Nearly all the old-time wire-wrap panels with which I'm familiar had extensive low-impedance ground and power planes. That, of course, was even before the evolution of the 20-pin DIL package. If you ever encounter one of those old Gary Mfg or Augat panels, you'll see what I mean. Wire-wrap is also very robust, though effort has to be put forth to ensure that IC's don't come out of their sockets. I've seen many panels that had standoffs on the component side, to which an aluminum panel was screwed, with the idea in mind of holding the IC's in their sockets. Before the evolution of "wire-stitch" which was a wire-weld technique that allowed greater density than wire-wrap, even flight hardware was wire-wrapped, as it could stand stresses and vibration that PCB's couldn't handle.

In any case, some of us like it, and some don't. Today, it's not easy to exploit, since most "interesting" parts are not packaged in readily wire-wrappable packages.

RE