On June 8, 1959, the U.S. Navy submarine USS Barbero launched a nuclear-capable turbojet cruise missile towards a naval base in Mayport, Florida. And after 100 miles and just over 20 minutes in the air, it would deliver its payload. Not a 4,000-pound warhead like it was designed to hold, but rather letters, performing the the United States' first and last official missile mail delivery.

The launch was an obvious and self-admitted stunt—each of the 3,000 letters packed into the SSM-N-8A Regulus's fuselage in lieu of a bomb was from Postmaster General Arthur A. Summerfield himself, addressed to prominent Americans like President Dwight D. Eisenhower and packaged in commemorative envelopes.

"Before man reaches the moon, mail will be delivered within hours by guided missiles."

Still, Summerfield was optimistic, insisting the delivery was "of historic significance to the peoples of the entire world," and that "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."

The first official missile mail in the United States may not have happened until 1959, but the premise had already been tested quite thoroughly, though with unguided rockets. A 1934 issue ofPopular Mechanics highlights the first regular and consistent rocket mail service as having been in Austria:

Each rocket carries 200 to 300 letters from the starting point, the Shocket, to Radegund or Kunberg, in the neighborhood of Graz, whence the mail is forwarded by regular postal service. All of the mail rockets have functioned perfectly, each flight being mad according to scheduled plans without the loss of a single letter. Bearing special "rocket mail" stamps, the letters are sealed in a metal container to prevent damage, but this precaution has been unnecessary, due to the accuracy with which the rockets have arrived at destination.

The rockets would launch at 65 degrees and power upwards until they rain out of fuel, at which point the letter case—quite literally an asbestos-lined container with an outer coating of more asbestos—would float down to the destination below, having covered a handful of miles. A short distance, but a valuable trick if that distance was particularly treacherous.

Meanwhile, in the United States, things were not going quite as well. In February of 1936, a prospective rocket airplane attempted to take a payload from Greenwood Lake, New York to Hewitt, New Jersey, bypassing a pesky frozen lake in the process. It went…not super great. Just see for yourself:

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A subsequent launch when a little further, but not by much. Still, there was success to be found in the flop, as Popular Mechanics pointed out in a May 1936 issue:

Despite the short distance covered, the rocket mail flight has been termed a success because it proved certain basic principles important to the world-wide research program. Ir proved a rocket motor can lift and propel a loaded airplane fifty times as heavy as the motor itself. It also proved a rocket airplane can maintain a safe stability while in the air. From the first flight, it appears the principle of the reaction motor is basically sound, although it can stand improvement.

By the time 1959 rolled around, it had. That launch from the USS Barbero —deemed the first official missile mail in part to distinguish it from incidents like the one at Greenwood Lake—proved that the so-called rocket airplane had come a long way.

The Regulus cruise missile, which launched the Postmaster's 3,000 missives, was first tested in March 1951 and weighed nearly seven tons, with two booster rockets that could throw off 33,000 pounds of thrust, giving it a range of 500 nautical miles at speeds of just under Mach 1. A far cry from the primitive rocket-planes that preceded it. And so the first official missile mail was a resounding success with an added bonus: it allowed a Cold-War United States to slyly show of its missile might to the world.

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Ultimately, the downfall of missile mail wasn't a matter of impossibility, but impracticality. It turns out delivering mail with airplanes is just way cheaper. As early as 1931, before experiments in rocket mail really kicked off, second assistant Postmaster Irving Glover was predicting reliable transatlantic air mail by plane, vehicles that pretty reliably did not just flop off the end of a ramp onto a frozen lake. As he wrote in an article in Popular Mechanics:

In view of what already has been accomplished and what is now under development, I picture, in the very near future, a three-day air-mail service between this country and Europe.

Sure enough, by the launch of the first official missile mail—a proof of concept that could have seen letters taken across the Atlantic in a matter of hours—airplane-based airmail was already capable of delivering letters in a single day. The slight improvement missiles might have offered just wasn't worth the inflated cost, and the first official missile mail would also be the last. But boy was it ever a delivery to remember.

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