Documents / Official release
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.
“Red River”2 pages
169 start from. This was quite easy. I just had to wait for the spacecraft to move so that I could see the horizon in any position, and t hen I went for it . The yaw reference, though , wasn ' t present when I got to the horizon, so I ended up level on the horizon upside-down, but without a yaw reference. I pitched on down well below the horizon so that I could look down at the ground. Watching the clouds go by, or whatever was down below me , I could pick up the direction of my motion . So , I rolled around such that I was pointing down at the ground , probably 45 degrees plus or minus 20 degrees . I rolled aroumd until my head came up, and all I had to do then was pitch back to the horizon to get to the 30 degree nose-down attitude for retrofire. This took 2 minutes and 20 seconds . Now I did this trying to save fuel. I could have done it much quicker if fuel wasn ' t a constraint . Also, I think I learned something f r om this in that I made a mistake by going first to the horizon. I should have pitched down until I was pointed straight down to the ground, picked up my yaw as quickly as I could in this
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.