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Camouflaged Military Bunkers of Switzerland (2015)

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Re: Camouflaged Military Bunkers of Switzerland (2015)

#101

Post by nix23 »

joshuaheard wrote: post #86

I travelled around Switzerland by car many years ago. I noticed there were military trucks driving around all the time, but I never saw a military base. I also noticed there were many iron entrance doors in the side of the mountains on the roads with no apparent purpose. Then one day, I saw one of these doors opened with 2 guards standing out front as a military truck drove into it. Finally, I figured out these must…

That's the Gotthard pass:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Gotthard...

From here you can see three really small parts of a Bunker/Fortress (a supermassive one, probably the biggest in switzerland) ~quite clear.

Re: Camouflaged Military Bunkers of Switzerland (2015)

#102

Post by awiesenhofer »

nix23 wrote: post #11
lqet wrote: post #8

Also an interesting fact: The Swiss packed all bridges connecting Switzerland to Germany with tons of explosives until just recently. The wooden bridge [0] connecting Bad Säckingen with Stein contained hundreds of kilo of TNT until 2015. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holzbr%C3%BCcke_Bad_S%C3%A4cki...

You have explosive nearly on every main bridge and "autobahn" sometimes in the street sometimes on the walls of mountains, to slow down tanks/troop transports. Fun detail: Those can just be detonated with a "encoded" metal-plate. They look a bit like that: https://img.luzernerzeitung.ch/2018/4/14/5f68fda6-34ec-4375-...

So wait, these were pressure sensitive and triggered if the right "pins" were pushed when driving over them (if the metal plate was in place)?

Glad I only heared about this now and not back when I was driving over these regularly...

Re: Camouflaged Military Bunkers of Switzerland (2015)

#103

Post by mementomori »

Curious. Let's say the Swiss military has been studying other conflicts and strategizing accordingly, but has not actually experienced any warfare in 200 years. Does the lack of actual experience in warfare put a force at a disadvantage to the forces that had experienced actual warfare?

Re: Camouflaged Military Bunkers of Switzerland (2015)

#104

Post by tW4r »

mementomori wrote: post #103

Curious. Let's say the Swiss military has been studying other conflicts and strategizing accordingly, but has not actually experienced any warfare in 200 years. Does the lack of actual experience in warfare put a force at a disadvantage to the forces that had experienced actual warfare?

Yes, that is why Chinese military for example has a lot of catching up to do to us, cause whatever your idea is about the efficiency of the military, they have been constantly involved in many conflicts after the Second World War

Re: Camouflaged Military Bunkers of Switzerland (2015)

#105

Post by kybernetikos »

rhexs wrote: post #55
mhh__ wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

War with whom? 25 C model F-18s aren't going to stop any nation large enough to consider invading the world's bank in the first place.

How effective would the Swiss military really be? I looked up the last military operation they were in and couldn’t find anything relevant. Looks like they do extraordinary light peacekeeping and such. (Yes, yes, they’re “neutral”. Suppose I assumed they were still deploying with western bloc powers at least for some sort of combat experience training.) Seems like the military is more for show than anything else at t…

I'm no expert, but I've been reading Brett Deveraux's blog recently, and he argues that armies built from a civilian society frequently outperform expectations through history.

The other thing he argues that people overestimate is the effectiveness of hugely powerful weapons and technology. They generally don't degrade civilian morale enough to get them to surrender, and well prepared defensive positions are incredibly hard to render defenseless, even with modern weapons and seriously destructive bombing.

I don't think that it's necessary at the moment, but these decisions are a risk/reward thing, and I think the Swiss are prepared enough to make the pain of invading Switzerland outweigh the relatively small gain.

Re: Camouflaged Military Bunkers of Switzerland (2015)

#106

Post by Shacklz »

themaninthedark wrote: post #93
Shacklz wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> mostly based on some outdated views on the role of the army And this is where we differ - I think _your_ opinion is outdated ;) The services that you listed mostly do not require an "army", what exactly is camouflage gear & combat training good for with regards to helping with covid-related tasks (or any other "Katastrophenhilfe"-related endeavour)? The "Swiss army knife" metaphor is exactly what I so despise about…

Si vis pacem, para bellum. "If you want peace, prepare for war" I am not Swiss so my opinion might not matter to you but I would say that there are many skills that are taught with military service that help out in other circumstances. Organization, mindfulness and the ability to give and receive orders. >currently, put 10 Swiss men in a room, and it will take at >most half an hour until their army experience becomes…

> Si vis pacem, para bellum. "If you want peace, prepare for war"

This quote is so out of date, really. Humanity progressed so far just in the last couple of decades, but we're still supposed to prepare ourselves to smash each others heads in like we're some brutish barbarians? At some point, we should start acting like civilized adults and solve our conflicts by discussion, not by smashing each others head in.

The things you mentioned with regards to skills and such - you're right, but you don't need to have training on the weapon and such. The army teaches you ultimately death and destruction; everything else is just a means to that end. After all, if it truly were about the skills you mentioned, we could just have an obligatory boy scout camp instead and learn all the stuff without the barbaric parts, no?

Re: Camouflaged Military Bunkers of Switzerland (2015)

#107

Post by nix23 »

awiesenhofer wrote: post #102
nix23 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have explosive nearly on every main bridge and "autobahn" sometimes in the street sometimes on the walls of mountains, to slow down tanks/troop transports. Fun detail: Those can just be detonated with a "encoded" metal-plate. They look a bit like that: https://img.luzernerzeitung.ch/2018/4/14/5f68fda6-34ec-4375-...

So wait, these were pressure sensitive and triggered if the right "pins" were pushed when driving over them (if the metal plate was in place)? Glad I only heared about this now and not back when I was driving over these regularly...

Hehe no :) you have a central ignition away from the street (hidden in a bush under bridge etc) and it looks often like a sewer cover, if you uncover it you have 8-16 holes, on top of them you have to place your correctly encoded metal-plate then you place the igniter in the metal-plate-hole, that igniter fires another igniter and the whole bridge/street goes boom, if its the wrong hole (or wrong encoded metal-plate) you just destroy the main igniter and nothing will and can ever happen.

EDIT: The first ignition (the one in the plate) is manually fired often hundreds of meters away thru a fuse-cord, but you can "in theory" automatize it (trip wire or other technique's) witch is absolutely illegal, same with claymore's...they just have holes in the splinter to safe some weight ;)

BTW: DON'T try to open those sewer covers, you WILL have big problems in a matter of minutes.

Re: Camouflaged Military Bunkers of Switzerland (2015)

#108

Post by roel_v »

JayPeaEm wrote: post #39
roel_v wrote: post #9

Oh these are cool. When I was a teen, I stayed in one during a trek in the Alps; and then again (in another one) a few years later when I was a youth camp counselor myself. I was cooking dinner in the kitchen of the one we were staying at, and the supervisor came in, and casually told us "see that trap door you're standing on? If this bunker would actually be used during war, that's where any dead bodies would be sto…

I've heard those trap doors referred to as leichenluke Many of my older neighbors said pre-1990, these bunkers were used in a drill and everyone realized how cramped things were; I believe they've been retrofit for far less occupants now.

Oh I've often thought about what it must be like to live in there in the case of an actual war. There were 3 or 4 rooms with bunk beds, 20 or 30 sleeping spots in each; one common room, not much bigger than each if the bedrooms; the kitchen, and bathroom/washing area. It would be horrible being locked up with 100 others in there for months on end.

Re: Camouflaged Military Bunkers of Switzerland (2015)

#109

Post by cyberdelica »

tosseuthansia wrote: post #59
gonzo41 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those were unguided bombs. Modern artillery and mortars will just slowly wear down a static target like that. From a safe distance as well.

it was still 1400 tons of high explosive. Monte Cassino was reduced to rubble. The entire monastery was reduced to ruble and had to be rebuild from the ground up. Also, the US did have artillery at the time, which is bloody precise. It didn't matter, the Monte Cassino was a meat grinder for the Allies. Anyway, why dredge WWII era stuff? The US got spanked in Afghanistan by an irregular militia with bolt action rifles…

> And their tactic is simple as it is brilliant - negate the advantage of air raids by fighting as close to the enemy as possible.

The same tactic was used to good effect, by the Viet Cong.

Re: Camouflaged Military Bunkers of Switzerland (2015)

#110

Post by microtherion »

folli wrote: post #52
nix23 wrote: post #3

I was in many of them, one of the most impressive was "the 5-star hotel" with a hall so big that you could calibrate tank-cannons and in another "bunker/fortress" you could "throw" out f-18 fighter-jets. Edit: BTW that the entrance of the 5-Star: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/63/Me... The plate is for making fun of new recruits because it's the opposite of a "5-Star" and for sure not a "Hotel…

To hijack your comment: all of these type of bunkers mentioned in the article are decommissioned as they don't match the modern military doctrine. The majority of these bunkers are artillery and anti-tank bunkers built during the cold war (some during WWII) to play a decisive role in large tank battles. The article confuses this, as there were some plans in actually deconstructing them which however turned out to be…

Yes, the very pictures used in the article are evidence that the bunkers are decommissioned. Tourists who took pictures like that used to get a stern talking-to and their pictures would get confiscated.
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