William Railing served in the U.S. Army Air Corps as a First Lieutenant with the 30th Bomb Squadron, 19th Bomb Group, during World War II. On August 16, 1942, he was a crewman on a B-17E Flying Fortress (#41-2434) that took off from Mareeba Airfield, Australia, to test a new flare dropping mechanism. The equipment malfunctioned and a flare exploded inside the plane, causing it to crash into the sea north of Cairns Queensland, killing all aboard.