Amazing that kite material continued to be used on advanced piston planes like the b377 when they could have borrowed some ideas from de Havilland and used "kitchen foil" thick Al like they did on the Comet 1. :o
In one of the last chapters of Gann's "Fate is the Hunter" he tells of his lucky escape from a potential DC-4 disaster (due to fate taking a hand rather than airmanship) when on ground inspection they discovered a hinge problem on the elevator of his plane while another DC-4 had recently come to grief due to the same problem (1950s). Gann called it 'elevator porting' which is when an elevator breaks or loosens from a hinge causing it to put the airplane firmly in a nose down attitude without a chance for recovery. (The nasty incident was witnessed from another plane behind the unlucky DC4)
Are you guys familiar with this problem?
I digress though, so back to topic on control surface fabric use.