars' cartoon but not in ROTS? That got me thinking... ...'Clone Wars' was set between AOTC & ROTS, they already had a basic design for a 'new' Y-wing from that 'cut-away' book they did a few years back, why not use it to kinda bridge the trilogies? Instead of using that godawful ARC fighter. That ship is basically a WW2 plane with its tail booms & props missing. I really hope they've added some Ys into the BluRay version of ROTS. Whaddya think???
Your son's pretty sharp! In my opinion, I think they opted for the ARC-170 because it was seen as a precursor to the X-wing, which is a more iconic starship than the Y-wing. The arsenal for the Republic in Revenge of the Sith made use of both future Imperial and Rebel designs, and perhaps the Y-wing wasn't chosen in favor of other homages (such as the V-wing for the TIE Fighter). The Clone Wars was given more time and room to expand, so it was fitting to add the Y-wing there. The in-universe explanation is that the Y-wing design fell out of favor with the Imperials so it went over to the Rebels instead. Thus, it could be possible that the Y-wings were already slowly falling out of favor with the Republic during the late Clone Wars. By the way, I must disagree with the ARC-170 being awful, it's among my favorite starship designs in the whole Star Wars saga.
OK...maybe it's not THAT bad but my feeling since I first saw ROTS is that Lucasfilm got lazy when designing this ship. Check out the pic below. Whereas most SW ships are truly unique the ARC just seems like it was a last minute 'how-'bout-this' idea.
You do bring up a good point though, I've also noticed that the prequels use a lot of real-world vehicles for inspiration. For example, besides the ARC, I heard that the Queen's Royal Starship was partly based on the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, Jetfire's alt mode and the LAAT gunships used as transports were based on helicopters. Still I must admit that the ARC-170 is almost a dead-on resemblance to that plane you've attached. I still love the ship's design, though.
