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.
“Harder”5 pages
310 CO t'4 Fie, Et~Tl,1 l 7. 1 Impact McDivitt White McDivitt vfuite McDivitt Whi t e 7, 0 LANDING AND RECOVERY We got down to about 300 feet, and I said, "I guess we ought to get ready for landing." But as John Young says , "How will you get ready for landing this thing? " So as he did, we just sat there, and we went through zero feet, I believe, on the altimeter . We hit very close to the water with zero on the altimeter . I think we hit at about minus 100 feet or so . Any way, we really plunked down in the water. We hit ten times harder than I expected to hit . The altimeter was set at the lift-off setting. I didn ' t fool around with setting it . That 's an interes ting point . They ought to give you an altimeter setting for the landing area. I don ' t think that would do any good . I wouldn ' t trust that altimeter within a thousand feet . No, but I ' d rather have my reading on it that much more accurate . You've got a ship sitting out there that could give you the exact a ltime+.er setting. Here we had an altimeter that we hadn't set for GO~~ FJOPiTI7't
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.