THE NAVIGATOR'S LETTER by Jan Cress Dondi (epub)(Nonfiction)

THE NAVIGATOR'S LETTER by Jan Cress Dondi (epub)(Nonfiction)
Author: Jan Cress Dondi
Full title: The Navigator's Letter: The True Story of Two WWII Airmen, a Doomed Mission, and the Woman Who Bound Them Together
Length: 352 pages
Publication date: February 10, 2026
Genre/Categories: Nonfiction; World War II history; Military memoir
Dondi uncovers the WWII saga of two B-24 navigators—her uncle John B. White Jr. (POW) and father Lt. Robert "Bob" Cress—from tiny Hillsboro, Illinois, both linked romantically to Polley and shot down over Ploesti, Romania's vital Nazi oil refineries. Using family letters, POW diary, National Archives (U.S./German), and travels to sites, it details harrowing Ploesti raids like Operation Tidal Wave (1943 low-level disaster) and Operation Reunion (1945 POW airlift of 1,162 men). Themes of fate, brotherhood, sacrifice, duty, and love amid flak, fighters, fires, and freezing altitudes highlight uncanny coincidences in their intertwined fates.