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. 279 …I think only by a lot of noise ma.king, I
  • p. 288 …You have any concluding comments? I think we've been ma.king conclusions all day long…
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
271
any things that might not be understood too
well in the procedures . So this is where , I
think, that t he people giving this information
in D- 6 never were with it--as far as get t ing
the information ready for us for it .
Very good . I concur completely .
In the future I think the experiments should
be firmed up by six weeks prior to flight and
the procedures should be well in hand at that
time . They shouldn ' t drag on and be dragging
on right on down to a few days before the launch,
which is exactly what happened on D- 6 .
Okay. Equipment . We had some of the equipment
available to us as early as six or eight months
before the flight . Other equipment kept dragging
in until the very last day , just about. I don ' t
bel i eve that you can get the training equipment
avai l able to the crews too early. We found our
selves , in many cases , with the training equip
ment locked up out at the Cape for safe keeping-
so safe that we couldn ' t even get to it , and we
didn ' t get a chance to use it the way we should
have . I think only by a lot of noise ma.king, I

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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.