A guided tour of a Cold War guided missile base

The Bloodhound Museum on the Gubel near Menzingen celebrates its 20th anniversary this week. Some new exhibits will soon complement the collection.

A foreign aircraft has entered Swiss airspace. Alarm bells are ringing at the headquarters of the Swiss military. What to do? Their own jet fighters are too far away to intercept the foreign object. There is no choice: the "Bloodhound" guided missiles are used.

The battery in Menzingen, which is geographically ideally located, receives the firing order: "Fire." One of the sixteen guided missiles stationed on the Gubel shoots into the sky, hits the enemy plane and brings it down.

Museum celebrates the anniversary
For 30 years, the guided missile base on the Gubel was ready for this scenario, although it never happened. Today, the military-restricted area houses a museum operated by the Military History Foundation of the Canton of Zug (MHSZMilitärhistorischen Stiftung). On the occasion of the 20th anniversary, our newspaper visited one of the public guided tours that take place regularly.

Right at the beginning of the tour, Rolf Meier, a member of the Board of Trustees, asks you to understanding that your cameras must remain in your pocket, because:

"The military is also still on the site today."

This circumstance makes the tour all the more exciting. Escorted by grenadiers of the Swiss military, guide Roland Räber from Wetzikon leads the twenty or so interested people through the grounds.

Model club from Basel, a family from Aargau: the audience was mixed
Rather male, rather older, but the visitors were still a colourfully mixed troupe. A few older men, for example, identify themselves as a model building club from Basel that recreates military ships in its spare time. A young family came from Aargau for a hike to the Gottschalkenberg.

The latter was amazed at the technical progress when Guide Räber explains in the control point that certain computers only have a storage capacity of just 20 megabytes. "We were in the age of the moon landing!" he adds.

This is where they have been for over 50 years: the guided weapon with the appropriate name "Bloodhound".
This is where the boss sat: The control station took care of a functioning infrastructure, says guide Roland Räber
The radar was used to detect and direct the launched weapon    Photos: Jan Pegoraro, Menzingen

The operating room was continuously occupied during the repetition courses of that time, when both Guide Räber and Board member Meier were responsible as senior operations officers., It’s therefore not surprising that they are still familiar with the many coloured buttons on the consoles.

In addition to the visit to the powerful radar unit, the visit to the four original guided missiles on the open terrain is one of the highlights of the approximately two-and-a-half-hour tour. The 8.5-metre-long colossi are all oriented to the east, from where the enemy was expected at the time.

A drone and a new guided weapon
But what does such a museum bring to the public? "Here, you can experience military and technical history up close," says Rolf Meier. In addition, posterity can also be shown what was kept top secret for years.

But what happens when there’s no one left who was still on duty at the time and is therefore familiar with all the technical details of the guided weapon, like the 78-year-old guide Räber? Rolf Meier reveals that the collection is to be expanded next year: for example, a target drone that was used for training purposes in England at the time. In addition, the decommissioned "Rapier" guided missile system of the Swiss Army will soon be given a place in the museum. Räber adds:

"In this way, we hope in the long term to become the museum for anti-aircraft guided missiles."

The maintenance of the museum is financed by income from the guided tours and an annual contribution of CHF 10,000 from the canton. The guides work on a voluntary basis, and show the guided missile position to around 800-1000 interested people per year.

Information on public and private guided tours can be found under www.zug-tourismus.ch or www.mhsz.ch.