11 hours ago
When the US Navy tried to send mail using a missile
What if Americans' daily mail could be delivered not by postal truck but by a cruise missile? On June 8, 1959, the U.S. Navy had a submarine try just that. It kind of worked.
66 years ago today the U.S. Navy tested out a concept previously known as 'rocket mail,' only in this case they used a relatively new Regulus 1 cruise missile.
The idea of 'rocket mail' was first theorized in 1810 by German author Heinrich von Kleist. The initial concept was more artillery bombardment mail than rocket mail, with the idea being to fire the mail from cannons, using ballistic power and trajectories to route letters. Early, independent attempts were done in the 19th Century, but nothing widespread came out of it. However the idea picked up momentum in the first half of the 20th Century. Hobbyists and scientists in Europe and the United States gave it a shot, launching experimental rockets back and forth as a way of ferrying the mail. Some were even unofficial Post Office Department (now the United States Post Office) launches.
Things changed in 1959. Then-Postmaster General Arthur A. Summerfield endorsed the idea of rocket mail, but he, with partners in the United States Navy, took things a step further, using modern missiles. In this case, the Navy and Post Office Department would use a SSM-N-8A Regulus, or Regulus I, nuclear-capable cruise missile that had entered service only a few years prior. It was modified, of course, to remove the nuclear warhead and replace it with the capacity to carry 3,000 letters. The Navy would fire it from the USS Barbero, a Balao-class submarine, to a naval station in Florida. If it worked, it would show the speed of 'missile mail' and the accuracy of the Navy's cruise missile.
'This peacetime employment of a guided missile for the important and practical purpose of carrying mail is the first known official use of missiles by any post office department of any nation,' Summerfield said at the time, per the USPS, 'Before man reaches the moon, mail will be delivered within hours from New York to California, to England, to India or to Australia by guided missiles.'
Let's look at the selling points here. Rocket mail is fast — it uses missiles after all — and with the U.S. military, deep in the 1950s Cold War military industrial boom, as a partner, there is a reliable backer to this plan.
So on June 8, 1959, the USS Barbero was in the Atlantic Ocean. The submarine was surfaced, with the Regulus 1 cruise missile perched well above the water. The letters were loaded in and the missile was prepped. And since this was an office Post Office Department shipment, the letters still had addresses marked on them, all to high ranking government officials including U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower.
The missile fired, traveling through the air for just over 20 minutes, on a path towards the Navy's base at Mayport, Florida which was roughly 100 miles from the launch point. 22 minutes after take off, it landed on the runway in Florida. The mail was sorted and sent off to its recipients.
As the number of mail trucks still driving around the United States today shows, missile mail did not become a standard part of the postal service. The USS Barbero's test was the only one the Navy would do and despite its success, the cost of the missiles and the limited carrying capacity essentially killed any further development.
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