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…
245
McDivitt
White
GNFIDENTIAt
thing turned off and ruined , we went ahead and
turned the IGS Power Supply on, the computer on ,
and left it on the rest of the flight anyway .
So , whoever sent those instructions accomplished
it . I guess what he wanted to do was turn off
the computer. He sure accomplished that . It
seemed to me like it would have been more
worthwhile to leave the thing on till we got a
little more data out of the thing, instead of
rushing to get it tur ned of f t he way they d.L<.l,
I don't understand it . I don't feel that it
was a wise decision . Unfortunately, I didn ' t
have the electrical power consumption at my
fingertips right then, or I never would have
turned the thing off.
Okay, I guess we're over about 86 hours . I got
up at 86 hours . That ' s one of the longest rest
periods that I ' ve had . At 05 48 45 Zulu we were
supposed to perform a D-9 Experiment , and I guess
we did . Then I have in my notes that Ed went
to sleep at 87 hours elapsed time .
And this was my five hours of very good sleep .
~ONFIDENT~A4,

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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.