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.
“Gray”1 page
60 CO·N·F~DENTIM White McDivitt rates that we already had . We were into darkness by the time that we got turned around, and I had thrusted just two or three times at the booster . We were still quite far above it--I would guess now on the order of 2000 feet or more and it was still dropping away from us rapidly; I had already used about 25 or 30 feet/second to get toward the booster. I knew I had to catch it during the night time because when we came out of the dark ness on the next pass, we had to be next to it , because we were supposed to take some photos of it around that time . So I thrusted some more right at the booster trying to just overcome orbital mechanics with brute force . It was too l ate to start playing fancy games with the orbital mechan ics . Finally, I got us down to what I considered a good position , and this was prior to Carnarvon, I believe . Remember when we finally got it on the horizon? It looked like it had finally stopped . The relative velocity had finally stopped. And let me now make a general comment about what I thought of the lights on it . We had two lights on the booster that flashed and they were diametrically CO~Fl0E~TtAL
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.