The P-47 wing, or What am I looking at?

[Voyager]

The P-51, Tempest, and P-63 were all mid-war laminar flow designs. One of the P-47B's was fitted with a laminar flow wing in early 1942, but it did not show any performance improvement over the S-3 airfoil, so it wasn't just a matter of tooling or cost.

Tapered and elliptical wings have other drawbacks beyond cost. Because the lift drops as you get to the end of the wing, it tends to stall there first, robbing you of aileron control.