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…
158
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
It was a reasonable distance, probably something
on the order of 150 miles or m~be only 100
miles, but the problem was that between Yuma
and El Centro there weren ' t any identifing
masses that led you toward Yuma. And I had not
up till this time looked down to try to find
where the Yuma airport was,because we ' d been
saving fuel . So , this was the first time that
I'd seen Yuma airfield from orbit . As I get
into the next target, I think you'll see what
I'm leading up to . Having a first look at a
target like this, be i ng able to identify the
city , but then essentially wasting time before
I found the airfield within the city, I think,
cost some valauable time and consequently cost
some good pictures; because the best picture
is going to be that picture which is taken
exactly over the airfield .
That wouldn ' t happen again though , would it?
No ,
You ' d probabl y have it pretty wel l nailed .
No , it woul dn ' t . So ,the next target I had was
Cairo -- Cairo Int ernational Airport . Now ,
we'd been over Cairo quite a few times before
(MJ(1tf'F10'8'1Tli\l

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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.