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. 225 …We could find the Red Sea and we could . find the Mediterranean, obviously. You could see…
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McDivitt
White
McDivitt
White
why I didn. ' t t:iL:k about it. I got
instruc t ions from the ground to maintain the
oxygen pressure at between 930 and 960 with the
o2 High Rate . This is the time I told them
that the Command Pilot was asleep and I ' d
prefer to do it at a later time . I think they
called me back a few times on it ; finallJ, when
it got up to about 960 I went ahead and dumped
it .
It scared me to death !
The o2 High Rate started filling the cabin up ,
pressurizing it up around 5.4. At 5,4 on the
button the vent val ve relieved and Jim about
came through the top of the hatch .
I was there half asleep with my gl oves off , my
visor down , and a cover over . Trie cabin vented
and the cabin pressur e dropped about 3/10
of a pound . I knew that I didn ' t have my gloves
on and I figure , "Boy, I am going to have
to get those gloves on in the next half a
second or I'm going to be--"
He didn ' t get his gloves on but he sure was
thrashing around for a littl e while til I got
him the word . I didn ' t want to wake him up .

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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.