Hawk Missile Battery in North Attleborough MA
 

On my way to a football game this morning I came accross what looked like a real Hawk missile battery at G.I. Joe's Army Navy store in North Attleborough MA.

I didn't get to check the store out, but they had the Hawk battery and an old helocopter outside. It looked pretty cool so I took a few pictures.

The launcher looks real but I think the Hawks are mock ups. The fins look too thin and appear to be held on by a few short welds. And there are tunnels on the sides that are missing. But they do look nice.

Thanks Bill. That makes sense because up close the launcher looks old and somewhat warn while the Hawks look almost new.

It look very cool up close.

Interesting! Yeah those missiles are 'mock-ups'..No tunnels or movevable control surfaces..I guess those 'launchers' were used when they first fielded the HAWK system?:confused: My first 4 yrs in the Army was in a HAWK battery, but in the 'up range' area working on the radars and control vans so hardly ever got 'up close and personal' with the missiles. Our launchers were like the one in the picture.

EDIT: Some digging and the tracked vehicle is the 'loader', not the launcher..Knew it looked vaguely familiar! 2nd picture shows the loader at the launcher..:)

For those interested here is a good page describing a HAWK battery..Plus a couple more pictures(pulled off the above page) of what I worked on- the 3 radars..Can't seem to dig up any pictures of the control vans tho..Was a 'fun' system to deploy:rolleyes:, dragging 3" x 300 feet long cables over sand dunes! :chuckle:

Cool pics and thanks for the clarification, pics and link Jon.

I wonder how easy/difficult it was to move the missiles from the loader to the launcher. At 1,290 pounds each with a 119 pound warhead, dropping one probably wasn't a good idea.

Yeah, dropping one would not be good! :eek: From what I remember from way back then, in some conversations with the down range crew the transfer from loader to launcher wasn't really all that difficult..IIRC there were 3 set screws holding the missile on the loader rail and then the missile was slid onto the launcher rail where 2 set screws held the missile..The set screws would 'hold' the missiles on the rails, but when the motor was lit they would be sheared off..Our battalion had a live fire exercise where the battery which set up quickest got to fire the live warhead..Well, our crew dropped the missile during loading:eek:, so needless to say, our battery didn't get to fire the live round..I, however, got to fire a live Stinger missile on that exercise!:D That was a blast! It even hit the target! :chuckle:

Now that's very cool! Talk about high power. :D

Hawks
 

They're trainers, not actual missiles. Too bad you didn't stop and see the inside of the store. They have a Phoenix and a Little John in a display in the back of the store. I have pictures at the CMASS.org gallery under Questor. They also are trainers.

I'm definitely going back to check out the store. I locked the location into the Garmin. We were coming from a football game. The crew was very happy since they won the game, but tired and dinged up so I decided to save the store visit for another day when there's time to look around.

I really like Army Navy stores and that one looked very cool.