Artillery plant Halsegg

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Dufourmuseum (A 7352)

The Halsegg artillery plant (army designation A 7351 and A 7352) was created from 1986 to 1988 as a prototype for the BISON concept of the Swiss Army . It is a unique link in the history of Swiss artillery fortresses and has been operated as a fortress and Dufour museum by the Swiss Dufour Museum Association since 2009 .

Location and mission

The two adjacent double monoblock plants are located 1340 m above sea level. M. on the alp of the same name, which is on the east side of the Rossberg above Sattel SZ in the canton of Schwyz in Switzerland . Alp Halsegg can be reached by car or on foot via the fortress path from Sattel.

The fortress had with their four guns the space of Seedammes of Rapperswil to secure to an attack from the north on the Zurich to prevent and / or from the Eastern Switzerland Glarus.

history

The two two-story bunkers were built identically using opencast mining. If one bunker failed, the second could have taken on the same task. The two fortresses were each equipped with two 10.5 cm cannons (1942) on lever mounts. The monoblock artillery was also used to test various innovations which were used in the later BISON monoblock systems for 15.5 cm cannons.

The artillery plant was operated until 1998 by the fortress company II / 8 (Fest Kp II / 18), which was part of the fortress artillery department 18 (Central Switzerland), the fortress regiment 9 (Central Switzerland / Ticino) and the Mountain Army Corps 3 (Geb AK 3) .

Both plants were declassified and withdrawn from the Federal Department of Defense, Civil Protection and Sport (DDPS) in 2000 . The Oberallmeindkorporation Schwyz (OAK), as the owner of the Alp, bought the land in January 2009 and handed it over to the Swiss Dufour Museum Association under building law .

Fortress Museum

In the fortress museum (army designation A 7351) there are several guided tours by specialists in both bunkers on the first full weekend of the month. Bunker 1 with its two 10.5 cm cannons on lever mounts contains the complete original equipment with cannons, ammunition and powder depot, diesel generators, ventilation system, telephone switchboard and crew accommodation. It could be taken over by the army unchanged and shows the system like during a ceasefire . All devices are ready for operation and where necessary supplemented with older devices.

Bunker 1 also serves as accommodation and offers space for 24 people. It can be rented for short or long stays (approx. 1 week).

Artillery factory Halsegg A 7351 ⊙47.088183 8.600614

Dufour Museum

The first Dufour Museum in Switzerland (army designation A 7352) was opened on September 12, 2009 in Bunker 2. Bunker 2, also equipped with two 10.5 cm cannons, was redesigned as the Swiss Dufour Museum.

The museum is dedicated to Guillaume-Henri Dufour (1787–1875) and shows his biographical stages and his work. Many documents show Dufour as a politician in Geneva and a co-founder of the Red Cross , as a scientist and engineer ( Dufour fortifications , hydraulic engineering, suspension bridge construction , architecture), as a cartographer of the first precise map of Switzerland, as a military instructor and founder of the first central officers' school in Thun as well as an important military leader and general in the Sonderbund War and the Neuchâtel trade .

The exhibits are directly or indirectly related to Dufour's work and its military applications, particularly in the artillery, as well as with the artillery as an exhibition location.

Among the various maps on display are the first official complete map of Switzerland, the so-called Dufour map , which was issued from 1845 to 1864 on a scale of 1: 100,000, represented as a work of around 9 m ² , as well as the Halsegg fortress map on a scale of 1: 10,000, which was declassified in March 2009. There are also secret military maps of Switzerland from the Nazi era or the Cold War era, as well as detailed Russian maps of Swiss cities and terrain chambers.

The exhibited devices from different epochs are related to map production and military surveying and transmission, especially in the case of artillery . There are surveying instruments and computing devices, theodolites , planimeters , crypto machines and encryption devices.