Do people in the armed forces still train with bayonets? Are bayonets still fixed in present day battles?
They train with 'em.
But no, they are not used.
Ultra-conservatism of any and all career military officers. <shrug>
Maybe I missed something, but why would you train with a weapon you’re not going to use?
I trained with them (USMC), and everyone with an issue rifle always had one when we were full tactical. The point being, if you are out of bullets, mortars, artillery, spitballs and nasty words, and the bad guy is up in your face trying to do bad stuff to you, you are in a World of Hurt, technically speaking. That does not happen to US Forces very often since Vietnam. If you are on the defensive, and the order comes down to “fix bayonets”, that is a Bad Thing[sup]TM[/sup]. But the poor sods about to be overrun have been trained in slashes, horizontal and vertical butt strokes, jabs, (“twist and pull”), and other means to impose their will on another human being with an unloaded rifle with a bayonet.
Excerpt from Guidebook for Marines (ISBN: 0-940328-07-0) seen here:
Nobody ever said war was pretty.
Bayonets were used in the Falklands war, see:
http://www.naval-history.net/F54longdon.htm
“…1 and 2 Platoons work their way along the eastern half of the summit clearing the enemy positions with rifle and bayonet and grenades.”
The US Army and Marines do train with bayonets, but they’re really not likely to be used in the field. From WW2 on, battles that get to hand-to-hand combat end up not being enough like they bayonet charges of the past for the bayonet to get its original use. They continue to be issued because they’re useful to have around - a good strong knife always comes in handy, plus you can fix the bayonet and stick it in the ground to keep your gun off the ground while resting, and they do get a really infrequent use in fighting.
Training with bayonets continues because it’s good excercise and aggression training (going up and pretending to stab someone helps get soldiers into the right state of mind) and because of conservativism. Some of the techniques associated with the training (like blocking or striking with the butt of the rifle) are actually useful, so no one sees any real reason to get rid of the bayonet part.
James Dunnigan’s How To Make War is a really good book on modern armies and what weapons they use (and don’t use).
UncleBill, from all that I’ve read on, for example, WW2 veterans who had to deal with hand-to-hand combat, the fixed bayonet simply wasn’t thought of very highly by them. They preferred using a shovel or axe, non-attached bayonet, butt strokes from a rifle, or a pistol if they had one to using the traditional bayonet. I certainly agree that training to use a rifle without ammunition is good for that kind of situation, but from everything I’ve read using the actual bayonet on the rifle isn’t what’s done when the fur starts flying.
The bayonet originally served an important psychogical need; it turned a firearm into a hand-to-hand weapon. Prior to this, a rifle or musket was relatively ineffective as a weapon in hand-to-hand combat; basically it function as a second rate club. Therefore there was a tendency for many soldiers to drop their firearms and reach for pikes, swords, knives, etc when it appeared hand-to-hand fighting was imminent. The officers, who wanted to sustain gun fire as long as possible, tried to discourage this. The under barrel bayonet was the eventual solution; a firearm that could simultaneously be used as a hand-to-hand weapon.
While the tactical situation has changed, the psychological need is probably still there. Most soldiers will rationally know that any situation where they’re reduced to fighting with bayonets is by definition pretty much hopeless, but they’ll have better morale regardless knowing that they have them for such a case.
They might not have any of the others, but a detachment of Marines in battle would never run out of nasty words.
I did bayonet drills in basic training in 1985 (Army). I was issued a shiny brand-new bayonet when I went to Desert Storm in 91-92. That’s as recent as I’ve seen them.
Actually, Little Nemo, the socket bayonet was originally a weapon of decison. It turned a musketeer into a pikeman, allowing armies to drop speciallist pikemen from the rolls, and replace them with an equal number of musketeers, while simultaneously allowing all the existing musketeers to be converted into pikemen. “Pushing Pikes”, the traditional tactic for winning battles, was replaced with “Pushing Bayonets”, and the socket bayonet was a battle-winning weapon up to the mid-ninteenth century. Even in the American Civil War, Bayonet charges still won some battles. Europe didn’t learn the ugly lessons taught in that war, and repeated the lessons in the Franco-Prussian war, and again in WWI. Even as late as WWI, some bayonet charges actually resulted in small tactical victories.
My information on the bayonet is a little out dated. I went through bayonet training in 1965 and I was more than a little embarrassed by the whole thing. My training platoon got into some serious trouble with the training cadre by piping “kill, kill, kill” in a falsetto voice marching back from the training area. So far as I could tell the secret of the bayonet was to make a fierce face. That and to try not to run out of ammo. We were a bunch of Commie, liberal, effete pinkos, just the sort of people that gave Vice-president Agnew heartburn some years later. Our company commander, who was otherwise a decent man, spoke to us very strongly about our lack of respect for this traditional and ancient weapon. My own view was that if I ever got close enough to an enemy to use the bayonet, or to have one used on me, one or both of us had already made a serious mistake.
Some important British officer from WWII is reputed to have said that to his knowledge the only soldiers killed with the bayonet had their hands up. None the less, it is a handy tool. When you have lost your can opener, the bayonet will do the same job. It is a great intimidator. While some units fixed bayonets in Vietnam, I don’t know anyone who claims to have actually used one on a living human being.
I believe the Falklands example also sounts at least as a small tactical victory of a bayonet charge. IIRC, the command “fix bayonets” was given in advance of the assault, though I have not found a site to support this.
Well. I never trained with a bayonet - in fact, I don’t think the IDF ever used them (the Uzi doesn’t even have a socket; anyway, putting a knife on a submachinegun is beyond absurd), although it does issue them for ceremonial purposes.
Frankly, I don’t see how they would be used. You can’t put them on all the time - you’ll just get the damn thing stuck in rocks, shrubbery, othe soldiers, yourself, etc. In the old days, soldiers fought standing up in ranks, which was OK; nowadays combat is run, drop, crawl, repeat. Not the kind of think you want to do when carrying a sharp object.
And if you want to put in on righ before chargeing, well, you have to imagine the situation: you’re hunkering down 30 meters from the target, throwing granades,changing magazines, laying down massive machine gun fire, and suddenly you have to start burning your fingers on a red hot gun barrel while trying to stick a damn knife on the end of your CAR-15/M-4, which is too light and too fragile to use as a melee weapon anyway? Sounds like a waste of time to me.
Well. I never trained with a bayonet - in fact, I don’t think the IDF ever used them (the Uzi doesn’t even have a socket; anyway, putting a knife on a submachinegun is beyond absurd), although it does issue them for ceremonial purposes.
Frankly, I don’t see how they would be used. You can’t keep them on all the time - you’ll just get the damn thing stuck in rocks, shrubbery, othe soldiers, yourself, etc. In the old days, soldiers fought standing up in ranks, which was OK; nowadays combat is run, drop, crawl, repeat. Not the kind of thing you want to do when carrying a sharp object.
And if you want to put in on right before charging, well, you have to imagine the situation: you’re hunkered down 30 meters from the target, throwing granades, changing magazines, laying down massive machine gun fire, and suddenly you have to start burning your fingers on a red hot gun barrel while trying to stick a damn knife on the end of your CAR-15/M-4, which is too light and too fragile to use as a melee weapon anyway. Sounds like a waste of time to me.
Ignore the first post, please.
I was given some mild bayonet training as recently as 1997 in Kingston, Ontario. Actually, we weren’t really using bayonets, but our ex-Airborne instructor gaves us an intro on the subject of sentry-killing (you stay low, sneak up behind him, yank his feet out from under him, plant your knee on his back and slice his throat, apparantly).
The instructor was a cool guy, a consummate military professional, though why he was teaching these skills to a bunch of communications reservists remains something of a mystery to me.
We still carry fixed bayonets on our rifles on some ceremonial occasions, including Remebrance Day parades, but for day-to-day field work, we’re more likely to use our Gerber multipurpose knives.
I was in the Canadian infantry reserves from 1988 to 1991. At no time did I ever receive bayonet training. There was some talk amongst the kids that it was illegal due to the Geneva convention (something about not training with fixed bayonets during peacetime), but that sounded like an urban legend. The impression I got was that it was dropped from the training regime in favour of more important things.
However, one platoon in our basic training company did do an afternoon of it (the classic scream/thrust/turn/lift charge), apparently as a morale booster. The person who reported it to me said it worked: they were all tired and pissed off and frustrated; afterwards, they had the proper gung-ho attitude the instructors liked to see.
The bayonet is still issued in the U.S. and Royal Saudi Armies.
Soliders like to carry knives if only for campcraft and housekeeping. Might as well issue 'em a bayonet. The bayonet for the A2 (and its procurement is story in itself) doubles as wire cutters and a bottle opener.
I usually kept mine on the end of the rifle, but I was thought quite odd as a young LT.
My dad often told his war stories of Vietnam and there were more than a couple times where his unit used bayonets. Although they preferred using E-tools, and kept them sharpened for such use, the bayonet came in handy on occasion. A long knife is better than a short knife. It is a contingency weapon. When out of ammo and being attacked, or attacking to save your butt from an overrun, you use what you have.