Its development was an outgrowth of U.S. Navy tests conducted with the German V-1 missile at Naval Air Station Point Mugu in California.

[2] When the missiles were deployed they were launched from a rail launcher, and equipped with a pair of Aerojet JATO bottles on the aft end of the fuselage.

In October 1943, Chance Vought Aircraft Company signed a study contract for a 300-mile (480 km) range missile to carry a 4,000-pound (1,800 kg) warhead.

The project stalled for four years, however, until May 1947, when the United States Army Air Forces awarded Martin Aircraft Company a contract for a turbojet powered subsonic missile, the Matador.

Regulus development was preceded by Navy experiments with the JB-2 Loon missile, a close derivative of the German V-1 flying bomb, beginning in the last year of World War II.

Submarine testing was performed from 1947 to 1953 at the Navy's facility at Naval Air Station Point Mugu, with USS Cusk and USS Carbonero converted as test platforms, initially carrying the missile unprotected, thus unable to submerge until after launch.

The missile somewhat resembled the contemporary F-84 Thunderjet fighter aircraft, but without a cockpit, and test versions were equipped with landing gear so that they could be recovered and re-used.

[2] (Later, with the "Trounce" system (Tactical Radar Omnidirectional Underwater Navigational Control Equipment), one submarine could guide it).

[7] The first launch from a submarine occurred in July 1953 from the deck of USS Tunny, a World War II fleet boat modified to carry Regulus.

Tunny and her sister boat USS Barbero were the United States's first nuclear deterrent patrol submarines.

Operating from Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the five Regulus submarines made 40 nuclear deterrent patrols in the Northern Pacific Ocean between October 1959 and July 1964, including during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

Despite being the U.S. Navy's first underwater nuclear capability, the Regulus missile system had significant operational drawbacks.

Because it required active radar guidance, which only had a range of 225 nmi (259 mi; 417 km), the ship had to stay stationary on the surface to guide it to the target while effectively broadcasting its location.

[13] A second generation supersonic Vought SSM-N-9 Regulus II cruise missile with a range of 1,200 nautical miles (2,200 km) and a speed of Mach 2 was developed and successfully tested, including a test launch from Grayback, but the program was canceled in favor of the UGM-27 Polaris nuclear ballistic missile.