Less attention was paid to the crew. They used bare hands to remove filters from air scoops used to collect ionized particles, Wilmsmeyer said. One day, a technician checked the dosimeter Wilmsmeyer wore with his dog tags to monitor radiation levels.
“When they tested mine, it promptly went off the scale,” he said. “Then they checked my co-pilot’s and his went off scale. The technician said, ‘There's got to be something wrong with this damn thing’ and threw it in the trash can. After that, they took away our dosimeters, so we really don't have any idea what kind of exposure we had.”
Only the navigator began to feel ill, at one point vomiting blood.
“I tried to get him to see a doctor but mission hours were such, whenever we took off, nobody was alive on base, so to speak. And we got back after closing times,” Wilmsmeyer said. After Speedlight Delta, the navigator wouldn't fly again. Back at Forbes, he was medically discharged.
Like the rest of the world, in late September 1962, the crew knew nothing about missiles in Cuba. But flying to the detonation one day, they spotted a Russian freighter that had just left port. It had two large cylinders, both about 85 feet long, strapped to its deck.
They took photos. Back at base, two intelligence officers, one from Strategic Air Command, the other working for the Joint Chiefs, “really got excited,” Wilmsmeyer said. “They said, ‘This is what we've been looking for,’ “ evidence of missiles bound for Cuba.
Wilmsmeyer's aircraft spotted the freighter again, two days later, still steaming toward the Atlantic. The cylinders were still on deck but covered.
The Speedlight Delta mission ended Oct. 29. Before returning to Kansas, the crew was told not to talk about it. No mention of the temporary assignment would appear in their service records.
In 1971, after three combat tours in Vietnam, he retired. He suffers today from a neurological disease that his doctor ties to radiation exposure.
Feet and hands tingle constantly, as if asleep. In 1997, Wilmsmeyer and his co-pilot decided the Speedlight Delta crew should get a medal. It took them two more years and intervention from Congress, to get enough information declassified to make their case.
Last August, in a small ceremony at their Methodist church in Hermann, Mo., a retired brigadier general, on behalf of the Air Force, presented Wilmsmeyer with the Distinguished Flying Cross. The 1962 flights, made “in the face of great personal danger,” said the citation, provided the nation with “intelligence of incalculable value.”
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