Clint Smith’s Old Rifle course re-awakened in me a fascination with edged weapons that I’d had since my youth. Delving in chalybem vulnificum (into the wound-making steel) for an article on bayonets morphed into this resource for EW researchers and enthusiasts.
The Jet Pilot Survival Knife is a classic piece of functional Cold War hardware that remained standard issue well into the Global War on Terror. This article also discusses the CISO (MACV/SOG) Recon knife, and lists some instances when downed pilots were forced to fight.
This post is about just what the title says, plus some of my personal experiences with said bayonets, and a few other edged weapons, during my overseas deployments. Most of this material was originally published in “Bayonets” (now “Bayonet Origins, Effects, and Exploits”), which I broke up into related components, to make it more digestible to the reader.
This article explains why the British pattern 1907 bayonet was a virtual clone of the Japanese Arisaka bayonet, and why the US M1917 bayonet is a virtual copy of the P1907. Details about markings and other identifying characteristics are included.
The shovel is actually a more effective APERS (anti-personnel) tool than than a bayonet. What it lacks in elegance and beauty it makes up in effectiveness and panache. Shovels are commonplace tools, but are seldom thought of as a weapon you can use to defend yourself if you’re attacked in your garage or garden shed.
This Yugo blade bayonet has a very distinctive, enlongated ricasso to accommodate the papovka’s permanently affixed grenade launcher.
The Spanish learned, during their half-millenium occupation of the Philippines, how effective bolos are as close combat tools. Some Spanish bayonets were clearly modeled after bolos, intended for chopping as well as stabbing. This article discusses Philippine edged weapons, along with some of the history and identifying characteristics of two Spanish bolo blades and a Spanish Yataghan.
This article may help you identify a bayonet made for the Italian Model 1891 Carcano rifles and their variants.
Many people collect bayonets and other militaria. Would they ever have any practical application for armed citizens? This posting discusses in what contexts you could possibly use one.
This article I wrote, originally published on the now-defunct ILIVED website, explains concepts relating to maximum, max effective, and minimum effective range, as they pertain to assaults in confined areas when we vastly outnumber the assailant.
This posting, partially from notes I took during the Thunder Ranch Old Rifle course, was originally titled simply “Bayonets.” Bayonets are a subjcet that can fill volumes, and the article grew accordingly. I broke it up into smaller examinations of the subject. This remnant of the original article briefly addresses the development of bayonets, the reasons for (and sad demise of) bayonet training, and attempts to use the pistol as a substitute close quarters tool.
