Airman First Class Sweet was assigned to Keesler Air Force Base, Mississippi. On 7 July 1953, he was serving as a Medical Corpsman on a Coast Guard PBY-5 rescue aircraft on a mission to evacuate an injured seaman aboard a shrimp boat in the North Pass of the Lower Mississippi (Louisiana). The aircraft went out of control upon landing and sank killing him and two other crewmen.

Sweet was awarded the National Defense Service Medal.