CAPTION ONLY: HUGE LAUNCHER COMES TO HILL

A one-of-a-kind missile launcher - a type once intended to roam across the countryside carrying Midgetman Missiles - is unloaded from a huge C-5 Galaxy aircraft Wednesday at Hill Air Force Base. The vehicle is a Small ICBM Basing Hard Mobile Launcher, known as an HML. Built in the middle 1980s as a prototype by Boeing Aerospace of Seattle and Loral Defense Systems of Phoenix, it was rendered useless when Congress scrapped the Midgetman system. The launcher weighs about 200,000 pounds. "No one had ever loaded or unloaded one of these on an airplane before," said Hill spokesman Len Barry. "It took them hours to get it off. They didn't want to take a chance of damaging any part of the aircraft." The launcher had been stored at a contractor's missile display in San Bernardino, Calif. Once off the plane, the vehicle was driven under its own power. John McCleary, director of the Hill Aerospace Museum, said the Hard Mobile Launcher is expected to be on display in about two weeks, once it is cleaned up. Eventually it will be shown in the museum's outdoors missile park.