The G150 is a rifle specifically assembled by and for the Swiss P-26 organization: a very secretive stay-behind group intended to fight foreign occupiers of Switzerland. It was one of a series of such organizations that began with a concern during World War Two the Germany might invade, and continued during the Cold War with the threat of Soviet occupation in the aftermath of nuclear war. The P-26 group specifically was formed in 1981, and disbanded in 1991 under a cloud of controversy over its political leanings.
P-26 was armed with an assortment of weapons ideal for guerrilla warfare, including P210 pistols and suppressed MP5 submachine guns. The G150 rifle was intended to be a very quiet rifle for destroying enemy materiel like radar systems, fuel tanks, parked aircraft, and the like. About 250 were made using commercial JP Sauer actions, SIG 540 like pistol grips and folding stocks, and very large two-part suppressors. They were chambered for the .41 Remington Magnum revolver cartridge, loaded with a 408-grain subsonic bullet. The scopes were adjustable from 4-6 power (yes, 4-6: it;s a weird choice) and had BDC elevation turrets adjustable out to 200 meters.
Only three G150 rifles are known today, although the remainder may still be in some deep military storage in Switzerland. Many thanks to the anonymous viewer who arranged access to this one for me to film! To see another perspective on one of the other known examples, I recommend Bloke on the Range’s video:
If there was a weapon I never expected to see highlighted anywhere, it’d be this one.
I only ever heard rumors of these, up until after the Cold War was declared a draw.
I’d also have to disagree with Ian about the whole “What would Soviet do” in an occupation of Switzerland. As we can see from the activities of their successors in a former Soviet state, we can be certain that any Soviet occupation of Switzerland would have already been brutal and entirely arbitrary; the stay-behind forces would have little to worry about when it came to “provoking” the Soviet authorities, in that said “authorities” come pre-provoked. The stay-behinds would have likely been engaged in a lot more “revenge” attacks than anything else, because most of the hostages to fortune left to the mercies of the Soviet forces would already be filling shallow improvised graves, much as in Bucha.
I think the only “unrealistic” thing that the Swiss planners might have been guilty of was thinking that there would be any civilians left that they’d have to avoid reprisals against. By the time the Soviets reached Swiss territory, most of the glorious Red Army would have already had its command and control winnowed out, and the only ones left would be the same sort that operate in the Eastern Ukraine today; the barbaric and unrestrained. After working through Western Germany and Austria, the gloves would have been off and the civilians would have been dealt with in exactly the same way that modern Russia deals with Ukrainian civilians: Sheer barbarity.
Wait, what? Cold War I was a draw? Seems to me the West was the winner since the USSR ceased to exist.
Ha-ha…! Seen the news lately? /sarcasm.
Very, very interesting!
.41 Rem. Mag. would strike most as an odd caliber choice. I’d note that 10.4mm was the service caliber in the 10.4x38mmR cartridge that fired a 334 grain paper patched bullet at something like 410m/s 1.345k fps. So perhaps this factored into the choice of a 10.4mm/.41 cal. revolver cartridge. It might have been neat if the suppressed rifle could have used either cartridge, no?
This Swiss clandestine organization bears similarities with all of the Gladio-type groups, of course, and with the UK’s GHQ “Auxiliary Units” that maintained caches of suppressed .22 rifles, Thompson SMGs, explosives, and daggers in secret bunkers. The idea was for these to operate within the “crowd cover” of the more conventional Home Guard in the event of a German invasion and occupation, and also to prevent a collaborationist or radical government from consolidating effective control over the green and pleasant land…
As for bunker systems, while the Swiss are way off the scale in terms of salient bunker and shelter systems, certainly Israel has substantial similar systems, as did Cold War-era neutrals Sweden and Finland, North Korea,… and Albania. Enver Hoxha feared invasion by Nato Greece and Italy, Warsaw Pact nations led by the USSR, or even neutral Titoist Yugoslavia, so cement was lavished not on housing projects, but “plug and play” prefabricated concrete bunkers, to the tune of 750,000 or 14.7 per square mile/ 5.7 per square kilometer.
Of course, western media project paranoia on Hoxha but not the Swiss, for some strange reason… As far as invasion of Switzerland goes, while Italian irredentism and German encroachment and violation of neutrality historically appear to have loomed large in Swiss defense thinking, followed by the Soviet threat, recall that while the Allies were trying to figure out how to cross the Rhine in WWII after the failure of Market Garden, that Stalin cynically thought they might go around the large navigable river obstacle by going through Switzerland…
Lastly, I’d note that not targeting enemy personnel does fit with a variety of odd “non-compliance” and massive non-acquiescence general strike type strategies that were being envisioned by non-nuclear nations threatened by nuclear powers. In fact, in modern day Lithuania there is just such a program under constant development, while Estonia trains young people how to make IEDs, create road obstacles, sabotage and disrupt enemy occupation, and hide ex-Swedish AK4 service rifles where they’d be difficult to find…
Considering its limited (if sensible) effective range and power (409 gr @ 1,000 F/S= 900 FPE, about the energy of the standard .30 Carbine 110-gr FMJ), the “anti-materiel” label was likely more of a euphemism. The primary target for a rifle like this would be guard dogs and human sentries. Putting it exactly in the same niche as the WW 2 British DeLisle .45in carbine Ian mentioned.
I can only think of the choice of the .41 Magnum cartridge as odd. Perhaps based on barrel-making tooling left over from the old 10.4x38Rmm Vetterli M69/81?
clear ether
eon
The one thing missing from the majority of the Cold War weapons procurement process was any actual grounding in reality. I doubt that the limitations here were really all that recognized; I also suspect that the real deal was that this was a dedicated assassination weapon that they whitewashed as an “anti-material weapon”.
If you look at the actual performance window, there’s not a hell of a lot of logic for this silenced rifle. Any airfield or other site that the projectile could damage would likely be secured well outside of the practical range; on the other hand, any person going out into the “public space” of an occupied Switzerland would be forced to walk right into that range envelope. Likely target, in my mind? Occupation authority figures.
Hans von Dach was the military theorist most likely to have influenced the whole P-26 organization; his thoughts on “total resistance” are likely the driving doctrinal force behind this weapon’s development, and I strongly suspect it was a dedicated assassination tool that they sold as “anti-material” to all the numpties they had to deal with.
If you read his books, you’ll have a recognition when you see this of what he was advocating for. It’s easily concealable, can be broken down into short length components, and then rapidly assembled for use. This is not a weapon I’d pick to take out a distant target like an aircraft on a runway or a radar emitter; it is, however, something I’d pick to do a close-in infiltration and assassination mission on someone in the occupation. The design characteristics here are not geared towards the “anti-material” role; those would militate towards something more along the lines of a Barrett .50, something with sufficient range and power to actually damage material targets.
I’d lay you long odds that these weren’t meant for more than paying lip-service to the idea of damaging enemy equipment; they were meant to equip assassination teams.
Just my guess… You wouldn’t need a folding stock or that compact packaging for the anti-material role. You would need all of that to get in close for a killing shot on some important figure. I suspect that the Swiss just don’t want to highlight that they were planning on going that way, which is probably sorta counterproductive to the whole “dissuasion” idea; if you know going in, as a leader or manager, that the locals are trained and equipped to murder your ass…? Yeah; assignments to that region are gonna be pretty unpopular. On the other hand, if you’re expecting civilized conduct along the lines of the Marquess of Queensbury rules, well… Yeah. That you can guarantee enthusiasm for, especially when you think you’re the meanest kid on the block.
If you really want to dissuade someone like the Soviets or modern Russia from invading you, what you need to guarantee them is a knife in the gut, and endless mockery. That’s pretty much what worked for the Finns; Stalin had no appetite for further embarrassment after WWII, because he knew that Finland was going to go down fighting and probably take what was left of the Red Army with it. I mean, look at what’s happened since WWII, in terms of Soviet reputation: The Winter War more-or-less was a key factor in why the Germans thought they’d merely need to kick in a door or two, and…
Mockery and humiliation are the key tools to dissuade, not promises to follow the rulebooks that were written to try and restrain nations like Great Britain. Do remember who and why the provisions about the so-called “Dum-Dum Bullet” came in, along with what that nation got up to in the way of violations of the “gentleman’s rules” during WWI.
Not quite sure how you weaponize the ideas of mockery and humiliation, but it’s a damn sight more likely to work than some allusion to the ICC and lawyers.
Well, Kirk, let’s look at the “problem” of dealing with Russian generals: They always hide themselves in the rear and rarely go near the front unless they are assured that there are clearly no enemy soldiers or partisans out to get them (which, of course, is likely a fib the adjutant tells just to make the general feel less likely to shoot him).
Been paying attention to the number of dead Russian generals in the last few years…? And, the number of those that the Ukrainians have accounted for, off the battlefield?
Yes, I know that the Russians are losing generals like crazy, mostly because they have NEVER changed their overall security doctrine and continue to put the generals in over decorated buildings that are clearly saying “here I am, shoot me!”. They still think they are dealing with “cowardly Nazis” from 1945. I know for a fact that Ukraine targeted lots of Russian commanding officers with drones. I have yet to see a Russian general brag about a drone failing to kill him, so clearly the assassinations must have succeeded.
The Cuban MINFAR and MININT developed a “guerrilla” anti-materiel rifle in the fusil Mambí with one in 14.5mm and the other in 12.7mm. The essential idea was that two people could transport it–one carrying the barrel, the other the receiver and so on. A few shots at anything fragile and valuable on an airbase, and then abandon the thing and run for your very life was apparently the proposed tactical deployment, unless I’m mistaken.
Here at Forgotten Weapons we’ve reviewed similar:
https://www.forgottenweapons.com/kurdish-zagros-and-ser-anti-material-rifles/
https://www.forgottenweapons.com/zastava-m93-black-arrow-serbias-50-cal-anti-materiel-rifle/
https://www.forgottenweapons.com/pgm-precision-hecate-ii-at-the-range/
https://www.forgottenweapons.com/ptrd-in-ukraine/
The Islamic Republic of Iran has various anti-materiel rifles, some quite enormous. As with anything, one must be chary about whether these are propaganda claims or actual functional rifles.
All of those are legit “anti-material” weapons; this thing? Not so much. I’m unsure what the Swiss actually wrote down for justification when it came to buying it, but I’m pretty sure that it would have worked out to “Assassination Tool” in practical usage.
Killing generals in the old Russian Army was probably less effective than killing Party political officers. The zampoliti made the decisions and the generals mostly had to play King Theoden to their Grima Wormtongue routine.
About the only thing even semi-historically-accurate about the movie Enemy at the Gates (2001) was Bob Hoskins’ portrayal of Nikita Khrushchev as a low-level zampolit during the Stalingrad campaign. Yes, he was there, and most of what they showed him doing he actually did.
I think it’s the only “western” movie that portrays a Political Officer accurately, other than Peter Firth’s (brief) appearance as Ivan Putin in The Hunt For Red October (1990).
So offing the guy with gold shoulderboards was probably less effective in breaking up C&C than doing the guy in the good civilian suit standing behind him.
cheers
eon
“(…)limited (if sensible) effective range and power(…)”
If you find this fire-arm lacking in this area then use http://www.dogswar.ru/oryjeinaia-ekzotika/strelkovoe-oryjie/1522-opytnaia-snaiperskai.html
“(…)choice of the .41 Magnum cartridge as odd. Perhaps based on barrel-making tooling left over from the old 10.4x38Rmm Vetterli M69/81?(…)”
Does it has same or different twist?
I would bet they decided to use cartridge with similar rim diameter to host weapon. Note that .41 Magnum rim diameter of 12,35 mm is closed to 7 x 57 Mauser diameter of 12,01 mm.
Bet your right
I seem to recall from ‘The Guns of August’ that the Germans marching into Belgium had posters announcing ‘retaliatory’ mass-shootings printed up before they’d advanced.
Try John N. Horne and Alan Kramer, _German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial_ (YUP, 2002).
Certainly that JFK had read Tuchman’s _Guns of August_ apparently helped him negotiate the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, largely the work of his own national security team…
How would Tuchman help? Kennedy was a man grown and probably knew not to escalate a disagreement you can’t really win. Even so there are those who say his “quarantine” was too big a gamble. Hardly diploma genius there, though yeah, he came out a winner.
My take on JFK is that he was basically a slightly more innocuous Hunter Biden…
Throughout the Cuban Missile Crisis, which he pretty much caused, he was dealing with the aftereffects of being drugged off his ass by Dr. Max Jacobsen, who was, oddly enough, a disciple of the doctor that treated one Adolf Hitler with similar psychological effect.
I’ve never been very impressed by JFK; all the smarmy self-congratulatory BS people spout about him and “Camelot” has always struck me as cover for some very nefarious deeds. I suspect that if JFK hadn’t been martyred that day in Dallas…? We’d likely have a very different picture of him. The way he and his brother so nonchalantly ran the coup on Diem in Vietnam? Personally, I think both their assassinations were like karmic justice enacted by the universe; certainly, their inept international relations bullshittery got a bunch of people killed that didn’t need to die.
Of course, it’s hard to see how LBJ could have done a worse job than JFK et al. We’ll never know how JFK and RFK would have munged up things during the second term of JFK, and if they’d managed to parlay everything into a family dynasty…? Yeesh. Whoever was responsible for the assassinations might have done us a huge favor.
I’ve never liked any of that lot, and the more I find out about what was really going on during the 1960s and 1970s, I like them even less. Teddy was the perfect successor, in that he screwed up Vietnam so badly that everyone forgot who got us started there in the first place.
Ask the average American who got us into Vietnam, and they’ll likely tell you anyone but Kennedy and LBJ. I had to break out the history books to show a young officer who it was that got things going there… He’d just always assumed it was some evullll Republikan thug that did it, and that the Democrats had fought it from day one. Stupid twit didn’t even know that LBJ was a Democrat, which is something I found mind-boggling.
Kirk:
JFK certainly did not start the Cuban missile crisis. That can be laid at the door of Khrushchev, who decided to send IRBMs to Cuba without even consulting the Politburo. JFK did manage to defuse the crisis by secretly agreeing to remove Jupiter missiles from Italy and Turkey, a small concession. We do know (because the taped the meetings) that he was under immense pressure to launch an attack on Cuba. This was before the US knew that tactical nuclear weapons were already there, which could be launched on the authority of the local commander, with no permission needed from Moscow. We can thank Kennedy for avoiding a nuclear war over Cuba.
As to the fate of Diem, Kennedy admitted privately that he did not handle it properly. He left events in Vietnam in 1963 to the ambassador, Henry Cabot Lodge. He liaised with the Vietnamese generals, who were sick of Diem, who was alienating the Buddhist majority. Lodge was all in favour of the coup, and eventually Kennedy acquiesced in it, because there did not seem to be any way forward under Diem. But Diem’s death came as a massive shock to him, he seemed to have believed that Diem would be deposed and exiled, not murdered. He realised he had been naive about this, and regretted giving so much authority to Cabot Lodge.
In any case, Kennedy had made it very clear to his inner circle, including McNamara, that he had no intention of committing to a land war in Vietnam, but that he could not act on that until after the 1964 election. That is the background to NSAM 263 of 11 October 1963, which directed that 1000 men should be withdrawn from Vietnam by the end of 1963. This policy was reversed in NSAM 273, issued on 26 November 1963. They only waited for four days after his assassination to make sure that there would be a war in Vietnam after all. Most convenient.
JFK was not into all that James Bond stuff. He felt betrayed by Diem and the Bay of Pigs and made noises against the CIA. He was also making noises about limiting involvement in Vietnam when he was whacked. LBJ got us into a complete Land War In Asia when we could have handled it like the Brits did in Malaysia. It was Congress that pressured to pull support from the South Vietnamese, even though we had promised. Talk to some Vietnamese Refugees sometime. I have. The Commies were a disaster. Based on your comments about the Assassinations, you hate the Kennedys and blame them for just about everything. There were a lot more players than them. Protocols of Zion is your next subject???
“(…)Cuban Missile Crisis, which he pretty much caused(…)”
Now I am extremely confused. Are you suggesting that 35. President of U.S. bribed USSR to install missile launchers at Cuba?
Are you willfully obtuse? JFK put his brother Robert in charge of “Operation Mongoose.” Look it up sometime. The upshot, is that this campaign to cause “boom and bang” in Cuba convinced the Revolutionary state’s leaders–Fidel Castro et. al.–that the U.S. was going to go from the debacle at the Playa Girón/ Bay of Pigs and use direct U.S. military force after an appropriate “decent interval.” So Fidel Casto and his little brother Raúl got together with Nikita Khrushchëv of the USSR to figure out how to save their regime… The Soviets desired removal of U.S. nuclear assets from Turkey and possibly Italy and elsewhere if they were lucky, and so they installed missile launchers in Cuba, but the scrutiny of U.S. intelligence overflights of Cuba was such that the “cat was out of the bag” mighty quick, and the “missile crisis” ensued.
While you are at it, Google search “Operation Northwoods” while you are at it. Then come back and see if your confusion has been dispelled about “The [JFK] pretty much caused” the missile crisis of October 1962 much?
“(…)Playa Girón(…)”
Fair point, but blaming solely 35th president after his death seems… very comfortable for others involved in that.
JFK was in love with all the James Bond BS. You have to remember that he was the guy who basically institutionalized and supported the various “special” forces throughout the US military, and let the CIA do all kinds of stupid things internationally. Like, the multiple failed assassination attempts on Castro… Diem was the tip of a very silly (and, incredibly stupid) iceberg.
The zeitgeist of the era certainly fed off of Kennedy; I would not be one bit surprised, given what we know today about media/government collusion, to find out that all those “secret agent” movies and TV shows were gently “encouraged”.
I’ve read extensively on the whole “Where’d that idiocy come from…?” issue with regards to the 1960s, and talking to people who were adults and involved in things back then, I’m fully convinced that the fish rotted from the head down. Eisenhower and Nixon did not want to intervene in Indochina when it was a French problem, and that was the same judgment that Nixon would likely have carried forward, had he won in 1960. Unnnnnnfortunately for 50,000 Americans and few million little brown people living in that region, the Democrats made the “Domino Theory” and the “Missile/Bomber Gap” campaign issues, and once they were in office…? Well, it was put up or shut up, and they knew that the Republicans would shred their asses for lying about it all. So, in to Vietnam we went… All thanks to Democrat “talking points” while campaigning in 1960.
The irony that we’d effectively won the insurgency by 1970, and that the North Vietnamese had to invade twice, with enough tanks to have equipped the Wehrmacht during Barbarossa, enabled only by Teddy Kennedy and his pals (Note here that Joe Biden was a part of all that, and that an identical playbook was used to run down Afghanistan’s legitimate government) deliberately weakening South Vietnam…
You cannot possibly hate the Democratic Party enough. Every time they’ve been in power in the United States government, they’ve acted to create tyranny and oppression, doing everything possible against actual US interests. Had we simply lined all of them up, and shot them? No Great Depression, no Korean War, no Vietnam, no loss of Iran to the Islamists, no Gulf War, and likely no “Global War On (some) Terror”. All of that nastiness flows out of Democrat actions and decisions, and all of it goes to enrich their leadership and clients. While the rest of the world suffers…
What cracks me up is that most Europeans think the Democrats are the “good guys”, while the Republican Party is some neo-Nazi thugocracy. It never fails; observe the way they behave when it comes to well-meaning US politicians. Donald Trump is probably as close as we’ll ever come to a 20th Century P.T. Barnum, but the man did tell Europe the truth about selling out to Russian energy, and we’ve seen the results of that since 2022. They laughed then, but when Russia invaded Ukraine the second time in 2022, whose money paid for that? Who is still selling the Russians the tooling they need, most recently the Spanish rotoforge that they need to build cannon barrels?
The only possible way you can interpret this chain of sorry events is that the people participating in all of it are part of an organized criminal conspiracy.
Kirk:
I am with you on the Democrat Party. I think much the same about the British Labour Party, which is doing just about everything Biden did, as if it will somehow work when they do it.
As for Vietnam, all the evidence points to Kennedy having decided not to commit to a ground war. He had determined to withdraw the 15000 advisors by the end of 1965, with the first 1000 leaving before the end of 1963. That policy died with him, and the Gulf of Tonkin incident made sure that America would join the war, as soon as the 1964 election was out of the way.
I also agree that America finally won the war, and then pulled out and stabbed South Vietnam in the back. Joe Biden liked it so much he did it again in Afghanistan. I’m not necessarily saying the Democrat Party are traitors, but if they were, what would they do differently?
The received story is that he was chary of escalation–apart from the “quarantine” you mention–and that the Tuchman book informed him that things could really go bonkers mighty quick… You know: “Serbia backed a guy who killed an Austrian Archduke (and his Czech wife), so Germany declared war on Russia and invaded Belgium to get at France…” type of thing. What with Curtis LeMay freaking out and Bill Harvey planning your assassination of you “chickened out” and whatnot…
The real hero was deputy commander Vasily Aleksandrovich Arkhipov, who disobeyed his standing Soviet fleet orders and avoided nuclear war in 1962. JFK was pretty loopy on drugs or crashed on one or another surface of the White House during the crisis, if history is borne out…
German culture surrounding what they termed ” Francs-tireurs” was always a little nuts. During the 1870 war, they turned any sort of French resistance into some imaginary bogey-man, and then whenever someone took up arms against them, well… Yeah.
I think a lot of it was top-down driven, dating back to the post-Revolution era when the French first embraced the “Nation in Arms” thing, and all those lovely and expensively trained exquisite little toybox formations belonging to the rest of Europe got their asses handed to them by the “filthy French rabble”. That aristocratic fear of the common man in arms was a definite thread all the way down to anti-partisan warfare during WWII, and the German response to it was the same as it was in Belgium; the German formations were primed for atrocity at the drop of a single round by some unwashed freak defending their home. From their point of view, anyway.
The mentality is difficult to parse, from today’s perspective. I think that it grew out of the whole separation of war from civil activity ideas that permeated war in pre-French Revolution Europe. The soldiery wasn’t supposed to engage civilians, and the civilians were definitely not supposed to engage the military; any hint of them doing so was seen as cheating, even when the foraging parties were setting the peasantry up for starvation. That was just the culture of the times, I fear.
Still doesn’t excuse the crap the Germans got up to, after the endless whinging they inflicted on the world during the Boer War, which was mostly yet another case of an imperial power acting all ass-hurt when the ragged commoners dared resist their pretty-pretty toy soldiers in any serious way.
Personally, all I can say from where I sit is “A pox on all their houses…”
The “aristocratic fear of the common man in arms” is still with us today. See “gun control”.
Also, Bonaparte’ may have been almost as much to blame as the Directory, at least on the battlefield. The story about him ordering any Austrian soldier caught with an “air gun” is probably apocryphal, as I doubt there were that many pre-charged pneumatic rifles (expensive and a PITA to make and maintain) in the hands of Austrian soldiers.
But with his hard-hat, con-boss mentality, I could easily imagine him ordering that any Austrian or etc. grunt with a rifle as opposed to a smoothbore musket being hanged or shot just on general principles. He was an artilleryman, after all, and thus no doubt had a healthy respect for what a good shot with a rifle could do to a gun crew.
Or a senior officer. Although it was a plain old musket ball that did Bonaparte’s favorite second-in-command, Louis DeSaix, at San Giuliano on 14 June 1800. While Bonaparte’ was busy losing the battle a mile away at Marengo.
cheers
eon
“Enemy at the Gates (2001) was Bob Hoskins’ portrayal of Nikita Khrushchev as a low-level zampolit during the Stalingrad campaign.”
By the battle of Stalingrad Khrushche was no low-level party member.
He’d already had made a big jump up the party ladder having been the #3 guy in charge of killing his fellow Ukrainians a few years previously.
The battle of Stalingrad was seen as a must win by Stalin and the Politburo.
This is why Khrushch was sent to make sure the battle was won.
It would be interesting to know where the designation “anti-material-rifle” actually is documented, if it ever existed in Swiss documents. The only factual information we have is from the presentation in the Ammotec museum: “Präzisionsgewehr G 150”.
The term “anti-material-rifle” reminds me very much of naming the MG 42 “Spandau”. Some factual evidence that those Swiss “in the know” really used it, is much desired.
Apparently one of the biggest issues when it came to setting up rules for this guerrilla organisation, was: “would we be allowed to fight on Sundays? This may be illegal, and we can be fined…”. “And what about our Mittagspause, from 12:00 to 2:00?…”
Perhaps a materiel target was electric insulators and transformers. Plenty of them all over, impossible to guard. Switzerland is a very electrified country, and an occupier would be dependent on transmission lines.
Maybe you unknowingly confuse US system where there are lot of these boxes on local poles lines with european where theres none.
“In the United States, distribution transformers are often installed outdoors on wooden poles.
In Europe, it is most common to place them in buildings. If the feeding lines are overhead, these look like towers”
Plenty of porcelain and oil bath targets.
https://www.google.com/search?q=switzerland+power+transformer&client=firefox-b-1-e&sca_esv=499376757f56c8e4&channel=entpr&udm=2&biw=1139&bih=568&ei=G_aAaPveL67Tp84P7ua46Ag&ved=0ahUKEwi72MXanNOOAxWu6ckDHW4zDo0Q4dUDCBE&uact=5&oq=switzerland+power+transformer&gs_lp=EgNpbWciHXN3aXR6ZXJsYW5kIHBvd2VyIHRyYW5zZm9ybWVySNsqUJgFWI8kcAF4AJABAJgBRqAB0gSqAQIxMbgBA8gBAPgBAZgCBKAC1gHCAgUQABiABMICBhAAGAgYHpgDAIgGAZIHATSgB7gWsgcBM7gHzAHCBwUyLTEuM8gHJw&sclient=img
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-e&sca_esv=499376757f56c8e4&channel=entpr&q=switzerland+power+line&udm=2&fbs=AIIjpHxU7SXXniUZfeShr2fp4giZ1Y6MJ25_tmWITc7uy4KIeuYzzFkfneXafNx6OMdA4MQRJc_t_TQjwHYrzlkIauOKPY6AGi5WlEHM84Wm0PfFv70IbKvZ_YnHj3eN61I0ViwY4pnH5uK4ilKEYbr10BasAB18Gd26kqtjoHn0TUTLUlGrGq7E_Ejk1GThF6IEOPGrHhu8FQnG8PdAcpqey5cGUAElYQ&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiBuInZnNOOAxXb38kDHSL9K3MQtKgLKAF6BAgVEAE&biw=1139&bih=568&dpr=1.2
Second link, not realistic to hit anything vital on these, unless firing half a day which is dangerous for detection.