Tim, don't know if you have seen this 59 minute video
Video Player > Test Pilot discussion Eric "Winkle" Brown talks about the M. 52 and a US delegation visiting the UK and the Pentagon reneging on its part of the deal. No time frame for the visit is given though. Personally I see little, and am hard pressed to find any, technological transfer from the M. 52 to the X-1-1. The M. 52 had a slab tailplane and a bi-convex airfoil where as the X-1-1 had a trim-able tailplane with attached elevator, and the wing used a NACA 65-108 (a = 1.0) airfoil. In comparison the X-1 was rather pedestrian, but you can't argue with what works and gets the job done. It was interesting to learn that Eric flew a Spitfire with a "slab" tail and that the H.P. 88 was the first British jet with a "slab" (first flown in June 1951 by "Sailor"
Parker).
When Yeager found control difficulties it was Jack Ridley who came up with the idea of using the trim-able tailplane as the primary pitch control and thus enabling them to get through the barrier. Rather than the trim motor being electric as suggested by tonytech2 at post #21, it was in fact pneumatic. The stabilizer was initially capable of one-degree, later three-degree, and finally two-degree per second adjustments. The motive force for the trim motor was 100 PSI nitrogen. The aircraft had a 5,000 PSI source of nitrogen which was also used to operate the flaps, provide cockpit pressurisation (pilot was on 100% oxygen) and pressurise the fuel tank.
There is some confusion evident with the term "flying tail" and I must admit to be among the confused, so I include a "Flight" editorial from
aeronautical weekly | aircraft engineer | control column | 1955 | 0065 | Flight Archive
On the Slab
One of our 1955 resolutions was to tidy our thoughts in the matter of the all-moving tail, and in the process of implementing it we discovered (as we might have known) that today's supersonic panacea was old stuff around 1910. For sweet simplicity's sake it was occasionally resurrected in later years, notably on the D.H.77 intercepter monoplane of 1929—a "believe-it-or-not," this, which has special point in the present issue, wherein a very remarkable descendant of the "77" is the subject of felicitous news, partly by reason (it may be supposed) of its "slab" tail. And having marshalled our clear and righteous thoughts on a formerly perplexing topic, we now offer them as a plain man's guide.
Three forms of horizontal tail surface—"v.i." (variable incidence), "all-flying" and "slab"—are now being generally applied to transonic and supersonic aircraft. They were rendered necessary by the formation of shock-waves at high speeds and by flow-separation downstream of these waves, which, in many instances, rendered both the trim tab and the elevator itself ineffective.
Between the wars, of course, the variable-incidence tail had been commonly used as a trimming device on fast aircraft but was more or less abandoned as speeds increased—out of considerations of strength! It was reinstituted, on the North American F-86A Sabre, to develop the exceptional transonic potentialities of that fighter. In the modern "v.i." application fore-and-aft trim is achieved by an irreversible electric screw-jack controlled by a switch in the cockpit (most conveniently, on top of the control column). As well as maintaining trim the device can be used in manoeuvring, to lighten stick forces produced by the elevator. It is employed in conjunction with direct-mechanical, or power-assisted, elevators.
For even more effective control it became evident that the whole of the tailplane and elevator surface should be operated from the control column, through a fully powered irreversible transmission—hence the "all-flying" tail. This system, first applied to the F-86E, is so arranged that the tailplane is moved directly from the stick while the elevator is entrained by it as a "follow-up" surface, through a differential linkage. The entire surface is thus cambered in the direction of the desired control response. Trim is achieved by offsetting the relative incidence, in the neutral position, of elevator and tailplane
All of a Piece
The latest configuration—the "slab"—has been almost universally taken up for
American high-speed fighters and, for the first time in Britain, for the D.H.110. With the slab system the whole horizontal tail is one pivoted rigid structure, moved from the control column through an irreversible fully powered transmission, with the stick-top trim-switch usually acting on the "artificial feel" gear or stick-centering mechanism.
The slab tail is now considered well-nigh indispensable for adequate control in transonic and supersonic flight, especially when fore-and-aft instability, or "pitch-up" (an affliction suffered by some conventional types of swept-wing fighter) is likely. Any kind of aerodynamic tab is rendered quite ineffective once shock-waves build up at, and beyond, about Mach 0.85.
The slab, then, bids fair to remain as long as aerodynamic design proceeds along present lines. First exploited, in its modern "high-speed" application, by America, it has been taken up by a British company (as often in the past) with heartening results, for we believe that when performance figures of the D.H.110 are at last disclosed this big all-weather two-seater will prove to be well in advance of many single-seat day intercepters of more or less contemporary design. Certainly we may suppose that Mach numbers well over its publicly demonstrated unity have by now been achieved in shallow dives; and the possibility exists that, with advanced "five-figure" versions of the Rolls-Royce Avon, the Navy's ultimate version of their Sea Venom replacement might prove supersonic in level flight.
Meanwhile, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the slab tailplane might be applied with similarly happy results to other existing British fighters.