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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. 167 …The local l andmarks were the Mediterranean on one side , the Red Sea on the other…
  • p. 168 …Canal between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, and followed the river in. I started this…
180
McDivitt
McDivitt
Sunrise seemed to be the time at which t he
scanner had the largest tendency to br eak lock ,
and if it didn ' t break lock, it would at l east
put in spuri ous inputs which were obviously not
required other than due to the confusion factor
that the sunrise was causing on the scanner.
Again, I have one at 11 : 58 , at sunrise , the scanner
60 degrees to the sun , broke lock once and pul sed
quite a few t imes extr aneously , but caught
itself and continued to track . I think on the
whole that the scanner worked real well .
So do I . As a matter of fact , I bel ieve in the
last 20 or 24 hours, however long we had the
Horizon Scan Mode on , that we only real l y lost
control of the spacecraft that one time, where we
did the pitching maneuver I've already discussed .
I think in every other instance , although it
pulsed needlessly two or three times at sunset if
the scanner was pointed toward the sun, it never
really lost lock and it certainly never l ost
control . The light would come on every now and
then , but it would --.
But , I don ' t thi nk that the light came on more than
three or four times in t hose l as t 24 hours .
C8NFtDE~~TIAl

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Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 290 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.