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.
• 75H)EN=ttAL line of -sight w:ith . On the other hand I found that if the sun was on the window you couldn't see beyond the nose of the spacecraft . This satellite that I saw over around Ha¼~ii--I saw the thing and we were closing on it. We might have had a better rendezvous with it than with our own booster . We were closing on it and I was concerned enough that I checked to see where the a . c. Fower Switch was to see if I had maneuver capability at the time : The • sun came across the window and I lost it just like that . It might have been 5· miles out. I don't knov•. It might have been then. It might have been 50 miles out, but I had the im pression in the 30 or 40 s econds I saw it that it was quite close because I could make out the shape of it. Shoot! The sun came across the window and that was the last thing I saw out the window. I never saw another thing out the window until we were gone and until the sun finally came off the window. So, if you are doing an optical r endez vous and you've got the sun on the window, I don't know what you'd do. White And if you have as dirty windows as we had-- our windows had a white film of material on the GeNFIDENTIAt....
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.