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
313
White
7.2 Checklists
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
we would, but it really wasn't too hard.
To put everything in a comparison, the ride on the
retro was more than I expected , the drop to a two
point suspension was less than I expected, and the
impact was not as much as I had experienced on the
drogue, but more than I had expected. In other
words, the biggest surprises I had in order of
~agnitude were the ride on the drogue, the impact,
and I didn't think that I had much surprise at all
in the two-point. I was expecting a big jolt and
got not as much as I had expected .
We'd gone over the normal Water Egress Checklist
in flight before we came down. We did this in
that three-hour period while we were preparing
for retrofire. I read it over to E:l while he was
stowing things, and we went over it in detail
again as to what we would do. Also we went over
the emergency egress in case we had to do that.
So we had it fresh in our minds.
We turned everything off that wasn 1 t needed after
landing.
Ed had the Post-Landing Checklist and he read it
out to me--the things that I had to do. The only

Cases discussed

About this file

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.