Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in ... - The Black Vault

Exploring the Unknown 315
McDivitt
Yes, I think that was the time the movie camera wasn’t going and I was fooling
around with it, trying to make sure that it was running.
White
Oh, that would have been a very interesting picture.
McDivitt
I’m not sure it was going, Ed, because, as you know, we had so much trouble
making the left-hand one run. We had that trouble throughout the remainder
of the flight. You pushed a switch over and it seemed to run sometimes, but
sometimes it wouldn’t. I kept worrying about whether or not it was running so I
would grab a hold of it to see if I could feel it clicking over. I switched the ON-OFF
switch on a couple of times to make sure I could tell the change in the feel of
it. I’m afraid this time is one of the times that I didn’t have the camera going,
because I was trying to make sure that it was going. I’m not positive. I hope I got
the picture, but I’m not sure about it.
White
That was the time that I came right in, and I couldn’t have been more than a foot
from your window, looking in, I could actually see you sitting there.
[4-37]
McDivitt
That’s probably when you put a mark on my window.
White
I think the way I did that – I could actually see you in there and I pushed away with
my hands a little bit. I think this was the time that either my arm or my shoulder
contracted the upper part of your window, and you called me a “dirty dog” because
I had messed your window up. You know, as you look back in retrospect, I wish
you’d handed me a kleenex and I wish I’d cleaned up the outside of those two
windows. I think we could have done it.
McDivitt
Yes. We’d have never gotten to the Kleenex at that time, but I think we might have
done something about it.
White
I think I might have, but we might have smeared them so irreparably that it might
have –
McDivitt
That’s right. When you looked at that window of mine from the inside while the
sun was shining, it looked like it was a black paint smear, such as if you’d take a
piece of white linoleum and a black rubber soled shoe and made a mark on the
linoleum. It had that kind of consistency. It was absolutely opaque. Just as black
as it could be.