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. 155 …We came across Southern California, and I could see the Salton Sea. I didn ' t track…
  • p. 157 …We came across Southern California, and I could see the Salton Sea. I didn ' t track…
  • p. 161 …Th8 Dead Sea was a good l~cation, and actually the city itself was located at…
  • p. 163 …I )icked np the Salton Sea and El Centro , just below the Sal ton Sea, and…
  • p. 164 156 River, which should ::>e a few miles to the east of the Salton Sea. There…
  • p. 167 …The local l andmarks were the Mediterranean on one side , the Red Sea on the other…
  • p. 168 …up the Red Sea, picked up the Suez Canal between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean…
  • p. 202 …Pretty soon I found the Red Sea about 30 degrees below the horizon or maybe a…
  • p. 223 …I could see the sea dye marker in the water. I could see the parachute in…
196
McDivitt
while you ' re up there you ' ve got this thing with
the long eyepiece. I think we can do this with
EVA. Stow the thing back in the adapter , go back
and get it mounted up , get back in, and you ' ve
got yourself just about as long a telescope as
you ' d want to put up there. Same way with
cameras . I think you can take cameras up . We
can take some of these big cameras that we ' ve been
wanting to use.. We can have a sighting device so that
we can mount this thing on the outside of the
spacecraft after we get up there , and then point
it with a pointing device at the ground and get
some of these pictures that we ' ve been wanting
to take . I think we've got some possibilities
there.
Okay. Celestial . I think in the nighttime you
can see the stars without any difficulty. In the
daytime you just can ' t see the stars if there ' s
any sunlight whatsoever on the window, or if the
nose of the spacecraft is in the sunlight, or if
the horizon is in the sunl ight , or if some of the
earth is in the window. I think all these things
tend to limit your night vision. They create
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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.