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B/L 64 Bloodhound

The Swiss government decided to buy 200 Bloodhound missiles from the British Aircraft Corporation in 1964, in the wake of the 1961 Cuban missile crisis. These were then distributed to its six bases in Zug, Zurich, Lucerne, Fribourg, Solothurn and Aarau. At the time the SFr380 million ($252 million) price tag was astronomical - with inflation it would be ten times as much today.

Each missile was eight metres long, weighed two tons and could travel at two and a half times the speed of sound. The missiles were also better than those in the British airforce's own arsenal, which was one of the reasons why the arms purchase had to be kept such a secret. The Swiss bought the Mark 2 Bloodhound system, whereas the English had the Mark 1 system.

But every soldier who served on the base had to sign a secrecy document, declaring that they would not tell anyone - including their loved ones - about the site. "It was hard at first but my wife stopped asking questions when she knew I couldn't give her answers," says Werner Bisseg, a former full-time training officer at the base. But now times have changed: the base is common knowledge and its technology is far from state-of-the-art.

Inside the radar bunker it's easy to see why the equipment is obsolete -countless circuits, metal tubes, cables and dials fill a large concrete room. The radar room's equipment could now fit on a couple of lap-tops. In the missile control centre it's even more antiquated. Maps of European airspace fill the walls and there's a hotline phone on the main co-ordination desk, which officials in Bern would ring to give the command to fire the missiles - something that never happened.

Surrounded by such old equipment, which would be more at home in a Hollywood blockbuster, visitors tend to overlook the serious nature of protecting Switzerland against a Cold War threat. "We knew that if there was a real threat, we would have a very important job," say Beat Wütrich, a former commander who used to man the missile control desk. "Sometimes it was very difficult to think that by engaging the missile we could kill people."

Switzerland has a long-cherished history of neutrality and during the Cold War its missiles were there to protect the nation, not to act as part of the western arsenal. And even though no missiles were ever fired there were many occasions when the base was on high alert. The most recent of these was in 1999, when Nato aircraft bombed Kosovo during the Balkans conflict.

All 200 Bloodhound missiles were decommissioned in 1999.

The mobile Rapier missile system replaced the Bloodhounds in 1994. In 1994 the Bloodhound system was replaced by the mobile Rapier missile system and while the old missiles are now on show for all to see. The Rapiers' locations remain classified information.