Documents / Official release
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.
8 McDivitt White McDivitt White COl'IFIDE~4TIAt naps . I noticed Jim was napping too . Yes . I concur with F.d, although I don't want to get carried overboard. We shouldn't scrub due to crew fatigue . I think it is up to the crew. If the crew is un comfortable they should come down. But I don't think he should say, "Okay, two hours and 30 minutes . You cut this off. ", because it is an operational procedure. When I first got assigned to the crew I always fe l t one of the toughest things to do would be laying back for an hour and 40 minutes or so prior to launch . The time we spent in the simu lator laying on our back, I thought to be a very uncomfortable position. As we went through all the training and testing at McDonald , and again at the Cape , ;ny back got more callouses on it. I got used to laying with my feet over my head . At launch time I wasn't a bit tired from laying on my back . This is brought out in one of our last simulations , where we ran the whole four hour simulation and we forgot to have them tilt us up to 30 degrees. We just got used to running that way, CO l"I P"te E~~Tl,\l
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.