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
312 White McDivitt White McDivitt .COl>JFJE>ENflAL and tilted the thing up over the top . He said we were going blunt-end- forward, but we were actually tilted over the top . We then did a p~tch_down maneuver about 180 degrees in the water. I was surprised that we were being dragged backwards , but I got the sensation that I was going backwards and almost upside-down . I had t he kind of feeling that we went in and touched over a little bit, and that's about all the feeling that I got. I don't believe we got dragged very much. No, but I just felt that was the way that I was going. I was being pressed back in my seat like I would be if I were being dragged, and I was thrown over to the left like I would have if we had rolled over this way . I got the left roll and I also think that I had less water in my window than you did. I had a lot of spray and stuff. Did you have solid water in your window? I really didn't look that closely . I didn't look at the window to see what I saw there. I saw nothing but water sloshing all over the thing. We really seemed to hit hard, harder than I thought EO~ ◄ Flt,Et~TI.A"L
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.