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.
177 to the pitch up rate and increased my r a tes to something considerably above that , but then as we came up into the Horizon Scanner Mode dead.band , it started pulsing rapidly and ki l led off this rather l arge pitch rate and held the spacecraft right in this attitude . S~ we had a very good acquisition of the mode from a somewhat undesirable condi t ion . At the first sunset the scanners were pointed right at the sun but did not break lock. We did not get any scanner ignore lights at this time . Later on, at 17 : 04, about an hour later at sunrise , the scanner ignore l ight came on with the space craft pointed in such a manner that the small end of the spacecraft was pointed about 45 degrees to the right of a line drawn directly between the spacecraft and the sun. So tha t., essential ly, the sun was shining on the horizon scanners at about a 45- degrell angl e . The scanner ignore lights stayed on for 10 or 15 seconds, and then went out . There were no false pulses from the jets at all . At 7: 55, just at sunse t , again in about the same position, I was 45 degrees to the right of a l ine drawn between the spacecraft and J..Gt.qf:IDEt~JIAL
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.