In 1959 the US Army put the MIM-23 HAWK Missile system into service for the first time.
Also known as the Homing All the Way Killer, Hawk is a medium range surface to air missile that uses semi-active radar homing to track and destroy potential threats.
The new missile was designed to be a smaller, more mobile system that would complement the existing MIM-14 Nike Hercules that was already in service with the Army.
The Nike Hercules system boasted incredible range with a large, potentially nuclear, warhead.
Each missile was over 12 metres long and weighed almost 5 tons, so Nike missile sites required significant construction work before missiles could be deployed.
HAWK, on the other hand, was less than half the length of Nike while weighing nearly 10 times less at 590kg per missile.
This meant that the HAWK’s launcher, the M192, was essentially just a medium sized trailer that could be towed and deployed by any Army truck.
The M192 launcher could carry 3 missiles, with each HAWK battery having 6 launchers in total.
Reloading the launchers was going to take a relatively long time, with each missile weighing more than half a ton.
Bringing heavy lifting equipment would have hampered the mobility of the battery, so the army designed its own solution – the M501.
The M501 loader transporter was a mobile reloading solution for the HAWK system.
Small enough to be transported on the back of a standard Army truck
and light enough to be lifted underneath army helicopters,
the M501 could be transported as fast as the rest of the battery.
The tractor itself was a fully tracked vehicle, and weighed in at around 4000lbs, just under 2 tons.
The M501 only took one man to operate, who sat in the front left of the vehicle,
beside the 4 Cylinder, 71 Hp engine.
The engine was almost identical to that of the M151 Mutt utility vehicle,
a design that was incredibly simple and reliable, and spare parts were plentiful.
It’s reported that this powerplant could propel the M501 to top speeds of over 35mph,
but I can’t find any real technical documentation to back this up.
On top of the M501 was the missile loading rack.
This rack could be used to pick up and carry up to 3 HAWK missiles,
and ferry them around the battery at speed.
If a launcher needed reloading, the M501 could load all 3 missiles from the rack straight onto the launcher,
and have the launcher fully reloaded in a matter of minutes.
Each hawk battery had 6 launchers and 3 M501 tractors,
meaning the tractors could reload the entire battery relatively quickly,
even if all 6 launchers had fired their missiles.
Additionally, the M501 could double as a crane for any lifting work around the battery.
A large crane boom could be attached to the rack on top of the tractor and allowed the vehicle to reload the missiles one at a time if needed,
or help pack up the battery for transport to a new location.
The hawk missile system, along with it’s M501 tractor, was used by the US Military until 2002,
seeing service in Vietnam and Desert Storm.
No American HAWK missiles have ever been fired in combat,
but other Operators, such as Israel, France, Turkey, Iran, and Kuwait have recorded kills with Hawk.
The system is still used in many militaries today, almost 60 years after it entered service,
thanks to a series of upgrades that have helped keep the system at the forefront of SAM technology.
Most operators currently used the upgraded I-Hawk (Improved Hawk) system,
which boasts significantly higher hit ratios and enhanced detection and homing capabilities.
No matter which system is being used, the trusty M501 is ever-present,
and will continue to be the workhorse of Hawk batteries worldwide for years to come.
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