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
66 GOt\fPID Etft+A L White McDivitt White McDivitt and I thought at least we were going to get to see where t he t hing was. And all of a sudden the booster came out just like that, and you could see it . The lights disappeared and there was the booster. It was ·2 or 3 miles away, I'll bet . You asked me there and I estimated 1 1/2 miles . So , it had gotten that far away in such a short time, and it was down . I think what really gave me the clue that we were losing it again was that I had it on the horizon and it had sta~ted going down below us . Right . It looked like it was about 30 degrees below -- It started going down again. And I could see it was coming down below the horizon , so I knew that I wasn't right with it . But I wasn't really sure how far away I was so I did thrust a couple of times--a foot/second or so--to make sure I always had a closing velocity with it . And finally I got the thing down . It was down so that when it came out it wasn't directly below me ; it was out in front of me and down again. And like Eli said, I guess it was down about 30 degrees . White That's what I ' d estimate .
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.