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.
“The Advance”5 pages
269 White McDivitt White McDivitt White McDivitt and looking out and actually seeing the nose of t he spacecraft moving around out there . There's no comparison with t he simulator. You just can't simul ate t his . When I looked down at the ball and did t he retrofire, i t was just l ike the simulator. When I was l ooking outside and actually seeing what the spacecraft was do ing as I cont rol led i t , it seemed like it was a lot sloppier with the RCS than it was wi th the OAMS . We must have fired over New Mexico or Texas . Our retrofire? Yes . I could see the old brown sandy earth down right under us . Yes , Guaymas gave us our countdown , so we were over northern Mexico . That ' s the area that I thought we were over . Actually, it may even look almost a littl e like west Texas. It could have been. Then I did TR-5 . I went to our retro attitude. We reported our TR- 5 Checklist complete . I don ' t know exactly when Guaymas came on the radio . -€0-NFf'DEN·f~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.