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. 149 …I did notice that the suit was a little harder. I felt this type of suit…
  • p. 150 …You mean with the harder suit I was stiffer? Harder . And your. arms were stiffe:::- a…
  • p. 186 178 €0NflDENitM White McDivitt White McDivitt any harder . No . I think that shouli be t he…
  • p. 318 …We hit ten times harder than I expected to hit . The altimeter was set at the…
  • p. 320 …We really seemed to hit hard, harder than I thought EO~ ◄ Flt,Et~TI.A"L
200
White
McDivitt
White
little disappointed with the map information at the
end of the flight . I don ' t know exactly what was
hap~ening. But I ' m convinced that it wasn ' t right .
As a matter of fact , a couple of times I was even
on the wrong orbit . They ' d give me a time and a
l ongi tude and I'd plot it. I wasn ' t even over that
part of the world . I'd be over a whole orbit from
that .
Jim , I made this mistake once , too . I was using my
plotboard. I ' d plot evecything out a.nd I came
down in a place in Mexico at night , Tampico , Mexico .
So I told them something about seeing t his spot in
Mexico . T:!ey didn't pick up my mistake . I was back
checking over and I got to looking at my map and
said , "What the heck are we doing here at night?"
I was actually on the other side. I was clear
around in Australia.
Had you plotted east instead of west?
No, I don't think I did. I think I plotted it
correctly . I went back and checked it and I never
did get the plot . I went on to do something else
and I didn ' t get the plotboard squared away on that .
But I rea lized that instead of passing over Tampico,
Mexico , what I was really seeing on the ground was

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Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 340 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.