The Origins of V-Mail
Letters and correspondence to and from soldiers fighting in war zones have long been valued by leadership and troops alike for its role as a significant morale booster. Without these regular correspondences with their loved ones, soldiers’ morale on the front lines quickly plummets. This occurred during World War I, when the United States Armed Forces entered the war on the Western Front without prior mail delivery plans, and deliveries to front-line troops were both sporadic and delayed. Morale suffered among the troops in the American Expeditionary Force as a result, and in future conflicts, a new system was needed to solve these logistical issues. The solution was Victory Mail, commonly known among soldiers and civilians alike as “V-Mail”.
The concept that led to the development of Victory Mail (V-Mail) began in 1938, when the War Department began preparations for emergency mail service in the event of the United States entering a war in the near future. The concept of V-Mail also had influences from the British Armed Forces, who, in January 1941, launched their Airgraph Service. In June 1942, the War Department officially launched the V-Mail system, with the first letters going to President Franklin D. Roosevelt on June 12. The V-Mail program was completely voluntary for both civilians and military personnel, and was in active use from June 1942 to November 1945. The system had a significant impact on the American logistical system during the time it was in active use.
Using V-Mail
The core concept for Victory Mail was derived from the use of microfilm technology, initially developed in the 1850s for banking and refined for document use by Kodak’s development of the “Recordak I” document filmer in the 1920s and 1930s. To ensure standardization, uniform stationery, which served as both the letter space and as a built-in envelope, was provided that authors could write on with a typewriter, dark pencil, or dark pen, after which the letter was folded up to act as an envelope and sent to a V-Mail processing center in either New York, Chicago, or San Francisco. In each processing center, wartime censors read each letter for content, then the letters were fed through the Kodak Recordak microfilm machines. Each machine processed around 40 letters per minute, and the processed letters were then transferred to 90-foot long film rolls that could accommodate up to 1600 letters each.
After processing, the film rolls containing the letters were shipped to combat zones, where receiver stations reprinted the contents of the film rolls onto the photographic paper around ¼ of the original size and sent to the recipient. This system was free for service members and cost 3 to 8 cents for civilian mail.
Source: The Internet Archive
V-Mail envelope. Letters sent via the Victory Mail system were shipped in these envelopes after reprinting at the destination.
V-Mail letter. Mail sent via the V-Mail system was photographed, transferred to film reels, shipped overseas, then reprinted at a smaller overall size for final mailing to troops on the front line.
Digitized V-Mail and Correspondence
Effects of Using V-Mail
The effects this method had were staggering: V-Mail saved an estimated 98% of the equivalent cargo weight of full-sized letters. According to one estimate, 150,000 full-size letters took up 37 mail sacks and weighed 2,575 pounds, while the same number of letters in the original form of V-Mail took up 22 mail sacks and weighed only 1,500 pounds. In microfilmed form, savings grew even more: 150,000 microfilmed V-Mail letters only required 1 mail sack and weighed just 45 pounds. This freed up almost 5 million pounds of cargo weight by 1944, enough for over 2.2 million K-Rations, 496,000 M1 Garand service rifles, 1.3 million units of plasma, or over 51,000 packages of surgical dressings.
Further Readings About V-Mail
Items in the Display
Two microfilm rolls on loan from Government Documents in the Zach S. Henderson Library.