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
White McDivitt saw two lights again . I don ' t lmow if you did or not . I kept looking and there was a single light and a single light and a single light, and I didn't lmow where I was with respect to the boos ter . And then I started getting the impression without really seeing the double lights , I guess, that it was going away very rapidly . Maybe I did see two lights and I just don ' t remember it now. My impression was that the light was getting fainter . I think that must have been it . I think that must have been it. But all of a sudden I got the impression that it was leaving me at a rapid rate . I It wasn't that easy to see . During the few times that the booster was up against the sky back- I ground it was easy to see , but when it was down against a ground background, it was very difficult to see . I think it was just before we got to Car narvon that I felt we were in good shape . And then as we passed Carna rvon , I remember calling I could see the lights of the city. Well, during this period of time all of a sudden I thought it was starting to pull away again. So I started thrusting at it again. And I never really got the ~itAL
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.