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. 264 …We performed the P~e r etro Checklist well in advance of when it was supposed…
  • p. 267 …I set the event timer up well in advance of Carnarvon . At Carnarvon, I got the…
  • p. 273 …So we went through what we could in advance of T -5. The things we couldn…
  • p. 278 …You punched the SEP OAMS. We heard the bang. He followed wit h a SEP ELECTRIC…
  • p. 279 …advance. " So , I armed retro squibs , and we discussed whether or not to punch off the…
134
White
McDivitt
Whi te
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
White
around 4 minutes and 6 mi.nutes and 8 minutes .
And t' .en you got involved in floating 1:3,ro'.l.Yld
as we were t rying to get that last pict,\u'e .
The tim,a really flew!
You kept getting behi.nd me all the t ime and I
became distracted from ;he t ime we were on VOX,
co'llpletely blocking out the g rou.'ld . Our VOX must
have been triggered constantly , be::::ause whenever
we were on it they coul::l:o ' t tra.'lsmi t to us.
That ' s where the time got away from me .
That ' s right , and it was 15 minutes and 40 sec
onds when I looked at my clock. So , I th::>'.lght
that I had better g::> to the ground. I said to
the ground , "Do you ha-.re any ,rn,ssage for us? 11
because I knew it was time to get back in. And
th-9y just sai:i , "Yes . Get back in ! "
Right . I remember hea ring Gus say," Yes, get
him back in ! "
This is what all the fuss was about . They
might have been transmitting to us to get back
in hut we ware on VOX a.-id couldn' t hear a t hing .
I did a few things after this time that I wasn ' t
d·::>ing to deliberately stay out . Bc1t I was
deliberately t r ying to do one last thing . I was

Cases discussed

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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.