According to Goering and the Luftwaffe High Command, they were supposed to be the fighter elite.
“Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes.”
“It is quite possible we may have formed entirely erroneous ideas of what we actually see. The greenish gray patches may not be seas at all, nor the ruddy continents, solid land. Neither may the obscuring patches be clouds of vapor.”