Swept wing thread anybody?
The point I was trying to make is that its much easier and cheaper to test wing forms mathematically, there's no need to build expensive ground rigs for measuring until the designs are more finalised if at all (these days). You can test mathematically a wider variety of forms and tweek the best forms to improve stability, drag, lift etc.
These are the well understood advantages of calculation over a real model. Therefore , before the advent of the digital computer running FEM software the Soviets had an advantage in that they could crunch more numbers than certainly the UK could and so their swept wings were in advance of those in the West, as is plain if you look at Soviet wings of this period they resemble more closely wings we see on commercial A/c today than do the UK's crescent or delta.
Maybe I should have said that the development of swept wing technology was hindered in the West because of these limitations in the numbers of 'calculators' available particularly in the UK.