Jack S. Arnett was shot down in the Pacific in 1944, and his remains weren't recovered till 2004. Only one of his brothers survives to attend his funeral service Saturday.
December 09, 2009|By Stephen Hudak, Orlando Sentinel
Until her last breath, nearly 50 years after her son's wounded bomber plunged into the Pacific Ocean, Dessie Arnett Amick clung to the faintest of hopes that her baby-faced airman would someday return from World War II.
On Tuesday, he finally did.
The remains of 2nd Lt. Jack S. Arnett, missing since Sept. 1, 1944, when his B-24 Liberator and 10-man crew were shot out of the sky by Japanese artillery, arrived at Orlando International Airport with an Army escort.
"He will be where he belongs now -- among his brothers and those who loved him," said Carolyn Arnett Rocchio, 77, of Boynton Beach, who described her cousin as handsome and smart, a mischievous boy who liked to shoot the blossoms off their grandmother's flowers with a BB gun.
An Army honor guard greeted the soldier's remains Tuesday, and the Orlando Fire Department fired water cannons over the plane, but no family members were waiting at the end of the airman's amazing odyssey from ocean floor to OIA.
Arnett's mother died in 1993 at the age of 99 in her Audubon Park home, where an oil portrait of the 23-year-old pilot served as living-room sentry for 40 years. His father, B.B., and younger brother, Warren, are dead, too.
His wife remarried and died. They had no children.
His lone surviving sibling, Howard Arnett, 92, of Winter Park, a former Navy pilot and private aviator who flew Pacific routes after the war in search of his brother or the plane's wreckage, has Alzheimer's disease.
Howard Arnett, nonetheless, played a crucial role in his kid brother's return.
He provided DNA that helped military investigators from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command identify bones found in the wreckage of a U.S. bomber discovered 70 feet deep in the ocean near the Republic of Palau in 2004.
Hit by the enemy
The last flight of Jack Arnett and his crew, members of the U.S. Army Air Force's 424th Bombardment Squadron, rumbled off a primitive airstrip on Wakde Island shortly after 6:30 a.m. The taxing eight-hour round-trip bombing run would take them over the Japanese army's regional headquarters.
The U.S. military had launched the air offensive six days earlier, hoping to soften Japanese defenses on the islands in preparation for a bold invasion directed by Adm. Chester Nimitz and Gen. Douglas MacArthur.
The islands were the Japanese Imperial Army's last strategic stronghold between Allied forces and the Philippines -- and the site of some of the most ferocious battles of the war in the Pacific, where an estimated 1,500 Americans died.
Arnett's plane, known as '453 for its tail number's defining digits, was among a squadron of 18 bombers.
According to an official Army action report, the '453 dropped its payload over the island town of Koror about 11 a.m. when Japanese garrisons unleashed "heavy, intense" anti-aircraft artillery barrages skyward.
The hellfire ripped into the '453 twice. An engine burst into flames. The left wing broke off.
The plane with its crew spun like a burning tornado and then broke in two as it rammed the water.
Arnett's family, who lived at that time in the small town of Friendly, W.Va., were told only that his bomber was hit by the enemy and had crashed into the Pacific Ocean. They also learned that airmen in other bombers recalled seeing two or three parachutes drifting into the ocean and a Japanese boat speeding toward them.
The shrieking onslaught of anti-aircraft bullets had prevented fellow fliers from attempting a rescue.
In 1945, at the war's end and nearly a year after the '453's disappearance, Arnett's mother wrote a letter to the mother of Jimmie Doyle, the tailgunner on the lost flight. She commiserated with the Texas mother about "the boys."
"I suppose you had a letter from the War Dept. on Sept. 2nd saying their status was unchanged, and they are still considered 'missing.' I am thankful for that thread of hope, and, of course, with the surrender of Japan and the taking over of Palau by our forces, and also the discovery of so many prisoners who have been missing for two or three years, it does put renewed hope in our hearts right now," Dessie Arnett wrote in her neat cursive. "I think it is the uncertainty that is so hard, and alternating between hope and despair."
Honored as 'fallen hero'
Rocchio, who was 12 when the Army classified her cousin as "missing in action," doesn't think her aunt completely lost hope that Jack would someday return -- though the War Department issued a finding of death in 1946.
She recalled that Aunt Dessie once pleaded with a theater owner to rerun a "Movietone News" reel because she was certain she had seen her son among the gaunt soldiers liberated from a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp.
In 1951, after a pair of Army reviews reaffirmed the plane was lost and the Japanese had executed the three airmen who parachuted from the '453, the government declared all 11 missing crew members as "nonrecoverable."
Arnett's parents bought a marker for him in the Friendly Cemetery, where local veterans honor his service as a "fallen hero" every year. They then retired and moved to Orlando, where his father died in 1957 and Dessie remarried.
She never removed the portrait of her son from her wall.
Even after they left West Virginia, Millie Arnett of Winter Park, Howard's wife of 41 years, said her mother-in-law and husband never let go of the notion that Jack "was out there" and might reappear at any time.
Rocchio, who helped arrange for the remains to be flown to Orlando, thinks her cousin would still be lost if not for the extraordinary efforts of Pat Scannon and scuba-diving adventurers known as The BentProp Project.
The nonprofit group's work, detailed in a documentary called Last Flight Home, also spawned a lengthy article in the June 2008 issue of GQ magazine. The story featured the son of Jimmie Doyle, Scannon and others who played important roles in the recovery of the airmen, including U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Andy Baldwin, who was The Bachelor in the ABC reality show's 10th season.
Dog tags and aviator sunglasses
Scannon, 60, an experienced diver and owner of a California biotech company, has plumbed the waters surrounding the tiny Palaun islands for more than 15 years in search of missing U.S. World War II planes and their crews.
An estimated 200 U.S. planes were lost in Pacific battles.
On the BentProp Web site, Scannon explained that the families and friends of MIAs live with "a painful lack of closure: they do not know exactly how and where their loved ones died. ... The only antidote for such painful lack of closure is information. Unfortunately the ocean and jungles don't give up information about long-lost aircraft without a struggle. The ocean can bury an aircraft under sand and silt, or gradually envelop it in a shrine of coral."
His group scoured the waters for a decade in search of the '453, using clues from mission reports, reunions of Arnett's bomber squadron, archival film and a tip from an elderly fisherman who recalled seeing wreckage while spearfishing.
On Jan. 26, 2004, Scannon's group found a B-24 propeller and then scattered remains of the '453, parts of which were remarkably intact and preserved by the salt water. BentProp immediately notified the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, and the government agency that searches for U.S. prisoners of war and missing soldiers dispatched a recovery dive team.
During the next four years, military divers meticulously lifted hundreds of items from the ocean floor and the encrusted hull of the plane's remains, including bones, Arnett's dog tags, his aviator sunglasses and his watch.
Four other missing crew members were identified through DNA, including Jimmie Doyle, and three others have been returned to their families for military burials in Texas, Ohio and California. Remains that have not been linked to the other missing crewmen will be interred together in April at Arlington National Cemetery.
Arnett's service will be at 1 p.m. Saturday at Emmanuel Episcopal Church, 1603 E. Winter Park Road, Orlando, and his ashes scattered over the same grounds as his brother, Warren, an Orlando businessman who died in 2003.
Howard Arnett, Rocchio and Scannon are expected to attend the memorial arranged by Baldwin-Fairchild Funeral Home. The skeletal remains were covered by a full military dress uniform and Arnett's medals.
U.S. Army Chief Warrant Officer Charleston Winston of Joint Forces Headquarters Florida said he is trying to arrange a flyover for the service that will include a vintage B-24 bomber, similar to the lost Liberator.
"He was a hero from World War II," Winston said. "He earned his honors with his life."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Remains of a World War II pilot recovered in 2005 are being returned to West Virginia for burial.
U.S. Army Air Corps 2nd Lt. Jack S. Arnett was the pilot of a B-24 Liberator that was shot down in 1944 off the coast of Palau. The Bent Prop Project found the plane and recovered the remains of Arnett and seven other crewmen.
Frances Weekley with the Ohio Valley Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution says Arnett's remains were cremated in Florida last fall and some of his ashes were buried there. The remainder will be buried May 15 at Friendly Cemetery in Friendly, where Arnett's parents are buried.
A ceremony for the plane's crew was held Thursday at Arlington National Cemetery.
----------------------------------------------
FRIENDLY (AP) - The remains of a World War II pilot recovered in 2005 have been buried in his home state of West Virginia.
The service for U.S. Army Air Corps 2nd Lt. Jack S. Arnett took place Saturday. Part of Arnett's ashes were buried next to his parents at Friendly Cemetery in Tyler County.
Arnett was the pilot of a B-24 Liberator that was shot down in 1944 off the coast of Palau. The Bent Prop Project found the plane and recovered the remains of Arnett and seven other crewmen.
Part of Arnett's ashes were buried next to his brother in Florida last year.
-------------------------------------------------
FRIENDLY - After 65 years, the ashes of 2nd Lt. Jack Arnett were laid to rest Saturday with his parents in a hilltop cemetery in Tyler County.
Arnett left Wake Island on Sept. 1, 1944, piloting a B-24 Liberator No. 42-73453 on a bombing mission over Koror, 750 miles from Wake, where the plane was downed by anti-aircraft fire off the coast of Palau.
Using the DNA of his brother, H.M. Arnett of Florida, Jack Arnett's remains were identified by the Joint POW/MIA Account Command.
Arnett's parents, B.B. and Dessie Ash Arnett, are buried at the Friendly Cemetery alongside a memorial marker for Arnett. Arnett's remains were cremated in Florida last fall and his ashes were buried at the Friendly Cemetery.
Carolyn Arnett Rocchio, a cousin, said over the years Arnett's mother, who lived to be 100 years old, held out hope he would be returned. She said her Aunt Dessie spoke about her desire to bring him back to Friendly.
"She never said if, she said when," Rocchio said.
Charleston resident Carroll Leon Ash, a cousin, said from the plot where Arnett and his parents are buried, his grandmother's former house where he and Arnett played as children can be seen.
In 2005, Arnett's remains were recovered by the Bent Prop Project, an organization that searches for World War II American planes that were shot down.
"They searched for 10 years," Rocchio said. "Not to find plane No. 453, they searched for 10 years to find Jack, Earl and Jimmie. They knew the names of every crew member and knew about the families and had been in contact with them."
Rocchio said members of the organization were supposed to be in Friendly for Saturday's ceremony, but they had to cancel.
"They were ready to leave but their plane had mechanical problems," she said. "They may not be here with us today, but I know they are here in spirit."
Arnett was a Charleston native who graduated from Charleston High School in 1936 and in 1940 graduated from the Alabama Institute of Engineering, now known as Auburn University.
Members of the Bent Prop team found the remains of Arnett, 2nd Lt. Frank Arhar, Staff Sgt. Jimmie Doyle, Tech. Sgt. Charles Goulding, Staff Sgt. Leland Price, Flight Officer William Simpson, Tech. Sgt. Robert Stinson and Staff Sgt. Earl Yoh.
On April 29, a ceremony took place for the crew in Section 60 at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C., with military rites conducted by the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Regiment known as "The Old Guard." Although the remains of five crewmen - Arnett, Doyle, Simpson, Stinson and Yoh - had already been identified, the burial was in honor of all eight because the remains of all may have intermingled.
At Friendly, a flag was presented to Ash and a firing party made up of members of the Sistersville VFW fired three rifle volleys and "Taps" was played. A funeral with military rites also was held Dec. 12 at Orlando, Fla., for Arnett. Part of his ashes were buried there beside his brother and the remainder were buried in Friendly.
December 09, 2009|By Stephen Hudak, Orlando Sentinel
Until her last breath, nearly 50 years after her son's wounded bomber plunged into the Pacific Ocean, Dessie Arnett Amick clung to the faintest of hopes that her baby-faced airman would someday return from World War II.
On Tuesday, he finally did.
The remains of 2nd Lt. Jack S. Arnett, missing since Sept. 1, 1944, when his B-24 Liberator and 10-man crew were shot out of the sky by Japanese artillery, arrived at Orlando International Airport with an Army escort.
"He will be where he belongs now -- among his brothers and those who loved him," said Carolyn Arnett Rocchio, 77, of Boynton Beach, who described her cousin as handsome and smart, a mischievous boy who liked to shoot the blossoms off their grandmother's flowers with a BB gun.
An Army honor guard greeted the soldier's remains Tuesday, and the Orlando Fire Department fired water cannons over the plane, but no family members were waiting at the end of the airman's amazing odyssey from ocean floor to OIA.
Arnett's mother died in 1993 at the age of 99 in her Audubon Park home, where an oil portrait of the 23-year-old pilot served as living-room sentry for 40 years. His father, B.B., and younger brother, Warren, are dead, too.
His wife remarried and died. They had no children.
His lone surviving sibling, Howard Arnett, 92, of Winter Park, a former Navy pilot and private aviator who flew Pacific routes after the war in search of his brother or the plane's wreckage, has Alzheimer's disease.
Howard Arnett, nonetheless, played a crucial role in his kid brother's return.
He provided DNA that helped military investigators from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command identify bones found in the wreckage of a U.S. bomber discovered 70 feet deep in the ocean near the Republic of Palau in 2004.
Hit by the enemy
The last flight of Jack Arnett and his crew, members of the U.S. Army Air Force's 424th Bombardment Squadron, rumbled off a primitive airstrip on Wakde Island shortly after 6:30 a.m. The taxing eight-hour round-trip bombing run would take them over the Japanese army's regional headquarters.
The U.S. military had launched the air offensive six days earlier, hoping to soften Japanese defenses on the islands in preparation for a bold invasion directed by Adm. Chester Nimitz and Gen. Douglas MacArthur.
The islands were the Japanese Imperial Army's last strategic stronghold between Allied forces and the Philippines -- and the site of some of the most ferocious battles of the war in the Pacific, where an estimated 1,500 Americans died.
Arnett's plane, known as '453 for its tail number's defining digits, was among a squadron of 18 bombers.
According to an official Army action report, the '453 dropped its payload over the island town of Koror about 11 a.m. when Japanese garrisons unleashed "heavy, intense" anti-aircraft artillery barrages skyward.
The hellfire ripped into the '453 twice. An engine burst into flames. The left wing broke off.
The plane with its crew spun like a burning tornado and then broke in two as it rammed the water.
Arnett's family, who lived at that time in the small town of Friendly, W.Va., were told only that his bomber was hit by the enemy and had crashed into the Pacific Ocean. They also learned that airmen in other bombers recalled seeing two or three parachutes drifting into the ocean and a Japanese boat speeding toward them.
The shrieking onslaught of anti-aircraft bullets had prevented fellow fliers from attempting a rescue.
In 1945, at the war's end and nearly a year after the '453's disappearance, Arnett's mother wrote a letter to the mother of Jimmie Doyle, the tailgunner on the lost flight. She commiserated with the Texas mother about "the boys."
"I suppose you had a letter from the War Dept. on Sept. 2nd saying their status was unchanged, and they are still considered 'missing.' I am thankful for that thread of hope, and, of course, with the surrender of Japan and the taking over of Palau by our forces, and also the discovery of so many prisoners who have been missing for two or three years, it does put renewed hope in our hearts right now," Dessie Arnett wrote in her neat cursive. "I think it is the uncertainty that is so hard, and alternating between hope and despair."
Honored as 'fallen hero'
Rocchio, who was 12 when the Army classified her cousin as "missing in action," doesn't think her aunt completely lost hope that Jack would someday return -- though the War Department issued a finding of death in 1946.
She recalled that Aunt Dessie once pleaded with a theater owner to rerun a "Movietone News" reel because she was certain she had seen her son among the gaunt soldiers liberated from a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp.
In 1951, after a pair of Army reviews reaffirmed the plane was lost and the Japanese had executed the three airmen who parachuted from the '453, the government declared all 11 missing crew members as "nonrecoverable."
Arnett's parents bought a marker for him in the Friendly Cemetery, where local veterans honor his service as a "fallen hero" every year. They then retired and moved to Orlando, where his father died in 1957 and Dessie remarried.
She never removed the portrait of her son from her wall.
Even after they left West Virginia, Millie Arnett of Winter Park, Howard's wife of 41 years, said her mother-in-law and husband never let go of the notion that Jack "was out there" and might reappear at any time.
Rocchio, who helped arrange for the remains to be flown to Orlando, thinks her cousin would still be lost if not for the extraordinary efforts of Pat Scannon and scuba-diving adventurers known as The BentProp Project.
The nonprofit group's work, detailed in a documentary called Last Flight Home, also spawned a lengthy article in the June 2008 issue of GQ magazine. The story featured the son of Jimmie Doyle, Scannon and others who played important roles in the recovery of the airmen, including U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Andy Baldwin, who was The Bachelor in the ABC reality show's 10th season.
Dog tags and aviator sunglasses
Scannon, 60, an experienced diver and owner of a California biotech company, has plumbed the waters surrounding the tiny Palaun islands for more than 15 years in search of missing U.S. World War II planes and their crews.
An estimated 200 U.S. planes were lost in Pacific battles.
On the BentProp Web site, Scannon explained that the families and friends of MIAs live with "a painful lack of closure: they do not know exactly how and where their loved ones died. ... The only antidote for such painful lack of closure is information. Unfortunately the ocean and jungles don't give up information about long-lost aircraft without a struggle. The ocean can bury an aircraft under sand and silt, or gradually envelop it in a shrine of coral."
His group scoured the waters for a decade in search of the '453, using clues from mission reports, reunions of Arnett's bomber squadron, archival film and a tip from an elderly fisherman who recalled seeing wreckage while spearfishing.
On Jan. 26, 2004, Scannon's group found a B-24 propeller and then scattered remains of the '453, parts of which were remarkably intact and preserved by the salt water. BentProp immediately notified the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, and the government agency that searches for U.S. prisoners of war and missing soldiers dispatched a recovery dive team.
During the next four years, military divers meticulously lifted hundreds of items from the ocean floor and the encrusted hull of the plane's remains, including bones, Arnett's dog tags, his aviator sunglasses and his watch.
Four other missing crew members were identified through DNA, including Jimmie Doyle, and three others have been returned to their families for military burials in Texas, Ohio and California. Remains that have not been linked to the other missing crewmen will be interred together in April at Arlington National Cemetery.
Arnett's service will be at 1 p.m. Saturday at Emmanuel Episcopal Church, 1603 E. Winter Park Road, Orlando, and his ashes scattered over the same grounds as his brother, Warren, an Orlando businessman who died in 2003.
Howard Arnett, Rocchio and Scannon are expected to attend the memorial arranged by Baldwin-Fairchild Funeral Home. The skeletal remains were covered by a full military dress uniform and Arnett's medals.
U.S. Army Chief Warrant Officer Charleston Winston of Joint Forces Headquarters Florida said he is trying to arrange a flyover for the service that will include a vintage B-24 bomber, similar to the lost Liberator.
"He was a hero from World War II," Winston said. "He earned his honors with his life."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Remains of a World War II pilot recovered in 2005 are being returned to West Virginia for burial.
U.S. Army Air Corps 2nd Lt. Jack S. Arnett was the pilot of a B-24 Liberator that was shot down in 1944 off the coast of Palau. The Bent Prop Project found the plane and recovered the remains of Arnett and seven other crewmen.
Frances Weekley with the Ohio Valley Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution says Arnett's remains were cremated in Florida last fall and some of his ashes were buried there. The remainder will be buried May 15 at Friendly Cemetery in Friendly, where Arnett's parents are buried.
A ceremony for the plane's crew was held Thursday at Arlington National Cemetery.
----------------------------------------------
FRIENDLY (AP) - The remains of a World War II pilot recovered in 2005 have been buried in his home state of West Virginia.
The service for U.S. Army Air Corps 2nd Lt. Jack S. Arnett took place Saturday. Part of Arnett's ashes were buried next to his parents at Friendly Cemetery in Tyler County.
Arnett was the pilot of a B-24 Liberator that was shot down in 1944 off the coast of Palau. The Bent Prop Project found the plane and recovered the remains of Arnett and seven other crewmen.
Part of Arnett's ashes were buried next to his brother in Florida last year.
-------------------------------------------------
FRIENDLY - After 65 years, the ashes of 2nd Lt. Jack Arnett were laid to rest Saturday with his parents in a hilltop cemetery in Tyler County.
Arnett left Wake Island on Sept. 1, 1944, piloting a B-24 Liberator No. 42-73453 on a bombing mission over Koror, 750 miles from Wake, where the plane was downed by anti-aircraft fire off the coast of Palau.
Using the DNA of his brother, H.M. Arnett of Florida, Jack Arnett's remains were identified by the Joint POW/MIA Account Command.
Arnett's parents, B.B. and Dessie Ash Arnett, are buried at the Friendly Cemetery alongside a memorial marker for Arnett. Arnett's remains were cremated in Florida last fall and his ashes were buried at the Friendly Cemetery.
Carolyn Arnett Rocchio, a cousin, said over the years Arnett's mother, who lived to be 100 years old, held out hope he would be returned. She said her Aunt Dessie spoke about her desire to bring him back to Friendly.
"She never said if, she said when," Rocchio said.
Charleston resident Carroll Leon Ash, a cousin, said from the plot where Arnett and his parents are buried, his grandmother's former house where he and Arnett played as children can be seen.
In 2005, Arnett's remains were recovered by the Bent Prop Project, an organization that searches for World War II American planes that were shot down.
"They searched for 10 years," Rocchio said. "Not to find plane No. 453, they searched for 10 years to find Jack, Earl and Jimmie. They knew the names of every crew member and knew about the families and had been in contact with them."
Rocchio said members of the organization were supposed to be in Friendly for Saturday's ceremony, but they had to cancel.
"They were ready to leave but their plane had mechanical problems," she said. "They may not be here with us today, but I know they are here in spirit."
Arnett was a Charleston native who graduated from Charleston High School in 1936 and in 1940 graduated from the Alabama Institute of Engineering, now known as Auburn University.
Members of the Bent Prop team found the remains of Arnett, 2nd Lt. Frank Arhar, Staff Sgt. Jimmie Doyle, Tech. Sgt. Charles Goulding, Staff Sgt. Leland Price, Flight Officer William Simpson, Tech. Sgt. Robert Stinson and Staff Sgt. Earl Yoh.
On April 29, a ceremony took place for the crew in Section 60 at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C., with military rites conducted by the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Regiment known as "The Old Guard." Although the remains of five crewmen - Arnett, Doyle, Simpson, Stinson and Yoh - had already been identified, the burial was in honor of all eight because the remains of all may have intermingled.
At Friendly, a flag was presented to Ash and a firing party made up of members of the Sistersville VFW fired three rifle volleys and "Taps" was played. A funeral with military rites also was held Dec. 12 at Orlando, Fla., for Arnett. Part of his ashes were buried there beside his brother and the remainder were buried in Friendly.
Jack S. Arnett was shot down in the Pacific in 1944, and his remains weren't recovered till 2004. Only one of his brothers survives to attend his funeral service Saturday.
December 09, 2009|By Stephen Hudak, Orlando Sentinel
Until her last breath, nearly 50 years after her son's wounded bomber plunged into the Pacific Ocean, Dessie Arnett Amick clung to the faintest of hopes that her baby-faced airman would someday return from World War II.
On Tuesday, he finally did.
The remains of 2nd Lt. Jack S. Arnett, missing since Sept. 1, 1944, when his B-24 Liberator and 10-man crew were shot out of the sky by Japanese artillery, arrived at Orlando International Airport with an Army escort.
"He will be where he belongs now -- among his brothers and those who loved him," said Carolyn Arnett Rocchio, 77, of Boynton Beach, who described her cousin as handsome and smart, a mischievous boy who liked to shoot the blossoms off their grandmother's flowers with a BB gun.
An Army honor guard greeted the soldier's remains Tuesday, and the Orlando Fire Department fired water cannons over the plane, but no family members were waiting at the end of the airman's amazing odyssey from ocean floor to OIA.
Arnett's mother died in 1993 at the age of 99 in her Audubon Park home, where an oil portrait of the 23-year-old pilot served as living-room sentry for 40 years. His father, B.B., and younger brother, Warren, are dead, too.
His wife remarried and died. They had no children.
His lone surviving sibling, Howard Arnett, 92, of Winter Park, a former Navy pilot and private aviator who flew Pacific routes after the war in search of his brother or the plane's wreckage, has Alzheimer's disease.
Howard Arnett, nonetheless, played a crucial role in his kid brother's return.
He provided DNA that helped military investigators from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command identify bones found in the wreckage of a U.S. bomber discovered 70 feet deep in the ocean near the Republic of Palau in 2004.
Hit by the enemy
The last flight of Jack Arnett and his crew, members of the U.S. Army Air Force's 424th Bombardment Squadron, rumbled off a primitive airstrip on Wakde Island shortly after 6:30 a.m. The taxing eight-hour round-trip bombing run would take them over the Japanese army's regional headquarters.
The U.S. military had launched the air offensive six days earlier, hoping to soften Japanese defenses on the islands in preparation for a bold invasion directed by Adm. Chester Nimitz and Gen. Douglas MacArthur.
The islands were the Japanese Imperial Army's last strategic stronghold between Allied forces and the Philippines -- and the site of some of the most ferocious battles of the war in the Pacific, where an estimated 1,500 Americans died.
Arnett's plane, known as '453 for its tail number's defining digits, was among a squadron of 18 bombers.
According to an official Army action report, the '453 dropped its payload over the island town of Koror about 11 a.m. when Japanese garrisons unleashed "heavy, intense" anti-aircraft artillery barrages skyward.
The hellfire ripped into the '453 twice. An engine burst into flames. The left wing broke off.
The plane with its crew spun like a burning tornado and then broke in two as it rammed the water.
Arnett's family, who lived at that time in the small town of Friendly, W.Va., were told only that his bomber was hit by the enemy and had crashed into the Pacific Ocean. They also learned that airmen in other bombers recalled seeing two or three parachutes drifting into the ocean and a Japanese boat speeding toward them.
The shrieking onslaught of anti-aircraft bullets had prevented fellow fliers from attempting a rescue.
In 1945, at the war's end and nearly a year after the '453's disappearance, Arnett's mother wrote a letter to the mother of Jimmie Doyle, the tailgunner on the lost flight. She commiserated with the Texas mother about "the boys."
"I suppose you had a letter from the War Dept. on Sept. 2nd saying their status was unchanged, and they are still considered 'missing.' I am thankful for that thread of hope, and, of course, with the surrender of Japan and the taking over of Palau by our forces, and also the discovery of so many prisoners who have been missing for two or three years, it does put renewed hope in our hearts right now," Dessie Arnett wrote in her neat cursive. "I think it is the uncertainty that is so hard, and alternating between hope and despair."
Honored as 'fallen hero'
Rocchio, who was 12 when the Army classified her cousin as "missing in action," doesn't think her aunt completely lost hope that Jack would someday return -- though the War Department issued a finding of death in 1946.
She recalled that Aunt Dessie once pleaded with a theater owner to rerun a "Movietone News" reel because she was certain she had seen her son among the gaunt soldiers liberated from a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp.
In 1951, after a pair of Army reviews reaffirmed the plane was lost and the Japanese had executed the three airmen who parachuted from the '453, the government declared all 11 missing crew members as "nonrecoverable."
Arnett's parents bought a marker for him in the Friendly Cemetery, where local veterans honor his service as a "fallen hero" every year. They then retired and moved to Orlando, where his father died in 1957 and Dessie remarried.
She never removed the portrait of her son from her wall.
Even after they left West Virginia, Millie Arnett of Winter Park, Howard's wife of 41 years, said her mother-in-law and husband never let go of the notion that Jack "was out there" and might reappear at any time.
Rocchio, who helped arrange for the remains to be flown to Orlando, thinks her cousin would still be lost if not for the extraordinary efforts of Pat Scannon and scuba-diving adventurers known as The BentProp Project.
The nonprofit group's work, detailed in a documentary called Last Flight Home, also spawned a lengthy article in the June 2008 issue of GQ magazine. The story featured the son of Jimmie Doyle, Scannon and others who played important roles in the recovery of the airmen, including U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Andy Baldwin, who was The Bachelor in the ABC reality show's 10th season.
Dog tags and aviator sunglasses
Scannon, 60, an experienced diver and owner of a California biotech company, has plumbed the waters surrounding the tiny Palaun islands for more than 15 years in search of missing U.S. World War II planes and their crews.
An estimated 200 U.S. planes were lost in Pacific battles.
On the BentProp Web site, Scannon explained that the families and friends of MIAs live with "a painful lack of closure: they do not know exactly how and where their loved ones died. ... The only antidote for such painful lack of closure is information. Unfortunately the ocean and jungles don't give up information about long-lost aircraft without a struggle. The ocean can bury an aircraft under sand and silt, or gradually envelop it in a shrine of coral."
His group scoured the waters for a decade in search of the '453, using clues from mission reports, reunions of Arnett's bomber squadron, archival film and a tip from an elderly fisherman who recalled seeing wreckage while spearfishing.
On Jan. 26, 2004, Scannon's group found a B-24 propeller and then scattered remains of the '453, parts of which were remarkably intact and preserved by the salt water. BentProp immediately notified the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, and the government agency that searches for U.S. prisoners of war and missing soldiers dispatched a recovery dive team.
During the next four years, military divers meticulously lifted hundreds of items from the ocean floor and the encrusted hull of the plane's remains, including bones, Arnett's dog tags, his aviator sunglasses and his watch.
Four other missing crew members were identified through DNA, including Jimmie Doyle, and three others have been returned to their families for military burials in Texas, Ohio and California. Remains that have not been linked to the other missing crewmen will be interred together in April at Arlington National Cemetery.
Arnett's service will be at 1 p.m. Saturday at Emmanuel Episcopal Church, 1603 E. Winter Park Road, Orlando, and his ashes scattered over the same grounds as his brother, Warren, an Orlando businessman who died in 2003.
Howard Arnett, Rocchio and Scannon are expected to attend the memorial arranged by Baldwin-Fairchild Funeral Home. The skeletal remains were covered by a full military dress uniform and Arnett's medals.
U.S. Army Chief Warrant Officer Charleston Winston of Joint Forces Headquarters Florida said he is trying to arrange a flyover for the service that will include a vintage B-24 bomber, similar to the lost Liberator.
"He was a hero from World War II," Winston said. "He earned his honors with his life."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Remains of a World War II pilot recovered in 2005 are being returned to West Virginia for burial.
U.S. Army Air Corps 2nd Lt. Jack S. Arnett was the pilot of a B-24 Liberator that was shot down in 1944 off the coast of Palau. The Bent Prop Project found the plane and recovered the remains of Arnett and seven other crewmen.
Frances Weekley with the Ohio Valley Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution says Arnett's remains were cremated in Florida last fall and some of his ashes were buried there. The remainder will be buried May 15 at Friendly Cemetery in Friendly, where Arnett's parents are buried.
A ceremony for the plane's crew was held Thursday at Arlington National Cemetery.
----------------------------------------------
FRIENDLY (AP) - The remains of a World War II pilot recovered in 2005 have been buried in his home state of West Virginia.
The service for U.S. Army Air Corps 2nd Lt. Jack S. Arnett took place Saturday. Part of Arnett's ashes were buried next to his parents at Friendly Cemetery in Tyler County.
Arnett was the pilot of a B-24 Liberator that was shot down in 1944 off the coast of Palau. The Bent Prop Project found the plane and recovered the remains of Arnett and seven other crewmen.
Part of Arnett's ashes were buried next to his brother in Florida last year.
-------------------------------------------------
FRIENDLY - After 65 years, the ashes of 2nd Lt. Jack Arnett were laid to rest Saturday with his parents in a hilltop cemetery in Tyler County.
Arnett left Wake Island on Sept. 1, 1944, piloting a B-24 Liberator No. 42-73453 on a bombing mission over Koror, 750 miles from Wake, where the plane was downed by anti-aircraft fire off the coast of Palau.
Using the DNA of his brother, H.M. Arnett of Florida, Jack Arnett's remains were identified by the Joint POW/MIA Account Command.
Arnett's parents, B.B. and Dessie Ash Arnett, are buried at the Friendly Cemetery alongside a memorial marker for Arnett. Arnett's remains were cremated in Florida last fall and his ashes were buried at the Friendly Cemetery.
Carolyn Arnett Rocchio, a cousin, said over the years Arnett's mother, who lived to be 100 years old, held out hope he would be returned. She said her Aunt Dessie spoke about her desire to bring him back to Friendly.
"She never said if, she said when," Rocchio said.
Charleston resident Carroll Leon Ash, a cousin, said from the plot where Arnett and his parents are buried, his grandmother's former house where he and Arnett played as children can be seen.
In 2005, Arnett's remains were recovered by the Bent Prop Project, an organization that searches for World War II American planes that were shot down.
"They searched for 10 years," Rocchio said. "Not to find plane No. 453, they searched for 10 years to find Jack, Earl and Jimmie. They knew the names of every crew member and knew about the families and had been in contact with them."
Rocchio said members of the organization were supposed to be in Friendly for Saturday's ceremony, but they had to cancel.
"They were ready to leave but their plane had mechanical problems," she said. "They may not be here with us today, but I know they are here in spirit."
Arnett was a Charleston native who graduated from Charleston High School in 1936 and in 1940 graduated from the Alabama Institute of Engineering, now known as Auburn University.
Members of the Bent Prop team found the remains of Arnett, 2nd Lt. Frank Arhar, Staff Sgt. Jimmie Doyle, Tech. Sgt. Charles Goulding, Staff Sgt. Leland Price, Flight Officer William Simpson, Tech. Sgt. Robert Stinson and Staff Sgt. Earl Yoh.
On April 29, a ceremony took place for the crew in Section 60 at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C., with military rites conducted by the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Regiment known as "The Old Guard." Although the remains of five crewmen - Arnett, Doyle, Simpson, Stinson and Yoh - had already been identified, the burial was in honor of all eight because the remains of all may have intermingled.
At Friendly, a flag was presented to Ash and a firing party made up of members of the Sistersville VFW fired three rifle volleys and "Taps" was played. A funeral with military rites also was held Dec. 12 at Orlando, Fla., for Arnett. Part of his ashes were buried there beside his brother and the remainder were buried in Friendly.
December 09, 2009|By Stephen Hudak, Orlando Sentinel
Until her last breath, nearly 50 years after her son's wounded bomber plunged into the Pacific Ocean, Dessie Arnett Amick clung to the faintest of hopes that her baby-faced airman would someday return from World War II.
On Tuesday, he finally did.
The remains of 2nd Lt. Jack S. Arnett, missing since Sept. 1, 1944, when his B-24 Liberator and 10-man crew were shot out of the sky by Japanese artillery, arrived at Orlando International Airport with an Army escort.
"He will be where he belongs now -- among his brothers and those who loved him," said Carolyn Arnett Rocchio, 77, of Boynton Beach, who described her cousin as handsome and smart, a mischievous boy who liked to shoot the blossoms off their grandmother's flowers with a BB gun.
An Army honor guard greeted the soldier's remains Tuesday, and the Orlando Fire Department fired water cannons over the plane, but no family members were waiting at the end of the airman's amazing odyssey from ocean floor to OIA.
Arnett's mother died in 1993 at the age of 99 in her Audubon Park home, where an oil portrait of the 23-year-old pilot served as living-room sentry for 40 years. His father, B.B., and younger brother, Warren, are dead, too.
His wife remarried and died. They had no children.
His lone surviving sibling, Howard Arnett, 92, of Winter Park, a former Navy pilot and private aviator who flew Pacific routes after the war in search of his brother or the plane's wreckage, has Alzheimer's disease.
Howard Arnett, nonetheless, played a crucial role in his kid brother's return.
He provided DNA that helped military investigators from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command identify bones found in the wreckage of a U.S. bomber discovered 70 feet deep in the ocean near the Republic of Palau in 2004.
Hit by the enemy
The last flight of Jack Arnett and his crew, members of the U.S. Army Air Force's 424th Bombardment Squadron, rumbled off a primitive airstrip on Wakde Island shortly after 6:30 a.m. The taxing eight-hour round-trip bombing run would take them over the Japanese army's regional headquarters.
The U.S. military had launched the air offensive six days earlier, hoping to soften Japanese defenses on the islands in preparation for a bold invasion directed by Adm. Chester Nimitz and Gen. Douglas MacArthur.
The islands were the Japanese Imperial Army's last strategic stronghold between Allied forces and the Philippines -- and the site of some of the most ferocious battles of the war in the Pacific, where an estimated 1,500 Americans died.
Arnett's plane, known as '453 for its tail number's defining digits, was among a squadron of 18 bombers.
According to an official Army action report, the '453 dropped its payload over the island town of Koror about 11 a.m. when Japanese garrisons unleashed "heavy, intense" anti-aircraft artillery barrages skyward.
The hellfire ripped into the '453 twice. An engine burst into flames. The left wing broke off.
The plane with its crew spun like a burning tornado and then broke in two as it rammed the water.
Arnett's family, who lived at that time in the small town of Friendly, W.Va., were told only that his bomber was hit by the enemy and had crashed into the Pacific Ocean. They also learned that airmen in other bombers recalled seeing two or three parachutes drifting into the ocean and a Japanese boat speeding toward them.
The shrieking onslaught of anti-aircraft bullets had prevented fellow fliers from attempting a rescue.
In 1945, at the war's end and nearly a year after the '453's disappearance, Arnett's mother wrote a letter to the mother of Jimmie Doyle, the tailgunner on the lost flight. She commiserated with the Texas mother about "the boys."
"I suppose you had a letter from the War Dept. on Sept. 2nd saying their status was unchanged, and they are still considered 'missing.' I am thankful for that thread of hope, and, of course, with the surrender of Japan and the taking over of Palau by our forces, and also the discovery of so many prisoners who have been missing for two or three years, it does put renewed hope in our hearts right now," Dessie Arnett wrote in her neat cursive. "I think it is the uncertainty that is so hard, and alternating between hope and despair."
Honored as 'fallen hero'
Rocchio, who was 12 when the Army classified her cousin as "missing in action," doesn't think her aunt completely lost hope that Jack would someday return -- though the War Department issued a finding of death in 1946.
She recalled that Aunt Dessie once pleaded with a theater owner to rerun a "Movietone News" reel because she was certain she had seen her son among the gaunt soldiers liberated from a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp.
In 1951, after a pair of Army reviews reaffirmed the plane was lost and the Japanese had executed the three airmen who parachuted from the '453, the government declared all 11 missing crew members as "nonrecoverable."
Arnett's parents bought a marker for him in the Friendly Cemetery, where local veterans honor his service as a "fallen hero" every year. They then retired and moved to Orlando, where his father died in 1957 and Dessie remarried.
She never removed the portrait of her son from her wall.
Even after they left West Virginia, Millie Arnett of Winter Park, Howard's wife of 41 years, said her mother-in-law and husband never let go of the notion that Jack "was out there" and might reappear at any time.
Rocchio, who helped arrange for the remains to be flown to Orlando, thinks her cousin would still be lost if not for the extraordinary efforts of Pat Scannon and scuba-diving adventurers known as The BentProp Project.
The nonprofit group's work, detailed in a documentary called Last Flight Home, also spawned a lengthy article in the June 2008 issue of GQ magazine. The story featured the son of Jimmie Doyle, Scannon and others who played important roles in the recovery of the airmen, including U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Andy Baldwin, who was The Bachelor in the ABC reality show's 10th season.
Dog tags and aviator sunglasses
Scannon, 60, an experienced diver and owner of a California biotech company, has plumbed the waters surrounding the tiny Palaun islands for more than 15 years in search of missing U.S. World War II planes and their crews.
An estimated 200 U.S. planes were lost in Pacific battles.
On the BentProp Web site, Scannon explained that the families and friends of MIAs live with "a painful lack of closure: they do not know exactly how and where their loved ones died. ... The only antidote for such painful lack of closure is information. Unfortunately the ocean and jungles don't give up information about long-lost aircraft without a struggle. The ocean can bury an aircraft under sand and silt, or gradually envelop it in a shrine of coral."
His group scoured the waters for a decade in search of the '453, using clues from mission reports, reunions of Arnett's bomber squadron, archival film and a tip from an elderly fisherman who recalled seeing wreckage while spearfishing.
On Jan. 26, 2004, Scannon's group found a B-24 propeller and then scattered remains of the '453, parts of which were remarkably intact and preserved by the salt water. BentProp immediately notified the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, and the government agency that searches for U.S. prisoners of war and missing soldiers dispatched a recovery dive team.
During the next four years, military divers meticulously lifted hundreds of items from the ocean floor and the encrusted hull of the plane's remains, including bones, Arnett's dog tags, his aviator sunglasses and his watch.
Four other missing crew members were identified through DNA, including Jimmie Doyle, and three others have been returned to their families for military burials in Texas, Ohio and California. Remains that have not been linked to the other missing crewmen will be interred together in April at Arlington National Cemetery.
Arnett's service will be at 1 p.m. Saturday at Emmanuel Episcopal Church, 1603 E. Winter Park Road, Orlando, and his ashes scattered over the same grounds as his brother, Warren, an Orlando businessman who died in 2003.
Howard Arnett, Rocchio and Scannon are expected to attend the memorial arranged by Baldwin-Fairchild Funeral Home. The skeletal remains were covered by a full military dress uniform and Arnett's medals.
U.S. Army Chief Warrant Officer Charleston Winston of Joint Forces Headquarters Florida said he is trying to arrange a flyover for the service that will include a vintage B-24 bomber, similar to the lost Liberator.
"He was a hero from World War II," Winston said. "He earned his honors with his life."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Remains of a World War II pilot recovered in 2005 are being returned to West Virginia for burial.
U.S. Army Air Corps 2nd Lt. Jack S. Arnett was the pilot of a B-24 Liberator that was shot down in 1944 off the coast of Palau. The Bent Prop Project found the plane and recovered the remains of Arnett and seven other crewmen.
Frances Weekley with the Ohio Valley Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution says Arnett's remains were cremated in Florida last fall and some of his ashes were buried there. The remainder will be buried May 15 at Friendly Cemetery in Friendly, where Arnett's parents are buried.
A ceremony for the plane's crew was held Thursday at Arlington National Cemetery.
----------------------------------------------
FRIENDLY (AP) - The remains of a World War II pilot recovered in 2005 have been buried in his home state of West Virginia.
The service for U.S. Army Air Corps 2nd Lt. Jack S. Arnett took place Saturday. Part of Arnett's ashes were buried next to his parents at Friendly Cemetery in Tyler County.
Arnett was the pilot of a B-24 Liberator that was shot down in 1944 off the coast of Palau. The Bent Prop Project found the plane and recovered the remains of Arnett and seven other crewmen.
Part of Arnett's ashes were buried next to his brother in Florida last year.
-------------------------------------------------
FRIENDLY - After 65 years, the ashes of 2nd Lt. Jack Arnett were laid to rest Saturday with his parents in a hilltop cemetery in Tyler County.
Arnett left Wake Island on Sept. 1, 1944, piloting a B-24 Liberator No. 42-73453 on a bombing mission over Koror, 750 miles from Wake, where the plane was downed by anti-aircraft fire off the coast of Palau.
Using the DNA of his brother, H.M. Arnett of Florida, Jack Arnett's remains were identified by the Joint POW/MIA Account Command.
Arnett's parents, B.B. and Dessie Ash Arnett, are buried at the Friendly Cemetery alongside a memorial marker for Arnett. Arnett's remains were cremated in Florida last fall and his ashes were buried at the Friendly Cemetery.
Carolyn Arnett Rocchio, a cousin, said over the years Arnett's mother, who lived to be 100 years old, held out hope he would be returned. She said her Aunt Dessie spoke about her desire to bring him back to Friendly.
"She never said if, she said when," Rocchio said.
Charleston resident Carroll Leon Ash, a cousin, said from the plot where Arnett and his parents are buried, his grandmother's former house where he and Arnett played as children can be seen.
In 2005, Arnett's remains were recovered by the Bent Prop Project, an organization that searches for World War II American planes that were shot down.
"They searched for 10 years," Rocchio said. "Not to find plane No. 453, they searched for 10 years to find Jack, Earl and Jimmie. They knew the names of every crew member and knew about the families and had been in contact with them."
Rocchio said members of the organization were supposed to be in Friendly for Saturday's ceremony, but they had to cancel.
"They were ready to leave but their plane had mechanical problems," she said. "They may not be here with us today, but I know they are here in spirit."
Arnett was a Charleston native who graduated from Charleston High School in 1936 and in 1940 graduated from the Alabama Institute of Engineering, now known as Auburn University.
Members of the Bent Prop team found the remains of Arnett, 2nd Lt. Frank Arhar, Staff Sgt. Jimmie Doyle, Tech. Sgt. Charles Goulding, Staff Sgt. Leland Price, Flight Officer William Simpson, Tech. Sgt. Robert Stinson and Staff Sgt. Earl Yoh.
On April 29, a ceremony took place for the crew in Section 60 at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C., with military rites conducted by the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Regiment known as "The Old Guard." Although the remains of five crewmen - Arnett, Doyle, Simpson, Stinson and Yoh - had already been identified, the burial was in honor of all eight because the remains of all may have intermingled.
At Friendly, a flag was presented to Ash and a firing party made up of members of the Sistersville VFW fired three rifle volleys and "Taps" was played. A funeral with military rites also was held Dec. 12 at Orlando, Fla., for Arnett. Part of his ashes were buried there beside his brother and the remainder were buried in Friendly.
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