Preliminary Gemini 4 Crew Debriefing, Part I, 1965

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.

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in ~he opposite dir ection. Each time this arc
carried me right back to the top of the
ad.9,ptec- , to th~ i;np ,.:;(' 1,;he s_pa~e(;raft , in fact
toward the adapter section. One time I w11s so
close to the t hrusters back there that I called
J • I •d "D I t f . bti:i.;n . s,:u. , on ire a.nymor:; . , eca.use
I was right on the thrusters . I was even
closer than that f oot and a hal f wh.ich I had
noted to be tne leng!;1:1 of the thz-uster plumes ,
and I didn ' t want to sit on a firing thruster .
°CONFIDENT'IAL