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
143
Whi t e
McDivltt
White
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
White
McD:i.vitt
know whether he felt it or not in that suit .
No , I couldn't.
I reached over and I steered his leg::i do,m in ,
and I sort o f got hi.n settled b the seat a
l ittle better than what he was getting himself .
Yes. Right. I was kind of free wheeli~g my feet
up there.
Yes . It looked to me like Ed was holding o~ to
the top of the open part of the hatch and j~st
swiveling around that pa-rt. It looked like he
didn ' t have enough mobility and strength in his
arms to actually t wist his body down against the
f orce of the suit into the seat.
After awh.Lle, I reached my left arm u.nderaeath,
the same techniq~e we had used in the zero-g
training, and actually I had my hands all over the •
ci rc1xi t breakers.
Yes. Ed was a real hazard to the switches.
Yes, and I pulled myself do·..m in and that ' s when
I really started coming .Ln--when 1 gut hold. of the
underneath stde of that circuit breaker pane l
and p~lled myself in. That's when my first real
progress was made toward actually getting d:>wn in .
Because, while I co1.1ld steer Ekl from where I was
--CONFIDE~

Cases discussed

About this file

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.