Preliminary Gemini 4 Crew Debriefing, Part II, 1965

This is a preliminary transcript of Part II of the Gemini 4 (GT-4) flight crew debriefing, prepared by NASA's Spacecraft Operations Branch, Flight Crew Support Division, and dated June 18, 1965. The debriefing began aboard the recovery ship USS Wasp and ended at the Manned Spacecraft Center. In it, astronauts McDivitt and White discuss how the spacecraft systems performed, including the platform, OAMS, RCS and control modes. They also cover operational checks, visual sightings, experiments, mission planning and training, and give recommendations for future crews.

From the source:Release of 2026-06-12 Incident: 6/9/65, North Atlantic Ocean. This document is a preliminary transcript (Part II) derived from voice recordings of the Gemini 4 flight crew debriefing taken aboard the recovery ship, USS Wasp, on June 9, 1965. Part II of this document contains the “Visual Sightings” section of the debriefing (pages 196-224), where astronauts James McDivitt and Edward White describe their observations while aboard the spacecraft.

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About the way they had it initially was pretty
good. Maybe that ' s a little more than we need,
but--
No, I don't think it is, Ed. I think that is the
way it should be.
This is a whole hour on one page .
Really?
Yes . So later on, you see, they went from one
hour dovm to six hours on a page . Maybe if they
cut that in half and made two or three hours on
a page--this is probably about the--
Two hours on a page for our flight would have
made 50 single sheets or 25 double pages . That
would not have been bad .
That probably would have been just about the ·
right length .
We'd have gotten a lot more out of our notes, I
think, because we found ourselves scribbling in
places where it was pretty hard to determine
where you were .
The requirement to mak~ ·changes i-n the bo0k after
the flight goes· on is ab5o;tut-ely nil . So , I thi nk