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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and down . We did the pitch with rolling, and
here I pitched up and rolled left and right, but
we did not do the pitch-down , rolling left and
right because of a fuel limitation and a time
limitation . We had another experiment that had to
be done . We had to get the platform off and we
had a limited amount of time to accomplish this .
I sort of felt that the check was very well
accomplished at this time , The data is in the
data book . I saw no need to waste time doing the
other two maneuvers , especially since we were
so limited on time and fuel , Did you have any
thing to add to that, Ed?
White No . I think that the remark that the data is
in the book is adequate .
9, 5 Horizon Scanner Check
McDivitt The first one is the sun . I think the best wasy
to do it is to have Ed read out the comments
that we wrote in the data book as we did this .
We started with the blunt- end into the sun.
White We started blunt- end into the sun and we got
· the scanner ignor e light momentaril y as the sun