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.
14 White McDivitt Whi te McDivitt White McDivitt :iObJFIDE1'4 Tf,t(ilfr pointed toward the hori zon scanner although we never got an unlock light . We wouldn ' t get an unlock light , but we 'd ~et a bunch of maybe four or five thruster blips right there. Particularly at sunrise . It would hold. I thought the Ho rizon Scan-- It was definitely getting some spurious signals through but not enough to break it out all the way. I thought the Horizon Scan Mode was an excel l ent attitude-hold mode. Did you notice the water boiler venting, Jim? Yes, I did. We kept yawing around to the left . I believe it was left. I did notice the fact that we were yawing , but not very much. We were yawing a t rates that we r e extremely low and it just took a pulse every once in a while to handle the thing. As a matter of fact, when we were chasing the booster around a lot a t the beginning, I never even noticed. It was when we were i n the Pulse Con trol Mode for a period of time,when we didn ' t do much thrusting in yaw, that I noticed we did start drifting off in yaw . So I did notice the water boiler venting.
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.