Hi Pat. I didn't call YOU arrogant. I said not flying their aircraft was militarily arrogant.
Again, flying their airplane to see what challenges it may present does not mean you want an Air Force of enemy-built airplanes and it has NOTHING whatsoever to do with the "design philosophy" or philosophy at all. It means you are looking to find out how their equipment flies so you can tell if your guys are in some trouble, are evenly-matched, or are over matched. The ONLY way to find out in WWII was to fly the enemy aircraft with pilots who had some test-flying experience and see.
Despite the sophistication of computer simulation today, the only way today to REALLY find out is still to fly it. You can get close with a sim, but you need the flight data points to program the sim. Gotta' fly it to get the data points, and you have to get points all over the flight envelope to do it justice. Just try flying the MS Flight Simulator P-51 to verify that part. It doesn't fly much like real P-51, which is strange. The C-172 is decently close except for the ability to fly inverted.