Hard to look at the history of aircraft and think aesthetics have nothing to do with the shapes designers choose. Aesthetics may not be the driver, but it's definitely an input in the process, to varying degrees.
> Hard to look at the history of aircraft and think aesthetics have nothing to do with the shapes designers choose.
In my reading about the history of aircraft, aesthetics have nothing to do with it. Performance and cost are everything.
For example, the elliptical wing of the Spitfire is often mentioned as a big part of the beauty of the design. But the elliptical planform is the most efficient wing design (the Mitsubishi Zero had one, too, for the same reason). Giving your pilots every edge possible is everything in those designs. And yet look at the beauty that resulted.
The downside of the Spitfire shape was it took twice as many hours to produce as the Me-109, which was designed to be easy to manufacture.
I can't think of a single successful airplane design that was designed to be beautiful - from the Wright Flyer to the Sopwith Camel to the Spitfire to the DC-3 to the Concorde to the Blackbird. Not one. Yet they're all beauties.
