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.

261
5.4 !R-12 Events
McDivitt
.CONFIDENTlA t'
checked it . I was exactly right . They were
obviously flying it off the same card that we
were , because I checked it and it was exactly
2 minutes and 40 seconds .
Hawaii said they would give me a countdown to
TR-12 , and they gaye me the 3, 2, 1 Mark . I
started thrusting at that time . Ed had planned
to give me a check at one minute elapsed time ,
two minutes elapsed t i me, and at 30 seconds to
g o , 20 seconds to go , 10 seconds to go , 5, 4,
3, 2, 1, and off . That's exactly what we did.
He called me at one minute , and again at two
minutes . We went right on down, and he gave me
the mark. I was checking t he t i me as he gave
me the counts . It was agreeing exactly with
my event timer. At Ed ' s mark , I released the
attitude controller :end we were within tenths
of seconds of exactly 2 minutes and 40 seconds
of burn time . During this period of time , I
think I held the attitudP-s probably within plus
or minus a degree. It was very easy to control .
The t hing that I noticed most about it was the

Cases discussed

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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.