It is true to say that the first kill can influence the whole future career of a fighter pilot. Many to whom the first victory over the opponent has been long denied either by unfortunate circumstances or by bad luck can suffer from frustration or develop complexes they may never rid themselves of again.

To use a fighter as a fighter-bomber when the strength of the fighter arm is inadequate to achieve air superiority is putting the cart before the horse.

And most of these pilots were lost during the first five flights.

Of course, the outcome of the war would not have been changed. The war was lost perhaps, when it was started. At least it was lost in the winter of '42, in Russia.

The German Luftwaffe always fought without any reserves. This is also the reason why we have pilots with extremely high numbers of victories.

Many pilots of the time were the opinion that a fighter pilot in a closed cockpit was an impossible thing, because you should smell the enemy. You could smell them because of the oil they were burning.

We have built a total of about 1250 of this aircraft, but only fifty were allowed to be used as fighters - as interceptors. And out of this fifty, there were never more than 25 operational. So we had only a very, very few.