Originally posted by BMatthews
The me262 used a standard stabilizer and elevator.
Wrong ! The me262 had a full moving tailplane, but it was used only as "trim", AND an elevator. This was to be able to have the stabilizer "neutral" even with the huge difference of AOA between high speed and low speed, with flaps and slats open. The Sabre f-86 had the exact same mechanism, as well as the Grumman Panther and Cougar. (Command systems was slightly different, but the principles were the same.)
BTW, the Me P 1101 (built has prototype, not sure if he actually flew at the time, had not only full moving tailplane, but also moveable sweept wings ! I honestly doubt the Yanks took that from the Britts, evrybody, Popof included (Soviets) took everything from the Germans. The Mig15 was an evolution of a Focke-Wulf study, and the Sabre had the Airfoil, studied but not used on the Me 262, plus number of other technical solutions used on the 262 (automatic slats being one of them).
How, about the Flying tailplane, it was already used by different planes during WW1, so nothing really new about that ! (Fokker DV among others)
Bernard