[HAHalliday]

As an afterthought - what would it have mattered if the Germans has built thousands more conventional fighters ? What use would they have been without the fuel to fly them ?

Gasoline was the Achilles heel of their war effort. Hitler deprived them of their largest, most reliable source by attacking Russia in June 1941 (almost to the eve of the invasion, Stalin had been delivering on his treaty obligations with blind regularity). After that, the Wehrmacht had to make do on what could be squeezed from coal and from Roumania. Moreover, by July 1944 the Roumanian oil fields had been taken out of production - by the Red Army. From then on, the panzers and Luftwaffe were literally out of gas (think of the Battle of the Bulge, when the armoured divisions were hoping to capture the fuel stocks that would top off their tanks ! Can you imagine Patton driving forward, hoping that the Germans would conveniently leave fuel stocks for him ?

Fuel shortages had reduced Luftwaffe flying training to a joke. The average pilot starting combat in 1944 had less time than an Allied pilot newly "winged" and still with operational training ahead of him.

As to the He.162 - it was not "difficult to fly" - it was a deathtrap which killed at least one skilled German test pilot and one British test pilot after the war. The idea of Hitler Youth taking glider lessons and then going on to flying '162s into combat was criminal and ludicrous.