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.
“King”1 page
283 C6 ► ~Fl0ENTIA " White McDivitt White McDivitt over , because if we were going to be nnypl a ~e , we were going to be short. I j".1st wanted to get over a.nd get in a good attitude . So , I r olled the thing upside down, got the-- One thing---on the Post- retro Checklist , we dedded this time to use Reentry Rate Command rather than Direct. That ' s r ight . That ' s a deviation on our checklist . When I got the thi ng upside dow:n, I was still in Rate Co!llllla.nd . I held the lift vec t or up, heads down , until I got down to· about 3 minutes and 15 seconds . I got my 3 minute time hack from the ground. I got my clock counting up a 3 minutes . At about 3 minutes and 15 seconds I started th0 roll . What I did was , I put in aoout 15 degrees/second , and then we turned off the roll gyro . I just left the · thing rolling. I controlled the pitch and yaw inside the rate deadba.nd , which was plus or minus 4 degrees , just a3 you would i n Direct. still had the rate deadba.nd t o take care of any wild pertubations t hat we got into . -€0NFl0ENllAL I
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.