Documents / Official release
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.
117 White Mc Divitt White ..CE>-NFIDENTl~ l:- I bet we used a little more than four , because I think we came out earlier th'll1 we thought . No , I sta~ted the event timer to time it . Well, this is where m:r control difficulty began . As soon as my gun ran out I wasn I t able to control myself the way I co-..1ld with the gun . With that gun , I coi.lld decide to go to a part of a spacecraft and very confidently go . I think right no·,. that .1. wish that I ha:i given Jim t he gun ,u1d taken t he camera off , Nov, I was working on taking some pict.1res and "lorking on the tethe:r dynamics. I immediately realized what was wrong. I realized that our tether was mounted on a pl ane ohlique .to the angle in which I wanted to translate . I remem·i:cL' i'.c-•.1::n our air-bea:::-ing work that every·- time you got at an angle from the perpendicula-:7 where yom.· tether wafl r:iounted , it gave yo.1 a nice a::-cing trajectory back in t he opposite direction. You I re actuall y like a weight on the end of a str ing. If you push out in one direc;tion , and you ' re at 911 angle fron ~he perpendicular , when you reach the end of a tether , it neatly sends you in a long ar.c ba:k e6NFIDENrlA c--
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.