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.
“Cairo”4 pages
207 White McDivitt I think we took some good pictures of the clouds. Yes. Well, throughout the four days we had cloud coverage over things we wanted to take pictures of. Other times we didn't have any at all. It was a variable thing, and w.e just got a lot of good cloud pictures, I hope. Horizons. Well, at night there was a definite dark horizon, which I assume is the earth 's horizon. And then there ' s a dim band, and then above that there's a br ight band that is much narrower than the dim band, and above that it is clear, and then nothing. I guess there are really three horizons. There's the top of what I think is the earth. There's a top of the dim band, and then there ' s a top of the bright band. In the daylight you don't see these dim and bright bands. I t's just a gradual decreasing in intensity of light. It starts out with a very light blue at the horizon and just gradually goes out to the dark blue, and it finally just goes t o black. Right at sundown,if you're pointing 90 degrees to wher e the sun is, you can see t he light blue of the day sky coming
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.