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. 239 …y in the manner that was de.mon@trated but by holding on to one end…
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White
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
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CO tsl FIDEt\JTIAL
I did four for the whole time.
Is that right?
My total reentries wer e four. I remember I
got three that day before the launch. I have
one thing, though, Jim, that I think that I
would do differently.
Okay, what's that?
Now that I know what kind of checklist I need
and what kind of procedures books and data
books that I need , I'd have those things ready
a month ahead of time . I 'd use them and get so
familiar with them and iron any little bugs
out . We still had some bugs in our books .
That's right .
It was a little hard to use. It was a little
hard to locate things in there. And if I did
anything differently, I'd put my emphasis real
early on getting my checklist and dat a books
up even though I know fully well that they'll
change in some little respects r ight up to the
flight, but I ' d get them out so I'd have them.
We didn't have anything up to a week or eight
days before t he flight.

Cases discussed

About this file

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.