The Army is turning in their muzzle-end pigstickers for close-quarter combatives and underslung shotguns:
(The) US Army has called time on the bayonet by scrapping basic infantry training with a weapon that has become part of army folklore since its introduction to military arsenals in the 16th century.
Although American soldiers do not generally go into battle with bayonets fixed to their M16 or M4 rifles — unlike their British counterparts with their SA80s — bayonet drills have been a vital part of training for decades.
Now they are being scrapped as part of the first significant revamp of the army training regime in three decades.
Bayonet charges are no longer regarded as relevant in the modern battlefield and the US Army has decided to switch its training to other forms of close-quarter combat — and to teach troops to improvise weapons from whatever is at hand, including lumps of wood or stones. It has also begun to use alternatives to the attached bayonet, including a five-shot, bolt-action shotgun underslung from an assault rifle.
This is the part where bloggers place snappy, one-liner conclusions.
Being naval, I got nuthin’.
Being an OCS grad I had all the pleasures of rifle drill, with none of the worries of actually firing the rifle. Great, huh?
Oh yeah, and the Marine “Hats” thought it was great fun to continually remind us of our impotence if somebody ever decided to board our ships (and they were off fighting somewhere, I guess).
Still remember the shouts of “Stupid Navy candidates, can’t be trusted with REAL weapons!” etc. etc…
Bayonet charges are no longer regarded as relevant in the modern battlefield and the US Army has decided to switch its training to other forms of close-quarter combat —
While there haven’t been many bayonet charges on the modern battlefield, there have been plenty of instances where a troop has used his bayonet defensively, usually because he was either out of ammo or his *modern* weapon jammed.
- and to teach troops to improvise weapons from whatever is at hand, including lumps of wood or stones.
Ummmmm — so, the idea is to take away a guy’s metal spear and replace it with a sharp stick? Or to take away one of his knives and replace it with a sharp rock?
No way that could go wrong.
Sooooooooo glad I retired.
I still laughing at the admission that naval men have nothing…
that should read I’m. I guess that’s what I get for bashing on the Navy…
I.e. what you get for naval-gazin?
I figured he was a Marine.
So you´re not trained on sword fighting, using hooks as weapons or boarding enemy vessels jumping to their sails and slowing your descent with a knife?
Shame on you, Lex. Shame on you.
That’s SWO/SBU training. Airdales get sexual harrassment, public speaking, autodog, VCR remote and Napping 101-301
Au, contrare, Mon Frere, Lex is quite adept at sword swinging.
I didn´t ask, please don´t tell me
From my prospective the M-14 was the last individual weapon with the size and heft worthy of having an effective bayonet attached to it. I qualified on one at ROTC Summer Camp in 1965 and in 1967 I once observed a Marine Combat Engineer patrol on a road sweep carrying the weapon. Never saw one in RVN again…the M-16 and its variants, some of which had a bayonet stud and a joke of a bayonet, replaced this fine weapon…the spirit of the bayonet will live on in Basic Training in other incarnations…alas the bayonet itself has suffered the fate of the gladius. Best
I guess you can use the M-4 as a club. Stupid decision.
Marine Rules For A Gunfight
1. Forget about knives, bats and fists. Bring a gun. Preferably, bring at least two guns. Bring all of your friends who have guns. Bring all their friends with guns. Bring four times the ammunition you think you could ever need.
2. Anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice. Ammunition is cheap – life is expensive. If you shoot inside, buckshot is your friend. A new wall is cheap – funerals are expensive
3. Only hits count. The only thing worse than a miss is a slow miss.
4. If your shooting stance is good, you’re probably not moving fast enough or using cover correctly.
5. Move away from your attacker and go to cover. Distance is your friend. (Bulletproof cover and diagonal or lateral movement are preferred.)
And last but not least -
Someday, someone may kill you with your own weapon, but they should have to beat you to death with it because it is empty.
When you run out of ammo, you still have a spear. Which is better than a club.
Col. David Hackworth talked about this exact scenario in his autobiography, “About Face”. He called it the “tale of Willie Lump Lump.” Willie would write home about some Army training (Hackworth used bayonet training in his book as an example) and Mrs. Lump Lump would get all a-twitter that her young Willie was learning such barbarous things as how to use a bayonet to kill the enemy. Mrs. Lump Lump mentions it at a cocktail party to her Congressman friend. Next thing you know, a man with a clipboard is whispering to Willie’s sergeant the next time they have bayonet training. The sergeant shakes his head and collects the bayonets from the men.
Fast forward to the next war and Willie finds himself out of ammo and scared. A young commie soldier, who HAS HAD bayonet training, gores poor Willie. Mrs. Lump Lump, upon hearing the news of her son’s death, fires off a letter to her congressman complaining that her son wasn’t properly trained….and so the cycle continues.
Okay…I found the excerpt. He obviously tells the story far better than I!
The Tragic Story of Willie Lump Lump
After WW 11, a boy named Willie Lump Lump enlisted in the Army. He went to Fort Benning to take his infantry training, sixteen weeks of sweat and tears and lots of punishment, to turn him into a hardened soldier. Along about the seventh week of training, a sergeant stood up in front of his class and said, “Gentlemen, I’m Sergeant Slasher, and today I’m going to introduce you to the bayonet. On guard! With that, the sergeant went into the correct stance for holding the bayonet. “On the battlefield,” he continued, ‘you will meet the enemy, and there will be times when you will need this bayonet to defeat the enemy. To KILL the enemy! Over the next weeks you’ll be receiving a twenty-hour block of instruction on the bayonet, and I will be your principal instructor.”
Willie Lump Lump went back to the barracks, deeply upset. Man, that was so brutal out there today, he thought. The war is over. We’re living in peace and tranquillity, and still the Army is teaching us how to use these horrible weapons! “Dear Mom,” he wrote home. “Today the sergeant told me he’s going to teach me how to use the bayonet to kill enemy soldiers or, the battle field.’
Willie’s mother was shocked. She got right on the phone: “Hello, Congressman DoGood? This is Mrs. Lump Lump. I want to tell you what’s happening down at Fort Benning, Georgia. Here it is, 1949, and they’re teaching my baby to kill with a bayonet. It’s uncivilized! It’s barbaric!”
The Congressman immediately got on the horn. “Hello, General Playitright at the Pentagon? This is Congressman DoGood. I understand the Army is still giving bayonet training.”
“Yes, we are.”
“Do you think it’s a good idea? I don’t think it’s a very good thing at all. It’s even somewhat uncivilized. 1 mean, really, how many times does a soldier need his bayonet?”
“Not very often, sir, it’s true. Actually, I was just reviewing the Army Training Program myself, and I was thinking that the bayonet is a pretty obsolete weapon. I agree with you. I’ll put out instructions that it’s going to stop…”
The next day, seven hundred miles away: “Gentlemen, I am Sergeant Slasher. This is your second class on bayonet training–” the sergeant was interrupted by a lieutenant walking purposefully toward his across the training field. “Stand easy, men.”
“It’s out,” the lieutenant whispered.
“What!” said the sergeant.
“It’s out,” the lieutenant whispered again. The sergeant nodded, his mouth wide open in disbelief. He returned to his class.
“Gentlemen, we’ll have to break here. It looks as if bayonet training has been discontinued in the Army.
A year later, PFC Lump Lump, the model soldier, deployed to Korea with the 1st battalion, 23rd Regiment, 2nd infantry Division. He was standing on a frozen hill and the Chinese were coming it him–wave after wave after wave. Willie stood like a rock. Resolutely, he shot the enemy down. Suddenly he realized he was out of ammunition. He looked at his belt–not a round left. He saw a Chinaman rushing toward his. He remembered the first class on bayonet training. He reached down and pulled his bayonet out of his scabbard. Shaking and fumbling, he tried to fit it an the end of his weapon, but by that time the Chinese soldier was standing over him, with a bayonet of his own.
The Secretary of the Army signed his thousandth letter for the day: “Dear Mrs. Lump Lump; It is with deep regret that I must inform you that your son, PFC Lump Lump, was killed in action 27 November 1950.”
Heartbroken, Mrs. Lump Lump wrote to some friends of young Willie’s in the company. “Now?” she asked. “Why???” “Willie wasn’t trained,” they wrote back. ‘He didn’t know how to use his bayonet.” Now Mrs. Lump Lump was not only heartbroken, but outraged. She didn’t even bother to call Congressman DoGood. She barged right into his office.
“Why?” she cried and screamed. “Why wasn’t my son trained for war?”
Lessons Learned:
The training soldiers receive daily is in their own best interest.
The civilian population doesn’t know diddley squat about the realities at war
I’ll give the Army a pass on this one.
First, Snake Eater is right. If you are serious about bayonet fighting, you want something longer than an M-16, without a pistol grip. An M-14 works, but something like a Springfield Model 1861 rifle-musket is better.
Second, modern M-16s and M-4s are frequently fitted with underbarrel accessories. Breaching shotguns and grenade launchers being favorites…the M-16/M-203 combination is particuarly nasty.
Third, don’t think of it as losing the bayonet, think of it as gaining a Ka-Bar. Because you get to trade in that bayonet for a purpose-designed utility knife.
I carry a Gerber and a thin Russell folder, but if I was out of ammo and had to go nose to nose with somebody from the other team, I’d take a bayonet on the end of an M-16 over a Ka-Bar — if only for the advantage of a longer reach.
Rig it on the side. Nobody says a bayonet has to be below the barrel. Plus, better for slashing.
Duct Tape! Never go into battle without Duct Tape! That way you can rig your Kabar as a bayonet as well as restrain any POWs you may acquire in your heroic efforts with said Kabar.
It’s also handy for restraining randy Airdales.
Indeed, up until the advent of the M1918 Springfield, ALL US (and most other) bayonets were side-mounted, whether through lugs or sockets.
The most useful, to my mind, were the sword bayonets designed for the model 1855 rifle and those retro-fitted to the Windsor and other variants of the M1841 riflr, plus the British Yataghan sword bayonet for the M1858 rifle, etc.
http://arms2armor.com/Bayonets/usmississippit2.htm
Yup. I’ve got an original Enfield sword bayonet.
M1861 indeed. You might be interested in my post here:
http://aw1tim.wordpress.com/2010/01/16/the-bayonet/
Respects,
All things being equal, I think I’d rather have my nephew the first john in the army have a bayonet ring on his utility knife, as well as a way to turn it and its sheath into a wire cutter. Cuz ya never know.
Now as to training on obsolete weapons, it seems a healthy enough variant on PT/obstacle course. Leave it in as PT.
Now another, more naval question is, why have a SAT proceed armed with night sticks when they could have cutlasses, given that certain spaces are suboptimal for ricocheting pistol and machine pistol rounds.
Jest askin so as to stir the pot, like.
I’d have no problem with SAT having cutlasses and a .45
the problem with using any of the 16 series rifles with a bayonet is their rather fragile design. when i was attended the Harmony Church School for Excitable Boys, we used dummy rifles made of plastic and metal for that training, rather than our issue weapons, because of the expense of repairing/replacing all the things that would have inevitably been broken.
neither the hand guards over the barrel, nor the butt stock are designed to take a blow of the sort that will result in such usage. since the recoil spring is in the stock, it is difficult to get the rifle to function, let alone function safely, when you snap it off caving in someone’s head.
all that being true, there is a time and a place for the skill, and it is always better to have and not need than need and not have.
Chances are if you are in a situation where you need to fix bayonets and defend yourself with it, having the stock or handguard break is going to be the least of your worries. If you survive it, good chance you will be able to pick up an undamaged rifle.
I gotta go with Mike M here (no relation). The single day of bayonet training I received in the summer of 1992 would really barely qualify as making me “competent” in the use of the bayonet as a weapon. It’s not like we gave any real time to hand to hand either. Plus, the thing is pretty weak as far as knives go. The Army would be better served getting an honest to goodness purpose built combat knife and spending more time on teaching most any other weapon.
In BCT, I had about two hours of hand to hand instruction from the Army, four of bayonet drill, two weeks of rifle marksmanship, 10 minutes with the M-203, 30 minutes with the M-60, three hours with grenades and zero time at all with a pistol. I’m not entirely sure (outside of the rifle time) that those ratios made much sense.
Plus, the thing is pretty weak as far as knives go.
Did they change the design that much? We used to punch through the tops of 55-gallon drums and cut ‘em off with the bayonets we were issued in the late ’60s.
I just checked the bayonet the Army now issues.
It’s a POS copy of the Soviet POS that doubles as a wirecutter.
OK, I talked about this last month.
Lots of old farts are up in arms about losing bayonet training, but they are wrong. First, there’s a heck of a lot of guys that can’t use a bayonet at all. None of the M203s can use one, nor can the SAW gunners. And to be sure, the M4 is a pretty whimpy weapon for a bayonet.
But the real point they are trying to make is a move from the stylized, but bullshit, bayonet drills, to a realistic combatives program where you actually might have to take a punch. Actually physically fighting someone is a heck of a lot better training than standing in extended order going “whirl!” a dozen times.
The stylized drills are only to teach the basic moves — that’s only 50% of the equation. The technique and application were supposed to be done with the pugil stick.
Problem is, the Army got away from teaching trainees to use one end as a *blade* and the other as a rifle butt, and pugil fighting degenerated into two people standing in place and whaling on each other with padded quarterstaves for a full minute, rather than moving toward each other and using the proper techniques until one scored a “killing” stab or smash.
That said, most bayonet fights I know about were initiated by defenders who were out of ammo.
I’m totally unqualified to comment about bayonets but I just gave my nephews a handful of books, one of which featured an officer asking a long time sergeant why he insisted on carrying one and made a reference to the fact that less than 4% of battlefield wounds were inflicted with the bayonet. Grunt replied that anybody stuck with a bayonet wasn’t going to be counted among the wounded. All I can say is the author is a ranger parachutist and lawyer.
Which is why the Marine Corps started the MCMAP (Marine Corps Martial Arts Program) back about 10 years ago. Their motto: ONE MIND, ANY WEAPON. In addition to realistic (and painful) full-force training, the student is taught to make use of any available item as a potential weapon – from a canteen to a cartridge belt. Everyone has to qualify as a tan belt (accomplished in basic training), combat arms have to complete grey belt (2nd level), and infantry have to complete green belt (3rd level) training.
Is that kind of like Jason Bourne?
Using a pen as a weapon?
Sorry, couldn’t resist…
There is a woodcut from the 14th or 15th century showing one guy sitting on another and using his great helm as a hammer to drive his dagger through the armor.
I will not give the Army a pass on this one. It is a terribly stupid idea. At some point in every war there is a need for close in fighting. Having a bayonet on the end of even your M-4 would be helpful.
Being a former Marine infantryman I was trained to use a bayonet. The training was part of our close combat training. It did not take that long. Even though the issued bayonet was a dull POS I carried it all the time.
As for losing a bayonet and gaining a k-bar. That isn’t the equation we used. The last time I was in the field, besides the rifle, dragon missile, missile sight etc. etc. I was carrying the POS bayonet, a Gerber bowie knife, a k-bar and a Gerber dagger.
fmr_grunt, The last time I was in the field,likely before you were born, I carried,besides the Car-15 (a M-16 with a telescoping stock, no bayonet stud, and a 20 round magazine locked and loaded Lex Babes) twenty, 20 round magazines of 556 ammo in a BAR belt around my waste… a Gerber fighting knife strapped to my right calf…a USMC K-Bar utility knife strapped upside down to the left suspender of the BAR belt ( I’m right handed)…five canteens of water…a poncho and poncho liner, food ( Korean made dehydrated minnows with their eyes open and rice) for at least one week, a package of morphine syrettes, Darvon, Dexedrine(go-pills in case you had to E & E) and on more than one occassion two to three M-60 HE or Willie Pete Mortar rounds to feed one of the gunners should we step into some real s*it…lots of stuff…eh ? …but absolutly no room, desire or need for any flippen bayonet…I guess it just depends where you put your feet…and remember…once a grunt always a grunt. Best
PS, Lex, A modest proposal for a snappy one-liner conclusion ” Being Naval…I’ll continue gazing at my navel”…works for me
My guess is that you also had a helicopter on-call just in case you burned through the ammo and discovered a *second* hostile horde approaching…from 360 degrees.
I once took off in the dark with two more passengers than had called for extraction.
Yeah, they were that close.
Dude, you were seriously overknived.
There was BGEN at the Expeditionary Warfare Conference in Panama City back in 2001 or 2 or 3 who was, as I recall, Deputy at TRADOC, who told the most amazing stories while he was up on the stage. He started with long range field artillery used by Germans which had a tiny fire control problem and then branched into Phil Sheridan or Sherman deciding that some thing needed to be done about the enormous number of knives infantry had to carry and coming up an army certified field entrenching, skinning utility knife about the time that Custer’s guys were getting gutted by indians and trying to figure out how to use the 7 pound knifish monstrosity to scrape out the base of the cartridges in their rifles which had a tendency to stick after one fires a hundred rounds through them. Rifles couldn’t be reloaded. A rifle he said that had been purchased by the army and extensively field tested but which, since the army was cheaper than a whossname had never actually been proven to be able to fire more than a dozen consecutive rounds since that was all the army could afford.
I’d love to get a copy of that general’s speech. He and Jones were the only 2 speakers worth hearing that year. Watching Jones literally leap onto the stage and tell the powerpoint wrangler to just turn it off since he didn’t need powerpoint to speak. priceless.
Did you all ever hear the Monty Python skit about the pointed stick?
But what if the tiger has some raspberries? Your pointed stick won’t be much use then, will it? Best pull the lever!
Lord have mercy.
Duty sections on things like nuclear armed ships were sections. Standing CDO with a new section and watching as the SAT/BAF drew their weapons, stuffed in the magazine and shouted ‘halt halt or I shoot’ before dashing off to the ASROC magazine and leaving the small arms locker was what Coontz called a leemer. I used to hear that BUDS would send their meat over to ‘take down’ a ship at 32nd Street. Those poor bastards, had they made it aboard, would have a foot on their neck or 6 .45 cal bullet holes in them.
One night as CDO at the same place on a ship that had no nukes (I can confirm that by the way) I had the POOW call me and say that there was a zodiac out there acting all suspicious at Pier 9. We lit it up with a 24 inch carbon arc searchlight. If you’ve never seen one of those, it can light up the dark side of the moon. Yes, it can still do that even if you have seen one. We called naval station security, base police, base CDO, all of whom declined any knowledge of any exercises in our vicinity, and followed that zodiac with 9 dudes in it with the searchlight for 30 minutes. When those a*sholes called back 20 minutes later and requested we take the light off the infiltrators I laughed. A lot. It wasn’t so much the brazen nature of the attack. It was thinking about how that one duty section would have blown giant holes in them. Compounded by the fact that SEAL HQ had selected an Amphib moored astern as their ‘victim’. SAT and BAF were easily as scary as the IRT. I went with that one to Kuwait a long time ago and had tea with the Kuwaiti SF commander on the island the day we arrived. I warned him that we were really really super dangerous and to please not attempt to play sneak and peek with us after dark as my guys would instantly open fire and blaze away until they ran out of ammo.
New training, how to defend against fresh fruit:
This time with fresh link!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piWCBOsJr-w
Aside from CQB techniques which are on the day. We forget the visible impact of the bayonet on the populus. When you are in a peace keeping/making situation it does mean youmena business. It’s also one step up when dealing with crowds, You dont have to shoot them in the universities, just fix bayonets.
Workes wonders at Kent State in 1970. Best
Next step is to eliminate ammunition, in preference of using rocks and sticks; after all, you’ll just run out of ammunition.
What exactly is wrong with teaching and equipping for BOTH? You’re going to carry a knife anyway (most useful tool man ever invented, after all); making it capable of mating to the end of your (short, light, but STILL LONGER THAN YOUR FRIGGIN’ HAND!) weapon and practicing at least the rudiments of handling it in a scrum seems far preferable to EXCLUSIVELY focusing on caveman tactics. It’s like deciding not to teach the rear-strangle take-down because most guys will never have to use it to silence an enemy sentry. SOME will need it; NONE are harmed by knowing it. Teach it to all!
BOTH bayonet and improvisation are useful; teach BOTH. It’s not like it’s all that hard to learn the basics, and knowing them might keep a guy alive at some point.
Hell, officers & NCOs still learn saber manual for no better reason that it’s fun and looks swank to wear a dress saber. How many hours of training are spent in that, which could be “better used” on rock drill?
I’m okay with the short barreled shotgun mounted on an M-16 in place of a bayonet, I just think there should be a bayonet on the shotgun.
Battle can still regress to the point that a bladed weapon is the best remaining choice. Having a way to extend that blade and the skills to use it only makes common sense.
Next thing you know, the Navy will stop teaching celestial navigation!
Wait…
what…
oh.
Yeah….and shut down the Loran-C system too!.. wait, what?
USCG controlled the Loran C system. I think only Civvies were using it before it was shut down. What I hated to see go was the Omega system. I think we have put too many eggs in the GPS basket, and the Navy will regret not requiring celestial navigation training.
A few years back, the Russkies had a usable, portable GPS-spoofer that worked like a champ. The fear that they might get into unfriendly hands that might use them to nullify our Tomahawk advantage caused a major kerfluffle and system upgrade.
To the Tomahawks.
*Not* to anything else we got that uses GPS…
I’m still not sure why they added a bolt-action shotgun, though… why not a pump?
Bolt is a more rugged action and less likely to be accidently cycled in rough conditions. Although I would think that an auto-loader would be better than either.
Of course, then we have things like this: http://www.laserlyte.com/new_products/New_PB_1.html
And, of course, the classic – Win. Mod 97 trench gun: http://www.olive-drab.com/od_other_firearms_shotgun_m97.php (which was considered not sporting by the European powers in WWI)
The Beretta shotgun oughtta do it.
12 rounds in less than 2 seconds. All hits. (I want that guy on my side)
I was thinking the Benelli M-4, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lyed7nZf9J4
as Uncle Sams Misguided Children use. Tom Knapp wouldn’t be bad to have with you either. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5uHt4AwYb4
Well that *would* make skeet shooting a snap.
Tom Knapp is crazy good too.
Of course, if they issued these, we’d have a lot fewer problems with Jihadis, I would suspect…..
http://gizmodo.com/5100331/a-chainsaw-bayonet-strapped-to-an-ar+15-rifle-is-the-ultimate-zombie-killing-weapon
That would tend to make the weapon veeeeeery muzzle heavy. I like the idea though
Is a flush bayonet anything like a conformal antenna?
My last bayonet training was ’87. Maybe not all that practical, but did it instill a fighting spirit? God Yes! Now about that shotgun…since the doc put me in bifocals, I NEED that shotgun! Can I get an 870, 8 shot tube, bayonet lug, and double-ought buck? Please?
Sounds good SFC,
Strap it all on a phased plasma rifle in the 40-watt range
Call me old-fashioned, but while I’d prefer my rifle to be able to accept a bayonet for close-in combat a bayonet is no substitute for a short sword like the gladius, and my favorite the gladius mainz. All that said, hauling around another 8lbs or so of short sword that has little other utility beyond cutting isn’t going to do my stamina any good, and if I’m out of ammunition and the enemy is not I’m pretty much screwed either way. Ideally the entrenching tool could be designed to be a useful close-quarters weapon, as it has a similar heft and dimensions.
Still, there is nothing like the bayonet, or the short sword unsheathed, to impress the rabble. For whatever reason people understand being shot hurts like hell and can be deadly, but since so few have had it happen to them there seems to be this disconnect between the threat of being shot and behavior
that minimizes the chances of it. I suppose this is the same disconnect that causes young kids to take risks, drive fast, ride their Husky bicycles up ramps at 20mph and tool around on skateboards without helmets and pads.
But everybody has cut themselves at least once with a knife. When a knife comes out in a fight, we don’t think of the thrust through the belly and dying of septic shock. We think of the slash through the arm and the blood and shock and pain.
Which, if you’re trying to impress upon your enemy that attacking you means blood and pain, I’m thinking a larger bayonet or a short sword beats a K-bar on a stick. At least until he shows up with a gun.
– Max
Eliminating bayonets? Big mistake. From BLACKFIVE:
“Lieutenant James Adamson was awarded the Military Cross after killing two insurgents during close quarter combat in Helmand’s notorious “Green Zone”.
The 24-year-old officer, a member of the 5th battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland, revealed that he shouted “have some of this” before shooting dead a gunman who had just emerged from a maize field.
Seconds later and out of ammunition, the lieutenant leapt over a river bank and killed a second insurgent machine-gunner with a single thrust of his bayonet in the man’s chest.”
As I see it, bayonets are still relevant. Or maybe the groundpounders know they’re still useful, but we’re just outsourcing bayonet fighting as cost cutting measure. Who knows.
You gotta love that “have some of this” war cry, though.
Bayonets are obviously still necessary for their original military purpose, which is the defense by a square of infantry from a cavalry charge. Of course, for that, they need to be stuck onto longer and stouter muskets than are used these days.
They are still more useful for their original civil purpose, hunting wild boars with muzzle-loaders. If you shoot at one of those guys and only wound him, it’s nice to have something sharp on the end of a long stick.
So, yeah, what Chief Bill said. Shoot ‘em if you can, otherwise stick ‘em.
P.s. I do wonder if the new Army training advises biting the enemy, and scratching. Tooth and nail, y’know. I’m only half kidding, having gotten in a good bite wound in one of the few fights I’ve had (I try to avoid fights, but if I have to…).
I also wonder if anybody has gotten a Purple Heart for a human bite wound.
If you do, please send me mine. Got my bite wound at Fort Benning, in jump school. Oh wait, does that have to be from enemy action? Or does an Army guy biting an Air Force guy count as enemy action?
An interesting series of comments, now I’ll go back and look at all the links provided.
Here’s the shotgun we need: http://www.hkpro.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=101:caw&catid=11:rare-prototypes&Itemid=5
It even carries the sacred letters H K
12 Ga shells x 10 at 240 RPM? That thar deserves advertisement as the zombie special!
I’d normally call that the Edsel of shotguns, but it’s even uglier. That’s the Pacer of shotguns.
– Max
AW1: Agree completely. With tongue still slightly in cheek, firing a .45 in a confined space and having the entire ship go up in a cataclysmic explosion from the ricochet may be a suboptimal self defense tactic.
The e-tool will do the job but are scarce on most warships.
A cutlass is a gladius optimized for naval use, now fallen into disuse. My point was not that cutlasses were on the cutting edge of modern weapons, but rather declaring deadly force authorized and issuing night sticks is a tad silly.
But then so is formerly active naval persons commenting on army infantry’s choice of killing tools.
Great fun, though.
Cold Steel sells a USN 1917 pattern cutlass for about $300. I want.