Documents / Official release

Preliminary Gemini 4 Crew Debriefing, Part I, 1965

National Aeronautics and Space Administration · 1965-06-09 · 340 pages · text from the file's own layer

This is a preliminary transcript of Part I of the Gemini 4 (GT-4) flight crew debriefing. The Spacecraft Operations Branch of NASA's Flight Crew Support Division prepared it on June 16, 1965, from recordings of the debriefing held aboard the USS Wasp on June 9, 1965. In it, astronauts McDivitt and White describe the mission from an operational viewpoint, covering countdown, powered flight, insertion, orbital operations, reentry, landing and recovery. According to the preface, visual sightings were left for a later part.

From the source:Release of 2026-06-12 Incident: 6/9/65, North Atlantic Ocean. This document is a preliminary transcript (Part I) derived from voice recordings of the Gemini 4 flight crew debriefing taken aboard the recovery ship, USS Wasp, on June 9, 1965. Astronaut Ed White recounts seeing “sparkles” during the flight.

  • p. 102 …So I tol d them over Tananar.ive- -I believe it was Tan~n~rive- -that…
  • p. 229 …a id off for five minutes between Tananarive and Carnarvon, I guess . Oh ! This is where…
  • p. 251 …We got a call from Tananarive and they said to place the computer switch to the…
92
I
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
cor ◄ FIE>f~IAL
everything out without m~ch problem at all .
think it took •ls longer actually to p1lt it
all together. .
That ' s right . It d id . We started going
through the checklist here and putting the
things on and W'3 started getting more and more
rushed . We were supposed to star. t the E[,rress
Preparation Checklist at abo:it 1:44 . We
probsbly sta::-ted it at about 1: 35 or so . We
started it about 10 minutes early, roughly ,
maybe five to 10 min1tes early. We were
supposed to be ready to start the depressu r.a7,a
tion at 2: 30 over Carnarvvn .
I think I could h.3,ve gone through ari:i l1ook2d
ev8.rything all up , but I felt that we should
go -:hc:-ough fairly close to the p~ocedure w1; had
set up on the checklist.
That I s r igh t .
I think this slowed us down .
Well , we set tht, procedure up so tha~ when we
finished wlth it, it would be right . I think
this helter- sk8lter thing that we were being
forced into was for the birds. So an Ne g0t
farther al:mg , it beca;n,~ .:i.ppar,mt to nt, that
eot~Ftl:>ENll-AL

Cases discussed

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Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 340 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.