Raymond F. DeMers, World War II Aviator

He helped set a record by destroying the most German aircraft in one combat mission. On March 28, 1944, his 357th Fighter Squadron of P-51B Mustang fighters attacked an air base in southern France, destroying eighteen enemy aircraft and damaging thirty-one. One month later DeMers flew a mission over Germany, where he shot down two planes and damaged a third. While strafing enemy shipping on the Rhine River, he was hit by anti-aircraft fire and killed. During his brief career he flew more than fifty combat missions and forty operational sorties. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.