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
314
I
White
McDivitt
White
7. 3 Communications
McDi vitt
thing that I didn ' t do was to take my helmet off
and stow it . I did get my arm restraints down.
didn ' t put my drogue mortar pins in until I was
getting out , and I never did put my seat pin in .
It doesn ' t say on the checklist to put it in .
I put your seat pin in.
:lli put my seat pin in for me . Now , we'd got all
the switches in the right positions, I think ,
except one . I forgot to put my FDI to the OFF
position.
I think all other switches were all right . All
our pyrotechnics were safed .
I talked on UHF. I talked with Omnibus; and I
finally was talking to Inkspot 64 , the helicopter.
I talked to him and I heard him, and we established
excellent UHF communications . I heard Gus coming
through the auto cap two times, I think--very weak ,
almost unintelligible . I think he was asking how
we were , or if they had us yet . I kept making
transmissions in the blind to him . I don ' t think
he was ever getting any of them. Ed operated the
HF , and what do you have to say about that?
Okay. I put the antenna out and turned the HF on,White

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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.