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. 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
110
McDivitt
White
McDivit t
White
McDivitt
White
CSl>,lflQEDlllA I
spacecraft . I think you called me and said I
was out of the spacecraft .
I called and told you that you wer e cl,3n.r .
That ' s right .
And that ' s when I started firing the gw:i a"ld
act~ally pr~pelled myself under the influence
of the gun . I don ' t believe I ga ve any input
into the spacecraf"t whm1 t 1,3ft that t Lne ,
did I?
No , you left as clea,1 as a whistle .
Later on , I gave you some pretty big ones .
You were re~lly boun0ing arou~d then .
Now at the tjme, J l ef t entirely under the
influence of the gun a vid it 0arried me right
straight oat, a little higher tha"l I wanted
to go . I wanted to ma:.~euver over to your side ,
but I maneuv•;r~d out of the spacecraft and
forward ru1d pBrhaps a little higher· than I
wanted to be. When I got out; to whst I estimate •
as p~obablyone- half or two-thirds the way out on the
tether, I was out past the nose of ·t'ne
spacec:::-clf t . I started a yaw to the left with
the gun and that ' s when I reported th~t the
I
gun r 8al1J worked quite well. I believe that I

Cases discussed

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.