Preliminary Gemini 4 Crew Debriefing, Part I, 1965

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McDivitt
outside
, which made it very difficult to see out
when the sun's rays reflected on these particles
that were on the outside of the windshield.
To just summarize this thing, I think that we
came off the booster with a fully unknown relative
velocity which was much greater than what we
anticipated, and it didn't seem to be an inplane
relative velocity. It didn ' t seem to be an inplane
local horizontal relative velocity. It was out-of­
plane and it looked like the booster headed down ,
with respect to us because i t started separating
from us so rapidly,
I t al so had less total velo­
city.
I think that this was the first sur­
prise . It started tumbling and immediately the
rates built up in just a· very few minutes to
something very high--40 to 50 degrees/second-­
but it never got any higher, at least the best we
could tell.
When we last saw it over Mexico or
over southern United States it was still tumbling
at about the same rate , I guess around 40 or 50
degrees/second.
I felt tret I got down to it all
right and I was in reasonably good shape prior to
Carnarvon, and from that time on until we came out
of the darkness I lost it , And I think I lost it