Supposedly though, it was a good combat aircraft, at least to one RAF pilot that did extensive flight evaluations on the He 162 after the war but very light controls that made it a plane for experienced pilots only.
That's interesting, Galland said it was one of the biggest mistakes that the Luftwaffe made that late in the war. This was after he had dealt with the whole Me 262 cluster.
Here's what he had to say on it:
'On September 23, 1944, at the headquarters near Rastenburg on the decisive discussion on the Volksjäger was held. From previous discussions I had hoped that the majority of the participants would support me in my rejection. But in my demand to supplant the He 162 with the Me 262 I remained alone except for the Chief of the General Staff. My suggestion was to increase mass production of the Me 262 by having it built under license by all aircraft factories that were not working to capacity, and further to use all these planes only for the air defense of the Reich. This earned me a sharp rebuke from Göring which ran something like this: "This is unheard of! Now the General of the Fighter Arm refuses a jet fighter plane which the armament production is offering him by the thousands within a few months!" Hitler, who had obviously detailed someone to report to him, was fully informed about the course of discussions within the Reichsmarshal and within an hour he demanded from me a written statement of the motives for my rejection of the Volksjäger. This was an additional reason for mz being replaced as General of the Fighter Arm.
But the plan was put through and preparations were made for mass production. It was planned to use boz pilots after a hurried training on gliders, while production and service were to be assisted and controlled bz the Gauleiters. The Volksjäger was to represent a sort of levee en masse in the air. Inclredibly schedules were fixed, astronomical production figures were planned. Göring himself became a victim of the national frenzy with which the planning of the Volksjäger had infested almost everyone connected with air defense. "Hundreds! Thousands! Umpteen thousands!" he cried. "Until the enemy has been chased back beyond the borders of Germany!"
This project had one advantage: It was technically quite impossible to hang a bomb under the tiny aircraft and to declare it a Blitzbomber. Compared with the Me 262, the He 162 meant a considerable step backward in every way. The construction was completed in two and a half months, the mass production was ready to start on a grand scale as the prototypes were ready. In the history of aircraft design and construction this must have been a singular feat. On December 6, 1944, the He 162 flew for the first time. A few days later- far too soon- it was displayed to a large circle of interested experts at Vienna-Schwechat. Before the eyes of the spectators the test pilot Peter yanked the insufficiently tested plane too strongly in an attempt to loop. The aircraft started to disintegrate in the air, beginning with the right wing. Peter was killed.
In March, 1945, the planes of the first series were ready. Until the end of the war about 200 were produced. The Question whether the Volksjäger could still have played a successful part in air defense was left in abyance. The details of construction and a considerable number of half-finished planes fell into the hands of the Russians, and a few finished aircraft were seized by the Western Allies."
