June 8, 1959: Mail sent by Missile to Mayport

[Lunican]

June 8, 1959: They’ll Never Complain About Slow Postal Service Again

1959: “Rocket mail” becomes “missile mail” when 3,000 pieces of mail are delivered by a cruise missile fired from a U.S. Navy submarine.

Experiments in delivering mail by rocket had met with mixed success since the first rocket mail was sent between two Austrian villages in 1931. The first successful delivery by this method in the United States occurred in 1936, when two rockets fired from Greenwood Lake, New Jersey, landed on the New York shore about a thousand feet away.

The 1959 attempt, however, was something entirely new, because the mail was not packed in rockets built for the purpose but stowed in mail containers that replaced a nuclear warhead on top of a missile built for war. Because this was strictly an experiment, the mail consisted entirely of commemorative postal covers addressed to a host of government officials, including President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The missile was fired shortly before noon from a launcher aboard the submarine USS Barbero, cruising off the coast of Virginia. Twenty-two minutes after launch, the missile struck its target at the Naval Auxiliary Air Station in Mayport, Florida.

The mail was retrieved, sorted and routed in the usual way from a post office in nearby Jacksonville.

Rocket mail, which has a whiff of theatrics to it, still exists and still has advocates around the world. Since the end of the Cold War, a number of surplus missiles culled from the Soviet nuclear arsenal have been used to fire mail around Russia, including a few experimental launches from nuclear subs.

Source: Wikipedia

http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2011/06/0608submarine-fires-mail-missile/

[ChriswUfGator]

Additional information from Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Barbero_(SS-317)

In 1959 Barbero assisted the United States Post Office Department, predecessor of what in 1971 became today's United States Postal Service (USPS), in its search for faster, more efficient forms of mail transportation. The USPS tried their first and only delivery of "Missile Mail", though the idea of delivering mail by rocket was not new. Shortly before noon on 8 June 1959, off the northern Florida coast, Barbero fired a Regulus cruise missile towards the Naval Auxiliary Air Station, Mayport, Florida. Twenty-two minutes later the training type missile landed at its target; its training-type warhead having been configured to contain two official USPS mail containers.

The USPS had officially established a branch post office on Barbero and delivered some 3,000 pieces of mail to it before Barbero left Norfolk, Virginia. The mail consisted entirely of commemorative postal covers addressed to President of the United States Dwight Eisenhower, other government officials, the Postmasters General of all members of the Universal Postal Union, and so on. They contained letters from United States Postmaster General Arthur E. Summerfield. Their postage (four cents domestic, eight cents international) had been cancelled "USS Barbero 8 June 9.30am 1959" before the boat put to sea. In Mayport, the Regulus was opened and the mail forwarded to the Jacksonville, Florida Post Office for further sorting and routing.

Upon witnessing the missile's landing, Summerfield stated, "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 proclaimed the event to be "of historic significance to the peoples of the entire world," and predicted that "before man reaches the moon, mail will be delivered within hours from New York to California, to Britain, to India or Australia by guided missiles. We stand on the threshold of rocket mail."

And here was the commemorative postcard:

[riverside_mail]

If I remember correctly, there is a replica of the missile used on display at the base near the picnic area along the beach.