The first line of well-known poet and author Lewis Carroll’s poem, “The Hunting of the Snark,” reads “Just the place for a Snark!”.
When Carroll published this poem in March of 1876, he assuredly had never heard of Presque Isle, Maine and likely never imagined the name of his nonsensical creature would be given to America’s first intercontinental missile.
Webster’s Dictionary defines a “snark” as a half snake, half shark creature that is vicious and sneaky, while Dictionary.com says a “snark” is a mysterious, imaginary animal. The Strategic Air Command used the name for its weapon of mass destruction in the late 1950s and proclaimed Presque Isle “just the place for a SNARK,” naming Presque Isle Air Force Base as the nation’s first operational SNARK missile base.
The name SNARK then became a household word to residents of Aroostook County.
According to an article in The Command Post, a military publication at the time, the land-launched missile built by Northrop Aircraft had “capabilities startling enough to frighten any of Carroll’s storybook characters,” and in real life, hopefully deter a nuclear war with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
A SNARK missile could carry a warhead to a target anywhere in the world from its launch site, could be airlifted to any base in the United States within a few hours and could accurately correct its own trajectory. A large number of the weapons could be launched in a relatively short period of time.
The SNARK’s speed and accuracy made it difficult to defend against, and its sensitive guidance system relayed information faster than a human pilot was capable of.
The SNARK missile was 69 feet in length, 15 feet high, had a wingspan of 42 feet and flew at the speed of Mach .94. It had a range of 6,300 miles. If launched from Presque Isle, Moscow was only 6,000 miles away.
By serving as the nation’s first SNARK base, Presque Isle was positioned once again to defend the United States, a role it filled well during World War II and the Korean War.
Kimberly R. Smith is the secretary/treasurer of the Presque Isle Historical Society.
