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…
157
White
McDivitt
White
out , it was south of the main built-up area that
actuall y had another large group of buil dings
south of it . I did pick up the airport itself
at just about 5 degrees before the nadir , and I
tracked over to the target, probably just at the
nadir and just shortly past . I had the 16 mm
movie camera going with the telescopic lens on
it . I had t he gunsight on bright . I used
Pul se Control Mode . I got right on the target
and I managed to fly the spacecraft in such a
manner that the gunsight never deviated from the
target by more than a half a degree , I feel,
if it deviated that much. I think it was
considerably less than that . But there wasn ' t
any great difficulty in the tracking task , and
I managed to control in all three axes and hold
the target just about wher e I wanted it . Here
again we had a problem with the contrasting
target; the water-land mass was quite some
distance away. In this case, how f ar is it from
El Centro to Yuma?
I don I t know, Jim.
150 miles?
Yes .

Cases discussed

About this file

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.