The rest of the squadron gradually returned until we were all down and each pilot could go through debriefing, where he told what had happened on the mission. We found out then that from the three squadrons from our field there were eight pilots missing. Our squadron lost no one on that mission. Usually when a pilot goes down he calls an his radio or there is a lot of chatter if they engage enemy fighters. This time there was only silence on the radio. With forty eight planes in our three squadrons, if someone went down they should have been seen by one of us. We suspected the missing pilots might have flown to Norway or Sweden ( neutral countries ) for some reason. Some of those missing were friends of mine, but not as close as the fellows in our own squadron. High Command in England thought the Germans might have come up with a new weapon as no flak or enemy fighters were seen. All flights from England were grounded for three days while an investigation took place. None of those pilots ever turned up in prison camps and I don't think anyone ever knew what really happened to them. On another mission we escorted the bombers to Regansburg in southeast Germany, which was about as far as to Berlin, to bomb the ball bearing factories in that area. It was a tough mission because the flak was so heavy and the other defenses were greater because the factories were important. There were about 1500 planes from England and another 1100 came up from Africa. Someone erred in the planning of this mission as we crossed at right angles at the same altitude and we had trouble keeping from flying into each other. I never saw so many planes in the air at one time and guess the Germans hadn't either as they didn't send up any fighters! it was reaching the point where we had more planes than they did and so they only came up when they had a chance of success. We observed something unusual on that mission. Some white smoky objects came up from the ground in a spiral track to about 15,000 feet before they disappeared. They couldn't reach our altitude and seemed to move slowly. We reported them upon our return, but no one knew what they were. On other missions where the Germans didn't send up fighters, our fellows would be allowed to go down to ground level and shoot anything they could see.