Arthur R. Clemens was born on August 10, 1924, in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania. He was the son of Raymond G Clemens and Bertha Maude Emrich Clemens. He enlisted in the Army Air Corps on March 19, 1943, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He was noted, at the time of his enlistment, as being employed in the building of aircraft and also as Single, without dependents.
Arthur served in the 36th Bomber Squadron, 482nd Bomber Group, Heavy, as a Staff Sergeant and Flight Engineer/Top Turret Gunner on the B24 #42-51232 'The Jig's Up' during World War II. On December 22, 1944, their aircraft crashed into the sea close to North Stack in Wales, UK. The cause of the accident was a lack of fuel that resulted in a diversion to the Anglesey Wartime Air Base. It is reported that the B24 bomber was flying in fog, and the crew did not know that they were over the sea. The pilot ordered his crew to bail out, believing they were flying over land. Only the pilot, Lt H.Boehm, and his co-pilot, D. Burch, survived. The rest of the crew members were lost to the sea and their bodies were never recovered.
SSgt Clemens was declared Missing in Action and is memorialized at the Tablets of the Missing, Cambridge American Cemetery, Cambridge, United Kingdom. He also has a cenotaph located in Covenant Greenwood Cemetery, Ebenezer, Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, USA.
Source of information: www.findagrave.com, www.abmc.gov