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.
“Harder”5 pages
17707 COt~ft0ENftAL McDivitt White McDivitt White McDivitt we !leeded to close the hatch , just as we sat there and said we might need during the SAR of thfl spacecraft in St . Louis. I think the attachrnl'9nts of the bat' and the cable to the spacecraft sho~ld probably be at least doubled in strength , so there just isn 't any question in the pilots' minds or the engineers' minds . I guess the eng:ineers were co::winced that you didn ' t have Jim and I co!'lvinced that those tw~ attachme!lt points-- . We've seen it break too many times, I think . We've broken the bar and we've broken that atta::)hn:ent point. I ha::!. actually physically twisted the attachmen t right off the spacecraft up in the zero-g airplane. I certainly wouldn't have put my full strength into it if I knew my life depended on that attachment. It should be ma.de absolutely foolproof. Well , that was t l,'.e point I was trying to make earlier when I said I was pulling as hard as I could . Then I said that I really wasn't pulling as hard as I was capable of. You did::1 1 t have confidence in that attachment. I didn't really think that I shouln p~ll O!l it
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.