Around WW2 American aircraft which ditched in Soviet controlled territory were taken apart. There is a story in Richard Rhodes' books on the A bomb and H bomb that they re-created mistaken holes, welded repair plates into brand new aircraft in a chinese-copy mentality where they lacked time to make decisions what was needed and what was not. This allowed them to field long range bombers.
Some things only require physics to be proved. Soviet spying informed how to make Atom Bombs, even when all they had was measured constraints rather than drawings.
Again from Rhodes, they worked blind, the "proof" was when their science agreed with what they were told the Manhattan project had found. If they diverged and couldn't justify it, they had to re-do their working until they aligned.