Preliminary Gemini 4 Crew Debriefing, Part II, 1965

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.

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White
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
White
McDivitt
I remember they argued. I thought they had it on
EVAPORATOR first.
It went from EVAPORATOR--
That seems like the least likely of any position
to put it in .
That ' s right. We went from EVAPORATOR over to
OVERBOARD. So I think a comment that I ' d like to
make right now about the whole water management
panel is that it's a simple thing. It's got
three !mobs and each !mob ' s only got three or
four positions . We had the ECS engineers at
McDonnell give us a briefing on this simple water
management panel. We had about seven guys there
with seven different versions of how it was de
signed, how it operated, and what the different
positions we were supposed to be in. They got us
so screwed up that when we left ther e we didn ' t
have any idea in the world whatit was supposed to
do.
I think those designers didn ' t either.
They didn ' t either and it was pretty obvious that
they didn ' t . We went through a lot of discussion
with that water management panel. Finally I think