[Kurfürst]

I tend to think of JG 26 as a unit that had very good press, but I don`t think it was that special.

It had the high-profile in its ranks, and naturally Galland wrote all sorts of good things about his home unit. Alfred Price and especially Caldwell 'Top Guns' analague also give it a big press boost.
It was fighting through the war on the Western front against the Allies and this is probably why it is so highly rated and romanticized in Western circles - ie. JG 26 was fighting in the West because it was the best of the best, the only worthy opponent for the RAF and USAAF - this kind of thinking.

Same perception with the FW 190, the literature tends to describe its deployment on the Western front because the Luftwaffe would deploy 'its best fighter' against the Allies, of course, and not the 'backward' Soviets
- whereas the reality shown by German reports is that the 190 was deployed in France primarly because its early powerplants were so unreliable they simply wouldnt want pilots to fly it over enemy territory or over the sea.

Don`t get me wrong, I don`t think they weren`t a good unit, but I think they were overhyped in the post-war years a tad bit, much like Rommel, for the same reason.