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.
“Nevers”46 pages
- p. 20 …It shook the whole spacecraft--did you notice how
it never came up straight? The spacecraft…
- p. 30 …There
was never any doubt in my mind that they were
going to stay up there…
- p. 33 …It never really did decrease. It
stayed up around 45 or 50 psi, and we need…
- p. 44 …I
never had any problem there .
Shortly thereafter they called up and told us we
i…
- p. 46 …I could see the fairing over the horizon
scanner go, but I never did see the…
- p. 50 …I might comment that I never did put my safety pin
in . I never put the…
- p. 51 43
White I know , you never have been particularl y too hot
on that .
McDi vitt…
- p. 52 …I never did
get one of mine in satisfactorily at this time ,
so I think we…
- p. 71 …And then for a long,
long, long period of time after that I never
- p. 72 …And I never really got the
~itAL
- p. 82 …You
see we never got a chance to do a rendezvous . We
never rendezvoused with it…
- p. 83 …I
never saw another thing out the window until we
were gone and until the sun…
- p. 84 …40 to 50 degrees/second--
but it never got any higher , at least the best we…
- p. 86 …that
I hoped was zero,but I never got the spacecraft
alined to see that it…
- p. 87 …So, I never did get the
platform alined . I did not have time . I got
it…
- p. 91 …I never really
ea..11e to a posi tio:1. to try to ni1ll all these…
- p. 105 …We never e ·.ren got on the .;·_e press
system, di.d we?
Yes , I believe…
- p. 110 …We never
got down to a vacuum and even though we had a
cabin pressure of…
- p. 131 …But I never got the picture that
I was after . I wanted to get a picture…
- p. 132 …He couldn ' t see the
camera so he never really did tell me which way
to…
- p. 134 …We'd have never gotten to the kleenex at
t hat time , but I think we…
- p. 157 …It really wasn ' t closed far
enough because you never did get those dogs out
until…
- p. 163 …because I had the
feeling that I never had been confident that that •
attachment nor the…
- p. 170 …As you know, Jim, I have never
worn sunglasses very much , and I didn't n…
- p. 171 …I never
did see any need for the little lexion visor .
That's exactly the point…
- p. 176 …time we were out the the temperature never
changed . I don ' t remember looking ~t the…
- p. 180 …I never reaEy had a good co.!ltact with the
adapter back there .
Just as -:,.r…
- p. 189 …like that beca~1se ;rou I d
never get so far away that you're in…
- p. 197 …But, you know never flickered .
It flickered . I watched it as it flickered.
It flickered all…
- p. 202 …take a picture of it but I never
drifted around so I could see it . I…
- p. 207 …them a couple of times , but
I never did . By the time I would get the…
- p. 208 …I went back and checked it and I never
did get the plot . I went on…
- p. 230 …We tried to make
a tracking pass on El Paso International Airport,
and we never even…
- p. 233 …I never set it . I
never checked elapsed time or anything. It could
have been off…
- p. 238 …I'd noticed that the gage went up and down
before, but it never had gone…
- p. 243 …We never did take any
16 mm pho tos of the plumes .
Before you went to…
- p. 253 …at my
fingertips right then, or I never would have
turned the thing off.
Okay, I…
- p. 279 …I never saw them at all .
I could clearly see the t wo pumps together on…
- p. 282 …There are four distinct
pushes, and I never felt a pause between any
one of them…
- p. 284 …As far as I could see, it never deviated more
than a degree from where I…
- p. 295 …Did you ever see it tumbl e?
No , never did .
Okay. It was behind us and…
- p. 302 …Then the
yaw needle drifted on out and it looked to me
like it never got…
- p. 306 …I never could tell whether the thing dereefed or
not. I had a lot of goop…
- p. 322 …didn ' t put my drogue mortar pins in until I was
getting out , and I never…
- p. 329 White
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
White
321<IFIOEmr~r
then, we never would have gotcen…
- p. 337 329
I never knew they were so stable .
McDivitt Yes . He must have had a good…
€O ► ~FIDEt4Tl~L
I had suspected they were doing when we launched-
why we had unbal anced stack readings . 1-A read
6 amps, 1-B read 10 , 1-C read 11. This accounts
for your high reading on Stack 1. 2-A was 6,
2-B was 6, , and 2-C was 6 . . Ttis was the way
they were reading. I ran through a check on them
when we were actually in the booster phase. So
that is why I felt the reading wasn ' t bad. They
were both reading about 23 1/2 or 24 volts . They
looked pretty good.
I got my 2-1 update. I got the t:N of 167, 6T of
3+35, and GMT to retro command of 14 48 34. I have
the other times too. The time to 400 000 was 2+18,
as read up to me and the time to reverse bank
angle was 8+47. This is what we wrote down .
This is one time I remember now when I was a little
irritated, because they gave times to us in a
manner in which I hadn ' t wanted them to e They
were supposed to give elapsed time but they gave
it to us in GMT time for our retro. We had asked
them to give it to us in elapsed, They came right
back up and gave it to us both ways. I remember
writing it down twice, on the elapsed time of
01 32 35. I can see why they did it because it
About this file
Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 340 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.