It’s the true story of two young men from Hillsboro who were key players in heroic World War II bombing missions against Nazi Germany.
It’s a family story of two Hillsboro men and their loving relationship with the same woman.
It’s an extraordinary story told by the daughter and niece of these two men.
Author Jan Cress Dondi, a Hillsboro native, tells this story in her soon-to-be-released book, The Navigator’s Letter: The True Story of Two WWII Airmen, a Doomed Mission, and the Woman Who Bound Them Together.
I am particularly fascinated by this story because the book’s characters and author are my distant cousins. Jan’s and my great-grandparents were siblings, Nellie Bliss and Charles Wesley (C.W.) Bliss, who in 1892 started my family’s decades-long ownership of The Montgomery County News.
Dondi’s book tells the intertwined war stories of her uncle, John B. White, a young Hillsboro lawyer with political aspirations, and her father, Bob Cress, a college student with roots in dairy farming.
Their harrowing war experiences are captured in the letters they each wrote to the same woman, Polley White.
After being called to military service in the first peacetime draft in America’s history, John B. and Bob followed separate but identical paths. Both joined the U.S. Army Air Corps, both became navigators on B-24 bombers, both were sent to Europe and flew multiple combat missions.
In bombing raids nearly a year apart, both men’s aircraft were forced down over the heavily defended oilfields of Ploesti, Romania – and both went missing in action (MIA).
Discovering The Story
Born in Hillsboro and raised in Atlanta, GA, Jan Cress Dondi grew up vaguely aware that her uncle, John B., and her father, Bob, had similar war-time experiences, and she knew that her dad had been a prisoner of war (POW).
As an adult while visiting her childhood home in Atlanta, Dondi discovered a long-forgotten footlocker that contained hundreds of hand-written letters exchanged during World War II between her father Bob and a hometown girl, Polley.
Years later, she also found letters that her uncle had written to Polley, his youngest sister.
Through these letters to and from Polley, Dondi learned what her father and her uncle went through as B-24 navigators, particularly during Operation Tidal Wave, the extremely low-level, high- risk Allied air raids on oilfields critical to Germany’s war machine.
Players In The Story
John B. White, Jr., was born here and graduated from Hillsboro High School, University of Illinois and Kent School of Law. He returned to Hillsboro and worked with Attorney Omer Poos, who later became a federal court judge.
After being drafted into the Army Air Corps, John B. became a navigator for a heavy bomber, the B-24 Liberator. He flew the first B-24 combat mission over Europe on Oct. 9, 1942, and the first American bombing mission over Germany in January 1943.
In July 1943, he was deployed to North Africa for a top secret raid on Ploesti, Romania, the first ever zero-altitude air assault, dubbed Operation Tidal Wave. On Aug. 1, 1943, his B-24 was among 54 aircraft and 532 crewmen lost, and John B. was declared MIA.
Robert “Bob” Cress was raised on the Cress Hill dairy farm west of Hillsboro that his ancestors homesteaded in 1818. He was a star athlete on the basketball team, excelled in academics and was a talented musician. He won the 1940 national solo trombone championship.
After graduating from Hillsboro High School, he attended University of Illinois, with sights on law school when he was called to serve his country.
Bob became a B-24 navigator, and his combat training at Harvard Air Force Base in Nebraska included simulated bombings of Navy Pier in Chicago. He served with the 15th Air Force 484 BG in Italy. He flew his group’s first combat mission on April 29, 1944.
Bob flew almost daily thereafter, and he was lead navigator for the group on May 30,1944, the day before his mission over the targeted Ploesti oilfields. Riddled with flak and attacked by a swarm of German fighter planes, his B-24 was shot down on May 31, 1944, and Bob went missing-in-action.
Polley White, youngest sister of John B., had been a friend of Bob Cress since childhood. An attractive, outgoing and popular student at Hillsboro High, Polley had many suitors.
She and Bob had dated occasionally after high school, but never anything serious. Through letters exchanged in early 1944, the two developed a long-distance relationship.
The B-24 Liberator was the state-of-the-art weapon in the Air Force arsenal during World War II. It carried more bombs to greater distances and at higher speeds while exceeding at jobs the designers never could have imagined. An empty B-24 needed about 5,000 feet just to get off the ground; fully loaded, it could devour a 7,000 ft. runway. In Operation Tidal Wave, the B-24s were flown at zero- altitude, a height between 50 and 150 feet above the ground.
As B-24 navigators, John B. and Bob made calculations by hand – a human computer of sorts. There was no GPS. It wasn’t easy, and the task was complicated by inclement weather or while dodging Nazi Germany’s deadly anti-aircraft fire. Using pencil notations, navigators coursed a route deep from within enemy territory to bring their ten-man crews home.
Book Is Available Now
Dondi’s gripping account of combat and sacrifice is a tale of love, family, and eerie twists of fate. It’s a non-fiction book that reads like a historical novel.
The Navigator’s Letter will be released nationwide on Feb. 10 and is available now for pre-order online from major book sellers via the website www.JanCressDondi.com.
