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.

4
White
McDivitt
rI TIRt
information about the boosters) they put this in
formation on the test conductor ' s loop too . We
ha.d too many guys talking. I think if just CAP
COM talked from thr ee minutes on down we would
be all right .
This is the way I thought it was going to happen,
and then from three minutes on down it really got
busy with the yak , yak, yak of everybody talking.
I don't lmow whether we got off the Booster ~st
C)nductor's loop or not, but at final countdown ,
Al gave me 2 minutes , 1 1/2, 1, 30 , 20 , 10 , 9,
8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 , 1 . I got a similar count
from the Spacecraft Test C~nductor but it turned
01 ·.t that they were a second out of sequence on
the countdown and Al was giving me 10 and our
Spacecraft Test Conductor was giving me 9. So it
went ten-nine , nine - eight, eight- seven . They
were at the same t ime . All I knew was that we
were getting close to engine ignition and then it
started . So , we got a little over-communicated
there . I think t hey kept us adequately informed
on the hold . As a matter of fact , I ' d say we got
over- informed there at the end . We had too many
guys keeping us informed and I think the pendulum
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Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 340 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.