I was tired and relieved
to be on the ground. The guys on the radar truck did a great Job!
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.
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