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…
191'
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
10,3 Orbital Flight
White
spacecraft separation I think Jim and I both
noticed a lot of stuff coming by the spacecraft.
Right .
Just plain debris was all it was . Just
pieces of whi te junk came by.
Probably little bitty pieces of the adapter there.
In fact , when I got out and looked later on at
the spacecraft separation plane , there were pieces
of the same kind of white stuff still
back there attached jaggedly to the adapter
section. Fairing jettison - - I couldn't see
that . Did you see anything on the fairing
jettison?
When I jettisoned the fairings , I saw the
I
horizon scanner fairing go whipping off, but I
couldn't l ! ok at it and the nose fairing both.
S~ I only saw the one go, but there were some
more pieces flying all over the place , and they
went just as soon as I punched the .Fairing
Jettison Bitton.
Boy! We've been talking about these things for
t he last ten days .
The f irst one is geographical.

Cases discussed

About this file

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.