19591776 Club
USS Barbero surfaces off Florida and fires the mail; 3,000 letters land at Mayport 22 minutes later
The Regulus missile that normally carries a nuclear warhead delivers Post Office commemorative covers addressed to Eisenhower and postmasters around the world.
By June 1959, the Space Age was less than two years old and American officials were still finding new uses for the missiles they'd built to carry warheads. Shortly before noon on June 8, 1959, the submarine USS Barbero surfaced off the northern Florida coast and fired a Regulus cruise missile — its nuclear warhead replaced by two Post Office Department mail containers — toward Naval Auxiliary Air Station Mayport, Florida. Twenty-two minutes later the missile landed, and 3,000 commemorative postal covers addressed to President Eisenhower, foreign postmasters general, and government officials around the world were retrieved and forwarded to the Jacksonville post office for sorting…
