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.
39 McDivitt the booster. Either the camera, or better yet a 16 mm camera with a normal lens on it . Just tuck it to the side of your leg. If I had thought about it I think this is what I would have done- just connected the camera, tucked it by my leg, and taken pictures of the booster at this time . I think, Ed, this is probably one of those philo sophical things. On the first orbit you've got to save to prepare to come back in case you have a bad spacecraft. You 've got to be ready to reen ter during the first orbit . Tuis is the kind of bind we found ourselves in up there. During the first orbit we really had a lot to get ready for halfway through the second orbit, but on the other hand we had to be in good enough shape so we could reenter it at 2-1. Now, we didn't have anything to go wrong so there wasn't any problem, but I think when you first get into orbit you're in a problem. This kind of a thing, I think, is a problem you may have later on. You've got to be ready to eject at lift-off plus one second, and you don't want to be sitting there holding a camera or something like that. Both your hands are busy. But like you said we could stow it ~ONFtDf1'tliAt
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.