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
McDivitt
Whit e
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
Whi te
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
311, CONFID-E-WllAL
four days . I hadn't thought about this .
The l ast time that altimeter does me any good is
when I go through 10 600 . Well , I guess I use it
down to about five or six thousand when I ' m t r ying
to get the two- point suspension. It ' s useful there ,
too .
It was a good indication that we were coming up to
1000 feet and to get ready for landing, Jim.
Yes. Like I said earlier, how do you get ready for
l anding? All we did was sit there .
We 've got to stop throwing switches .
Yes , I guess so.
I think it would be a good procedure to go ahead
and get an altimeter setting.
I suppose it would. It only takes you a second to
crank the thing in.
Yes . It ' s there . We ought to use it ,
Well, we hit the water with a real wallop. Then I
sort of felt that we went into about a 150-degree
roll to the left and were dragged backward . We
were almost upside-down going through the water
backwards , Now, the CAG here saw us hit . He saw
us from about 100 feet on down, He said it looked
like to him that we came down and hit the water
COt<lflC,Et'<ITIAL

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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.