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…
228 i 0t~FIDE~~TIAL :J
White
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
this particular light to come b~ck on.
Did you ev8r flgure out why we needed to hand
r ecord all these things-why we had to record them
on the recorder--the times and all that jazz?
No, we h~d to r ecord the angles some place and
we h.ad to correlate it to a time .
Well, it says to prepare sextant and photo-event
indicator for meas,.1rem<'!•1ts . What do t hey mean
by photo- event indicator?
The photo-event indicator was to get the exact
time . Remember , when you were doing star to
horizon measur~me~ts you had to have--
No , but this is just for the star. I don't
understand the photo-cvant indicator. I think
that just clobbers up our data.
That ' s right. Yes, that Wlisn't applicable at
all. It didn't make any difference wha~ time it
was at all .
In fact, when I made a second run on this while
you were asleep one time, I didn't put the photo
event indicator on.
No , there wasn't any need to put the pho~o-event
indicatoc- on this.

Cases discussed

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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.