I've thought about buying that too. I know little about Italian aircraft design and certainly Gavin has tought me alot.
BruceDuncan, Don't the mistake of thinking he talks out of his rear-end about these matters. In his own mind I'm sure he knows the Ariete is over-estimated but he has a point to make. How many folks run their designs through planebuilder first or just pluck random figures from thin air that "sound about right". You can tell, all the paper planes from fertile minds stand out a mile on my Talons spreadsheet, even the planebuilder planes seems optmistic compared to the real designs.
Saying that we work with what we've got, we could argue all day about certain tanks with long-calibre 75mm guns, sloped armour, DDs festooned with guns, carriers with oversized airgroups etc etc etc. We know the problems and call on folks to be realistic. At the end of the day its the player that makes the choices about the aircraft he wants.
The P-51 was designed from 1941 I believe, so by the 3+ gents rule 1938 for intial drawing board studies wouldn't be far out would it?