JG26's VERY late war performance...

[NickM]

Guys:

I've been re-reading many of my Jagdwaffe unit histories ( Yeah...two Major & three minor ones) and some of my other 'sources' & I have a question:
JG26 (or at least I & II Gruppe) seemed to do better on the whole than say JGs 1, 2, 11, 27 etc....Now when they tried to do high altitude multi-gruppen ops they usually got chewed up by Allied fighters but when they were doing frei-jagd against the allied tactical airforces, even VERY late in the war I & II/JG26 seemed to have enough experienced unit, element & flight leaders to lead them that they packed a surprising sting for allied units.

So...how did JG26 'luck out'? Was it just that Galland favored JG26 & directed as many experienced & 'promising' replacements as he could to it or did some other factor allow them to maintain their quality of leadership--Not just Experienced long term unit leaders (Priller, Borris etc) and quality replacements (Eder, Hackl, Gluntz, Heckmann) but many guys who came right out of flight school (Soeffing, Crump, Hoffmann, Mayer, Schildt) survived & became top notch leaders as well;

Thanks ahead of time...

NM