"[2] Clapper died in a plane crash while covering the invasion of the Marshall Islands during World War II.

Raymond Lewis Clapper was born on May 30, 1892 in La Cygne, Kansas, the son of a farmer of Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry.

[7] In 1917, he was promoted to manager of UP's Northwest Bureau, which had headquarters in Chicago and served newspapers in western Canada and portions of six states.

[9] Clapper's success resulted to a large extent from "his objective writing style and his ability to explain the politics and policies of Washington for the average reader.

[17] Clapper was killed February 1, 1944,[1] uring the World War II, when an airplane in which he was riding collided with another plane while reporting on the Allied invasion of the Marshall Islands.

[4] When he died, Clapper was still officially a political columnist for Scripps-Howard, but he was reporting on the invasion of the Marshall Islands.