Lucas didn't do the clones justice by treating them as nothing more than CGI cannon fodder in the prequel trilogy. An entire other team had to create more (and better) stories to explore the obvious moral dilemma of creating clone soldiers enslaved to the Republic's MIC.
The "real" explanation is that all of the space flight in Star Wars is so heavily based on atmosphere dogfighting that it's effectively canon for SW that spaceships work like airplanes.