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.
“Cairo”3 pages
264 McDivitt White McDivitt White McDivitt White Neither did I . I didn ' t hear a thing. I agree 100 per cent with Gus that you absolutely can ' t hear those aft-firing thrusters . My ear muffs are loose . They are always loose on my ears . So if you could hear it outside , I would have heard it. I didn ' t hear it. I heard Rate Command. Those attitude thrusters really make a noise. They make a big noise . It sounded to me like I could hear the thrusters firing and I was also detecting these pauses evecy so often . Several times I thought, "Oh , heck, it's stopped! " That ' s right , Especially , when we started getting down towards the bottom. The old fuel gages were going down toward zero and the ti me was running around. It looked like it was going to be a dead heat between which went .out firs t. There was one··particularly J.ong pause ,. at about 2 minutes and 30 seconds , I thought , "There it goes ," a.nd we made a quick correction. .And when I stopped , I couldn ' t hear a thing. Nothing changed. That ' s all it was . Okay. I retract my statement. CO MF fDEN-slUa. L
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.