DOA,
There is a really great book put out by AIAA, the Author's last name is Raymer I believe. It's an introductory book to aircraft design.
Many decisions are made when designing an aircraft. It's more or less a balancing act. If you want a certain performance aspect in an aircraft, other parts may suffer, or may not be needed. LIke the wing of the corsair. It affords speed and maneuverability, but may induce more drag, but in the overall scheme of things, that drag may be negligible.
An elliptical wing is the best wing design for a low Cdi (induced drag) coefficient. But, if you do some quick back of the envelope analysis you can approximate that Cdi very closely by using a tapered or sectionally tapered wing. So close in fact, you can argue that the difference is negligable in most cases. Again depending on how you 'optimize' your design. Again, aircraft design is give and take, you change one equasion...and low and behold all the others are changing to reflect it. So you really have to become creative on how you tweak your design and what is truly desirable.
I highly recommend the above mentioned book, it may be pricey but you can get it used pretty reasonably. It's been awhile, my aero is a bit rusty, I haven't done any basics in awhile. But I work on aircraft everyday and it's a great field to have an interest in.
Also for anyone interested, Bruce Bohannon is doing some crazy time to climb record breaking in his Exxon Tiger. Check it out.
NAWC