Fortress artillery (Switzerland)

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15 cm pulled position mortar Ord 1882 L 25, location fortress St-Maurice, today Vaudois Military Museum Morges Switzerland
Ball mortar 12 cm Ord 1888, location Gotthardwerke, today Vaudois Military Museum Morges Switzerland
Camouflaged 10.5 cm turret cannon from a Swiss fortress
7.5 cm gun in the Reuenthal Fortress
Same gun, exterior view

The fortress artillery was a weapon of the fortress troops of the Swiss Army from the 19th century until 2011 .

history

First fortifications

As early as 1814, the Zurich officer Johann Conrad Finsler created concepts for a fortified "central position" in the Alps. The opening of the Gotthard Tunnel in 1882 prompted the Swiss Army to build artillery works carved into the rock north and south of what is now the most important European Alpine crossing, even before the outbreak of the First World War.

After the First World War, lack of money and the conviction that fortifications were no longer valuable from a military point of view led to the temporary end of fortress construction. But when giant fortresses like the Maginot Line were built in other European countries , the border areas in particular were further fortified in Switzerland. The central fortresses Gotthard and St-Maurice were reinforced and, overlooking the annexation of Austria to Germany, the space Sargans to Sargans stronghold expanded.

The reduit

Under the impression of Germany's lightning wars against France and Poland, General Henri Guisan laid down the three-stage strategy of the Réduit : A mere delaying struggle in the border area was to be supplemented by a first fortification line in the Central Plateau and the heavily fortified central area, the actual Réduit. For this purpose, enormous fortresses were built in the entire Alpine region from 1940 onwards, mostly by the troops themselves. From 1942 to 1995 a professional formation of the army, the fortress guard corps , guarded and operated the many facilities.

In the cold war

During the Cold War, the army command of the fortress artillery continued to be of great importance in order to block narrow spaces against mechanized attacks and to protect the transalpine routes. The existing works were adapted to the threat of nuclear and chemical weapons, and prefabricated small mortar positions were buried on the pass heights .

The last important modernization of the fortress artillery took place in the 1980s and 1990s. From 1980, the blocked positions at the passages obligées - the narrow passages through which an opponent would push into Switzerland - were reinforced with underground 12 cm fortress mine launchers. And at the beginning of the 1990s, very powerful BISON fortress cannons were installed in the fortress regions of Gotthard, St. Maurice and Sargans .

The end of the fortress artillery

After the end of the Cold War, all fortress artillery equipment with the exception of the new fortress mine throwers and "BISON" positions were decommissioned with the army reform in 1995. The “BISON” system, which was originally designed to provide comprehensive protection for the transalpine routes, was also not completed.

Various tendencies led to the fact that the cost-benefit ratio of the fortress artillery deteriorated:

  • The changed threat situation made a mechanized attack on Switzerland, which the fortress artillery was designed to fight, increasingly unlikely.
  • New attack weapons, especially precision guided missiles, made the fortresses more and more vulnerable.
  • The secrecy of the artillery positions was no longer possible, especially since precise descriptions and photographs of the positions soon appeared on the Internet.
  • Many of the fortress mine thrower's areas of activity became irrelevant because they were built over or the associated blocking points or explosive objects were lifted.

In May 2011, the Department of Defense, Civil Protection and Sports (VBS) drew the necessary conclusions and announced the complete decommissioning of the remaining fortress artillery. The reason given was the changed threat situation, the reduced combat value of these systems in view of modern precision and standoff weapons and the insufficient ammunition. The fortress artillery department 13 performed its last repetition course in June 2011 and on June 22, 2011 fired the last training bullet from a «BISON» cannon.

On May 31, 2012, the Council of States, as the first councilor, adopted a motion demanding that the Federal Council stop the planned liquidation of the fortress mine throwers in order to enable them to be reactivated later. The Federal Council stated that it had stopped the decommissioning of fortress mine throwing systems; This was especially true under the aspect that after the approval of the Convention on Cluster Munitions, the firepower of the artillery had been massively reduced.

In February 2018, the Federal Council asked parliament to scrap the “BISON” guns and fortress mine throwers that were still in existence. Further maintenance of the guns is expensive and useless.

Ordnance

8.1 cm fortress mine thrower of the Magletsch fortress
Entrance to 12 cm fortress mine thrower
Arming two bison guns

The fortress artillery used the following weapon systems:

Artillery fortresses

literature

  • Hansjakob Burkhardt: Gotthard Fortress - Fortificazione del San Gottardo Foppa Grande , Koller print and copy, Meggen, 2004 (81 pages online PDF)
  • Hansjakob Burkhardt: The Gotthard fortress "San Carlo", the prototype of all artillery works with 10.5 cm tower cannons Mod 1939 L52 , Meggen, 2003 (84 pages online PDF)

Web links

Commons : Bunkers in Switzerland  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h Heinz Nüssle: The Swiss fortress: an era is coming to an end . In: Schweizer Soldat 9/2011 , pp. 24–27. 
  2. ↑ Further decommissioning of outdated fortress artillery , media release of the DDPS dated May 25, 2011
  3. ↑ Motion 11.4135 by Councilor Paul Niederberger , decommissioning of armaments
  4. ↑ «The Beast» is to be scrapped . In: Der Bund , February 14, 2018. 
  5. ^ Fortress Switzerland: Overview of Swiss fortress weapons