Boosted ailerons on Fw 190D-13

Koopernic said:

However the Me 262 did feature spring servo tabs to reduce pilot effort.

Click to expand...

This was a design feature of the Me 262, but none of the many examples captured at the end of the war actually had an operational system installed (as far as I can tell). The tabs were no more than ground adjustable trim tabs.

Tabs on the elevators were riveted in the neutral position using small gussets. Trim was, as on many Messerschmitt aircraft, electrical, moving the entire horizontal stabiliser.

The servo/trim tab on the rudder did work.

Cheers

Steve

The Me 262 has the following controls:
1 Wings: Two outer wing ailerons (Querruder or quadrature rudders in German) the inboard of which had a spring servo tab (Flettner in German) on it to reduce pilot workload.
2 Horizontal Tailplane: for trimming the horizontal tailplane was all moving and adjustable from in the cockpit by an electric motor driven ball screw jack. The horizontal elevators had Flettners (servo tabs) for reducing pilot workload.
3 Rudder: The rudder had pilot adjustable trim tab. I suspect this was a balance tab with a trimming capacity over the top.

According to Walter J Boyne who writes in his book "The Best of Wings" in the Article "The return of the Swallow" that all the surfaces also had trim tabs of which only the rudder was adjustable in flight.

If you have a large computer monitor or if you use options zoom on your browser you can see these German plans with the elevator and ailerons all having Flettners, which are definitely servo tabs not trim tabs. The German word being Querruderflettner. Roughly quadrature rudder flettner. One wouldn't require such complex linkages for fixed tabs. Note also there is no point having elevator trim tabs if the trimming is done by an all moving horizontal tailplane.
Messerschmitt Me-262 Special Edition CD | AirWingMedia.com

Below are a few photographs of Me 262 linkages to the tabs I downloaded via google image search.



To be frank I can't find the original source that stated that the Me 262 had spring servo tabs but I do recall reading it and feeling the warm glow of satisfaction at having found what I had sought.
Unfortunately few aviation writers seem interested in the extremely important topic of aircraft control surface rigging.

I think you got the wrong plane,in the book I got Brown goes on about He162 and not the 262 and how the He162 "having the finest contrls of any plane he had ever flown" and it having a very high rate of roll
what he say about the 262 is it three features going for it "sweptback wings,it's axial-flow engines and it's armament of 4x30mm cannon and that it
and i can't see how the 262 with two 720kg engines out on it's wings can roll well

Allied investigations of the Me 262 showed that the system was not installed.
What you are looking at on those ailerons is this:



And from the same US report, regarding the elevator tabs.



What was supposed to be and what actually happened are not always the same.

Cheers

Steve

Koopernic said:

To be frank I can't find the original source that stated that the Me 262 had spring servo tabs but I do recall reading it and feeling the warm glow of satisfaction at having found what I had sought.
Unfortunately few aviation writers seem interested in the extremely important topic of aircraft control surface rigging.

Click to expand...

And equally unfortunately your Me 262 source was incorrect, at least for production aircraft. Needs must and such features were simply deleted from the aircraft produced and accepted by the BAL/Luftwaffe.

Cheers

Steve

boost would have helped a lot with pilot fatigue. especially in dogfights or evasions that lasted more than a few minutes....or if you got into 2 or 3 successive battles. if you had to wrestle with the controls at high or medium speeds for very long and it would be simular to doing a lot of "reps" with weights...your first rep is fast and crisp...and the longer you go the slower you are the more it is a struggle. if you had to do that to avoid rounds coming at you.....sooner or later your stamina would give out and that could mean life or death.

AFAIR the late Fw 190D series was to follow the Ta 152 series in reverting from electrical actuated systems to hydraulic systems, mainly to conserve copper.