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
139
White
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
White
whichever direction that is .
Back to getti'lg bade the 3pacecraft- -I hc:l,d theL°l
one thermal glove o~ the on~:aand , my left hand .
I always wanted my right hand to be free to op
erate that g,m a--id the camera . The way the cam-
era was mow1ted on there, I had to use both h9.nds -
one hand to actually stabilize it with the glll1
and the other ha.;1d to cea.ch over. Again, I think
dynamics pl~yed a little bit of a role there .
Everytime I brought my hand in from a position
ou~ on my left, it tended to tur.n me a. little
bit, which is exactly what we found happened on
the air-bearing tables. I think that the camera
should have been velcroed to my body somewhere
and used independently of the gun.
Yes . I g 1)t that same impression . I got the
impression that what you reall y should have d•:me
was--.
Dropped the gun.
Unhooked the camera out there floating around
and j.1st throW!'l the g,m away. I don't think you
ever should have tried to bring it back.
Well , what I should have done was fold the g~n
and handed it to y◊u,
C~l'JFlDENTI.AL

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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.