William Francis Arnett Jr. was born on August 11, 1920, in Mascot, Knox County, Tennessee. He was the son of William Francis Arnett and Ollie Catherine Jones Arnett. He was married to Lois Eileen Smith Willis. He entered military service on February 23, 1943, as an aircraft mechanic with the U.S. Army Air Forces. In September 1943, he enrolled in aviation cadet training and earned his commission as a second lieutenant on August 4, 1944. He was deployed overseas in April 1945. He served in the 52nd Bomber Squadron, 29th Bomber Group, Very Heavy, and as Pilot of B-29 Superfortress #42-63571 during World War II.

On the early morning of May 11, 1945, a Boeing B-29 Superfortress #42-63571, commanded by 2nd Lt. Clemence W. Halteman Jr. departed Guam on a Twentieth Air Force mission targeting the Kobe Industrial Area in Japan. Shortly after takeoff, the aircraft was involved in a catastrophic accident and crashed before reaching its destination. All eleven crew members were lost. Wartime records initially reported one crew member as killed and ten as missing; however, the missing airmen were subsequently presumed dead, and no survivors were ever found. While contemporary accounts reported that the precise cause of the accident was never publicly disclosed, surviving records do not provide a definitive explanation.

2Lt Arnett was reported Missing in Action, and his name is memorialized in the Tablets of the Missing in the Honolulu Memorial, Honolulu, Honolulu County, Hawaii, USA.

Source of information: www.findagrave.com, aviation-safety.net, weremember.abmc.gov