Documents / Official release

Preliminary Gemini 4 Crew Debriefing, Part II, 1965

National Aeronautics and Space Administration · 1965-06-09 · 290 pages · text from the file's own layer

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.

  • p. 166 …So ,the next target I had was Cairo -- Cairo Int ernational Airport . Now , we'd been…
  • p. 167 this , and I had l ooked down to find Cairo. I think we had had an…
  • p. 169 …I t hink that on the tracking tasks on Yuma, Cairo, and Basr a, I managed…
  • p. 202 …We had trouble when we came to El Paso in finding it, and Cairo blended right…
156
River, which should ::>e a few miles to the east
of the Salton Sea. There was a nice big bend
in the ColoraJr> River . Unfortunately , the
Colorado , although it is a reasonably good
sized body of water - ..i'€ just plain do(-)Sn ' t
show up that w-all. It was a little difficult
to see , but I finallJ pi~ked it up . I saw
the bend in the river. The river doesn ' t
actually go through the town of YumA., so I
started looking for Yuma, and I d:id w:1nder
aro~d a little bit before I finallJ found the
town. Then I was unable to find the airfield
within the tow~1 . When I was just a::>out d .'..::ectly
over the a.i.rfi8ld , I picked it up. Here is
where I think the photog::-aph wo~;ld have been a
lot of help , because the mH.p t.h:it I had just
showed a yellow bl,)b indicating the city with
a circle to indic ~.te where the airfield ws.13 .
It sho,1ed the airfield to be to the s,>t! ~h :Jf
the town . What I was looking at was a 1 ,rge
group of buildings , the to,..,.,, :_i.;self . Then
as I went to the south , I saw even more
buildings and I wasn ' t sure whether the airfield
was south of tha: built-up area. As it turned
arco~~FIDE~TIAt

Cases discussed

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Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 290 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.