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.
214 McDivitt White McDivitt I could . At this time I didn't !mow where the sun was. We oscillated back and forth on the drogue probably as much as plus or minus 40 degrees. I never did see the drogue dereef. I couldn't see up to the top to see if it was reefed or not . I don ' t think there's much else about what we could see on the drogue. Can you think of anything? I could see it up there whipping back and forth , and I was sure hoping that it was going to hold on and not pull the front end of the spacecraft off, the way we were oscillating. At Rand R-separate I saw parts of stuff out in front . My window was pretty well clouded over, and I couldn ' t see that well . I did see something separate , and I did see the chute start off. It wen t all t he way up. At main chute deploy I saw it come out in a reefed condition, I checked the chute and I didn ' t see any panels missing. I checked t he little circle in t he middle in the parachute , and it seemed to be in fine shape. I was expecting that we had a good chute . It
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.