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. 224 …I got another update that said : "Over Cairo on the 26th Rev I ' d have rny…
  • p. 225 …Well, anyway, Cairo and Alexandria were both clear , but this was the first time we'd…
  • p. 255 …I did the second one on Cairo . This was a good run . I went through some…
217~ENttAt-
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
Well , you weren't awake then.
What time wa.s it, Jim?
It says 07 18 37. You should have been asleep
then . I have in my notes that you slept to 08 : 15,
Well, I was like you were. I wasn ' t sleeping
very good the last--quite often, I had my cover
up watching out the window. You could a l ways
hear everything that was going on the radio, so
you knew pretty well what was going on.
Well, anyway, Cairo and Alexandria were both
clear , but this was the first time we'd seen
them and it took a long time to find the targets-
the particular target that we were looking for.
We could find the Red Sea and we could . find the
Mediterranean, obviously. You could see the
Suez Canal . You could see the river. I had
difficulty finding the town of Cairo . How about
you, Fil., with Alexandria? You were looking for
Alexandria .
I found that one .
You found the town all right, but finding the
airfield that we were supposed to take a picture
of was pretty difficult the first time. Later on
eet<mDENTl,t(l.

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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.