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.
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6. 3 .04 g White McDivitt White McDivitt White McDivitt White McDivitt We didn ' t even have a time for . 04 g's did we? No . We d.id:a ' t h:we ::1.ny-thing like that . We started rolling reentcy at 400 000 feet, except that I didn ' t start it until ah-.ut 45 seconds after that to make sure that I had good at ti bd9 . I started the thing around the way I wanted it . Just .<.i,lxmt this tim,~ , we saw the retro adapter start floating back past us . I figured the other day that thing was small-end- forward rather than blunt-end-fo rward . I'd sa:y it was front-end- forward too . We saw the spherical end of the retrorockets . Remember? Yes . All four of them. All fo·..1r of them. We didn ' t see the nozzle . It had done a 180-degree turn small-end- forward and it was as stable a8 a rock. We could see the whip antennas sticking out to the side . Exactly the position it should go to . That's the heaviest end, I would presume. It would tend to trim that way too . Except that EONi;,IDENTIAL
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.