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.
“Mission Control”2 pages
62 to get close to it and not even maneuver--not to pick specific positions . All I wanted to do was just get close enough so I wouldn ' t lose it. When I could see these two lights, I had a pretty good impression of whether I was closing or opening; for a long part of the early part of the mission in the night time it looked like we were holding our own, and then we finally started closing with it . I finally worked it down where we were at the same level , All this time I had been above the booster. I worked dovm until I was at the same altitude with it ; at least it was on the horizon. I felt that by then I had gotten the thing under control and we stood a pretty good chance of still coming out on the daylight side with the booster. I can't tell you what the range was . It looked to me like I had worked the range back dovm (it had been opening up as · we went into darkness)-- to 2000 or 3000 feet again--probably around 2000 feet . It might even have been as low as 1000 feet . It could have been lower than that . At one time I got the impression that we were quite close to it . White Yes . You were wondering whether you should retro grade away from it . 6ONFt01:M"flAL
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.