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.

12 'COI\IFIDE~◄ llAl
White
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
I got that feeling when I read Gus and John ' s
debriefing.
Did you? I didn't . I got the impression that it
was going to be a much quieter noise .
Well, the whole noise level of the engine girnbal
ing was louder than I thought it was going to
be. It surprised me .
Yes . Engine gimbaling was much louder than I
heard before . We heard this during Wet Mock and
during precount and at midcount. You can hear
those engines gimbal around; they really shake t he
spacecraft . But, I really wasn't prepared for
the big noise that the prevalves make, and such
a long noise as that fuel gushed down to the
bottom. I guess that was what it was.
I didn't like t he sounds and vibrations we got
when they raised and lowered the gantry.
It shook the whole spacecraft .
It shook the whole spacecraft--did you notice how
it never came up straight? The spacecraft was
supposed to line up kind of like this and then
wham! I had visions of them knocking us off and
laying us flat on the ground before we were
launched ,
co~,Fl0Et'4TIAI:

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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.