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.

Open the PDF at page 219 Original source ↗

“Cairo”4 pages

  • 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…
211
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
White
off to the side , and then it went out of my view.
Okay. On retrofire there weren't any sightings
to observe . Did you see anything outside, F.d? Did
you see any flames or anything like '. that?
No, I didn't.
I don't think there was much there. The retro pack
jettison- -we didn't see it jettison, but shortly after
that we had rolled upside down and we were flying in,
and I saw the retro adapter floating around on the
left side. It had turned around so that it was small
end-forward rather than blunt-end-forward. You could
see the whip antenna sticking out the side, the four
retrorockets, cross-beams, and the plumbing around
the edges . It was quite a sight. It drifted out
behind us until it got out a couple or 300 feet. It
started glowing a little on the leading edge. It
started fading farther and farther behind us as we
reentered. It finally went from a dull glow to a
bright one, and finally you could see the leading
edge of it eroding away. Finally, it vre.s just a
ball of flame back there.
I thought that was quite a sight, too. It kind
of set the modus for our reentry, of observing

Cases discussed

About this file

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.