There was still Adolph Galland’s reply to Göring during the Battle of Britain when der Dicke asked if there was anything he could do to help the Luftwaffe fighter arm. Gallandly famous replied, “Ja, get me a squadron of Spitfires!”
During the Battle of Britain the Messerschmidts were disadvantaged because of limited flying range. They only had about five minuted of fuel to fight over London, and many experienced Luftwaffe pilots were lost in the Channel. By the end of the War many raw Luftwaffe pilots entered combat with fewer hours air time than a U.S. pilot would be required to have to solo. Hitler anticipated a short war and the Luftwaffe did not establish a pipeline to train more new pilots to sustain it through the War. The Japanese had the same problem.
The U.S. Eighth Air Force specifically had the task of defeating the fighter arm of the Luftwaffe. The Luftwaffe had stopped sending up fighters to defend against bombing raids against cities or other targets except Berlin and oil fields, in order to preserve their limited strength to repel the coming invasion of Europe. The Eighth Air Force attacked Berlin, using B-17’s as live bait to force the Luftwaffe to respond. Almost 60,000 Americans were killed in the air war over Europe, but in the end, the Luftwaffe was defeated.
A few years later, Egyptian pilots flew the Spitfire against the new Israeli Air Force, which had Czech-built Bf-109 variants. The Israeli pilots were better.