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
142
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
White
Mc:Divitt
White
McDivitt
Wnite
McDivitt
tOfqfl0Et ◄ TIAL
I came in .
Yes. I think what happe:.e::1 ·,ms he was stiffer ,
and he wa.sn' t bending his legs and his arms ai:1y .
You mean with the harder suit I was stiffer?
Harder . And your. arms were stiffe:::- a nd yo'J.weren't
bending them around as much . It looked a lot
more rigid.
This mig~ ~ hav,3 been .
Not semi-rigi.:i--Ei w:3.s rigid .
All r ight . This might have been .
And that looked to me like it might have been tht,
prob l3m .
ThL, might have been part of the recontact 0::1 the
side of t;'.,e spacecraft that I noticed . But
as I came back in, I noti-:::ed that I had to work
a little harder , and I hoped the tape was running·
because I think we had a very good commentary.
We were both talk ing very clearly bal)k a'ld forth
to ea-:::h ot~~er during this time and I w~s telling
Jim that I was go:'..ng''to com-3 in slow because it
waf-1 a little tought;r than t ha.:i tho 1ght . We ·-'•=re
talking back and forth ab.::mt being slow and tak-·
ing it easy .
I actually helped pu:,h ~ down in there . I d,,n ' t
€01'4FIDE~~TIM

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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.