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.

  • p. 149 …I did notice that the suit was a little harder. I felt this type of suit…
  • p. 150 …You mean with the harder suit I was stiffer? Harder . And your. arms were stiffe:::- a…
  • p. 186 178 €0NflDENitM White McDivitt White McDivitt any harder . No . I think that shouli be t he…
  • p. 318 …We hit ten times harder than I expected to hit . The altimeter was set at the…
  • p. 320 …We really seemed to hit hard, harder than I thought EO~ ◄ Flt,Et~TI.A"L
292
McDivitt
White
cor~FtOENr~~
So , we had 1/10 g and we thought· we had 3 . .And
we both felt this way . The g 's went up to a
bout 7 1/2 . They told us we would probably get
8 g ' s coming down . When we got the instrument
positions back from the spacecraft , the post
landing switch positions, they had the g- meter
marked at 7 1/2 g ' s , and I suspect that ' s
probably about as high as it went . Now , I ' m
telling you this was really a piece of cake .
I thought that maybe 7 1/2 g ' s aft~r being out
there for so long would be tough , but I di.dn ' t
even have to breathe hard to get any air , I
just lay there and relaxed and enjoyed the whole
thing , and I really got a big kick out of that
reentry .
We chatted back and forth . We talked through
the whole g- load, and I was watching outside
and inside . I was looking out quite a bit of
the time when things were going so smoothly,
particularly the g- load . When you get to the
high g's , you might as well look out, because
you ' re not going to do anything about it , and
I noticed no dimming in vision . Everything was
as clear as a bell . Not a speck. I could see
-CONfJDENTIJXt

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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.