More than seventy-five years ago newspapers in Captain Check's home state ran headlines like  Reds Advance in Savage Fighting on Karelian Front and Flying Fortresses Raid Eastern End of Sicily.  At home the favorite song was You’ll Never Know by Dick Haymes. Folks were going to the movies to watch Leslie Howard in  Spitfire or Robert Taylor and George Murphy in  Bataan. That Saturday night, families could tune into their radios and listen to Your Hit Parade with Frank Sinatra on CBC and Ellery Queen on NBC.

June 26, 1943 was also a day that would see the demise of scores of Americans who died serving their country. One of them was Captain Raymond Check.

He was born on September 27, 1917 in North Dakota. His mother was born in Russia and his father was born in Poland. A later census shows they were German speakers both born in Germany. It was probably a case of shifting borders. His father worked as a railroad road master. Raymond had two older sisters and two older brothers.

He enlisted in the Army Air Forces on June 11, 1941. He became a captain and pilot in the 423rd Bombardment Squadron, 306th Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force which was equipped with B-17 Flying Fortresses.

In the summer of 1943 airmen were given the opportunity to go home after twenty-five missions.

Captain Check took off on his twenty-fifth mission on June 26, 1943, flying Chennault's Pappy III. It was a milk-run bombing mission of a German airfield in France. A big party was planned for the evening of their During the bomb run, Check's temporary co-pilot, Lt. Col. James W. Wilson (an old squadron leader who wanted to go on Check's final mission), removed his gloves to make some adjustments to the engine. During the final moments of the bomb run, a German fighter swooped down unnoticed out of the sun’s glare. One 20mm cannon shell hit Cap. Check in the neck, exploded and killed him. A fire started in the cockpit, badly burning Wilson's hands. A crewmate put out the fire with an extinguisher. Col. Wilson continued flying with a melted oxygen mask, steering with his arms above the elbows, since his hands were too badly burned.

Still under attack, a machine gun bullet hit the box of flares behind the pilot's seat. The flares exploded, created another fire and blowing open the bomb bay doors. Fortunately, there was a third pilot on board -- Lt. William Cassedy, Check's normal co-pilot, was acting as a waist gunner. 

Cassedy replaced Wilson in the co-pilot seat. With only one other uninjured man on board, Cassedy brought Chennault's Pappy III  back to base. The radio was out and there were no remaining flares to announce an emergency landing. Instead of landing the plane into the wind as normal, Cassedy purposefully landed the plane downwind against incoming traffic. He wanted to avoid the reception group waiting to celebrate Check's 25th mission. It included an American army nurse who was going to marry Captain Check the next day.

His grave is at Cambridge American Cemetery and Memorial in Coton, England.