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
191 White McDivitt White McDivitt White McDivitt White McDivitt That's right . I nitially you saw the sun out there and you saw this t hing looking like it was flashing . Once it got above the air glow , the planet did not flicker anymore. It was perfectly bright . Very hright . When we saw that thing that looked like the booster , it was very low on the horizon. It always popped out . Remember how that bright light used to pop out? You'd have t he light sky and all of a sudden t here 'd be a bright light there . \Te saw that planet come up so many t imes during the flight, I feel quite convinced that the first sighting or two weren't of the planet. Well, maybe it wasn't. Actually, I continued to see the blinking on it after the stars were out . Wait , let ' s take a look and see which way the booster would be . The booster was bel ow us so it should be going out in front of us l ike mad . You're looking into the sunset which was behind us . The booster shouldn ' t have been there . The booster should have been out to the f r ont of us . CO~ftl}ENTIAb
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.