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.

White
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
White
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heard the thrusters go off he wouldn't push the
SPACECRAFT SEP. Then we did separate the space
craft with the ·exact routine we practiced in the
simulator. I said, "Thrusting, separate", and you
punched the SEPARATE button and I guess you went
to Rate Command. I thrusted straight ahead for
about five seconds . This is where I think we
came off crooked. This is the part Ed was men
tioning before. We didn't seem to come off
straight ahead. We seemed to be getting some
sort of an oscillation that got us going in a dif
ferent direction than what we had going on the
booster.
It seemed,, like one side of the separation plane
came off with more force than the other.
Yes. That's what it seemed like to me.
It separated at a bit of an angle.
That's right. We didn't separate fore and aft;
we separated with a lot of rotation to this side.
Yes.
Air-ground communications were all right. We were
talking to them and they were talking to us . I
never had any problem there .
Shortly thereafter they called up and told us we
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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.