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.

Open the PDF at page 115 Original source ↗

“Harder”5 pages

  • p. 149 …I did notice that the suit was a little harder. I felt this type of suit…
  • p. 150 …You mean with the harder suit I was stiffer? Harder . And your. arms were stiffe:::- a…
  • p. 186 178 €0NflDENitM White McDivitt White McDivitt any harder . No . I think that shouli be t he…
  • p. 318 …We hit ten times harder than I expected to hit . The altimeter was set at the…
  • p. 320 …We really seemed to hit hard, harder than I thought EO~ ◄ Flt,Et~TI.A"L
White
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
€0tt<tFIDENTIA-6- 107
By golly , I did . So I must of mounted it four
times . That ' s right , I knocked it off one time
during this time when I was out there . I got
the picture of the egress , and then I asked you
t o hand me the gun . At this t i me the camera
wasn ' t running. I had the glove on my l eft
hand , and I went ahead and t ook t he gun and made
sure that it was ready to go. I had the
camer a on at that time and the val ve was on . I
checked the valve to be sure it was on and I
was essent iall y ready to go . I don ' t know how
l ong this took , but it took me longer than I
thought . We had had early egress and it wasn ' t
too much bef ore I got the GO t hat I was ready to
leave the spacecraft .
I ' m not sur e whether we got that GO from
Hawaii or Guaymas . I sort of suspect that we
got that GO f r om Hawaii , not Guaymas as we had
originally planned .
Well , it sure seemed short from the time I was
mounting all t hat stuff out there to the time
you told me go.
That ' s right . I ' m sure we were talking to
Hawaii , and they said you ' re clear to proceed
-ee·NFI0EN 1=·1Ab.

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About this file

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.