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.
43 White I know , you never have been particularl y too hot on that . McDi vitt Noo White Then I went ahead and disconnected myself. I had a lot of things I had to squirm around and do. I left my life vest on as we had planned to do , then take them off leisurely at a different time. I did not find any reason to put the drogue pins in. I don't think they are satisfactory in any way . I don ' t think the pin itself i s sati sfactory , and I don ' t think the location or type of holes are satisfactory . I will elaborate on them a little further. We have had aircraft around for a long time and we have learned a lot about saf ety pins . We have come up with some pretty good designs on safety pins. We have a design on our drogue pin right now which is no more than the very first type of safety pin that I saw on an aircraft. I think that we are past the point where we should be starting right out at the beginning. We ought to put a properly designed safety pin in there that you can insert a little easier into the holes . I ' m not going to try to design the pin but I think that it should have some type of shaft on it that r€0NFll}ENftl(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.