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.
“Sea”9 pages
McDivitt White EO~~FIDEl>-JT.IA L... Yes. Geographical. We could see wakes of ships. We could see roads. We could see towns . Although I never saw any individual houses , I could see an industrial area with what looked like oil tanks and a few other things . We could see canals very well. We could see the Suez canal very well from the air. I don't think I ever saw an individual ship. I never saw any individual cars or airplanes, but you could see runways very well. But the thing that you could see best of all were long lines. I'm sure that if you had a road that was 50 f eet wide , or however wide you make roads, and it was long, you could see it . Whereas, if you had the same thing and it was just a square down there,I doubt very seriously that you could see it unless you were looking for it,specifically. I think perhaps also there is the contrast between the colors . The things that I saw with very high clarity were runways. As you looked d~un at the runways you caught a high contrast between the green or the brown, or whatever the color that it was laid out in. You could see it very clearly. I was impressed by how clear you could
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.