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.
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222 McDivitt White McDivitt White McDivitt White McDivitt White McDivitt We did the S-5 Experiment together and that was the best series of pictures we got on the whole flight. It was really fabulous . We got good pictures both for the S-5 and S-6 on this one . They should really come out good . I did the Apollo Landmark Area No . 4. I did the tracking task with it at 19 16 42 on El Paso, and it turned out pretty well. We tried to make a tracking pass on El Paso International Airport, and we never even saw El Paso. This was a very big surprise to both of us because we though we ' d nail that one cold. That's right . We've been in and out of there so often , you lmow , it's just like another home base. Which leads to one of your conclusions, which is- You can ' t have targets out in the middle of a land mass . They've got to be near a body of water . You need something to identify the landmark. There are some beautiful topographical features near El Paso . There ' s a range of mountains just to the west that show up and the white sands are out there to the west--Shoot! We never saw any thing. I think I saw El Paso when we were right COt'4·Fl0EN1°1AL
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.