Milch’s response was to trade quality for quantity and produce old aircraft with some updates. Among them were the Me 109 G, which could match the speed of its enemies with new engines but not their agility, putting it at a disadvantage in dogfights, and the He 111, which was equipped with electronics and heavy guns to serve as a night fighter; it was useful in this new niche until the second half of 1943, when the USAF began escorted daylight raids.
And yet it was this decision that produced much of Milch’s successful numbers.

(A digression on technology)
By the following year the Me 210 and He 177 had become viable. They needed better design specifications and suffered from a recurring theme in German wartime technology: the sacrifice of the test and fine-tuning phase of development to save time. On aircraft this could shorten the development cycle from four to three years. But this meant running the risk of producing faulty designs, whose perceived failure was worsened by the heavy expectations placed on them in the desperation to find war-winning weapons. With enough time they could mature and overcome their weaknesses but this negated the time won by rushing production. The gamble worked better with the Ju 88, which came out imperfect but good enough as a workhorse. The Panther entered Kursk with teething problems. The Mark XXI U-Boat had a convoluted story but could only be put into action when it was truly ready -at the war’s very end. The Me 262 was not rushed and the Luftwaffe’s leadership did all it could for it; it has been said that it could have been put into production earlier but that would have been rushing it. If anyone sabotaged it, it was Speer and Willy Messerschmitt. After the war the rockets, jet aircraft, tanks and electric submarines inspired future designs but there was no way to cheat time, technology had to mature on its own pace.