I mean in the original fashion, as a pointy thing on the end of a stick. Big-ass knives will always be popular.
They are frequently used as digging tools, or spits for cooking meat.
They are frequently very poor knives.
Bayonets got their start back in the late 1600s or early 1700s (or somewhere thereabouts - I’m going from memory here). The idea then was that you could replace a bunch of archers surrounded with a bunch of pikemen by guys with muskets who could do both jobs at the same time. The slow reload time of muskets combined with short combat distances (which were a result of the smooth bore musket’s inaccuracy past about 50 to 75 yards or so) meant that bayonets played an extremely important role on the battlefield. They weren’t last-ditch weapons like they are today. They were primary battle weapons, usually accounting for roughly a third of all battlefield casualties.
Bayonets were extremely important during the Napoleonic Wars and during the American Revolution. Washington got his butt kicked up and down the battlefield until he went into Valley Forge. Once there, besides doing things like starving to death, he got his men some proper training in military discipline and bayonet fighting. Only after that could he really go toe to toe with the British troops.
Bayonets of that era reflected their use. They were long and spear-like, often with triangular blades that were designed to resist being bent in any direction (people will often say that they were triangular so that they made asymmetrical battlefield wounds which were harder to sew up - that wasn’t the purpose of the triangular blade).
Going into the U.S. Civil War, bayonets were still long and spikey. Muskets had changed from inaccurate smooth bores to much more accurate rifle-muskets, which were accurate out to several hundred yards. Changes in weaponry combined with changes in tactics rendered the bayonet obsolete. It accounted for less than 1 percent of battlefield casualties during the Civil War. It still saw some use, such as at Gettysburg when Chamberlain’s men ran out of ammo and were forced into an old-fashioned bayonet charge. But mostly, bayonets were no longer of primary importance on the battlefield.
After the Civil War, the U.S. continued to produce long spear-like bayonets for a few years, simply because they had a bizillion of them already built from the war. When those ran out, they switched to shorter, knife-style bayonets. This reflected that the bayonet was no longer a primary fighting tool, but instead had become a camp tool that could be used as an emergency weapon in a pinch.
Bayonets remain as last-ditch weapons today. You still find them used in rare occasions in battle, but mostly it’s a knife you can use around the camp that you can also stick on the end of your rifle if you need to.
The US Army and Marines still produce and issue a lot of the things. The spear is the most used weapon in all history, and still dead useful if everything goes to shit…
M9 bayonet seems to be the model currently in service.
But as comp geek stayed, they are more utilitarian now. Like a survival knife that can be mounted to your rifle should the need arise.
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They have been used as recently as the Falklands War.
Scratch that. They have been used as recently as 2012,
And in Helmand Province and in ["]Iraq](Bayonet - Wikipedia)
Scots regiments involved in the Falklands and Iraq examples. I suppose the national dress does involve a dagger :dubious:
Here’s another Afghan one http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/6178044/British-officer-wins-two-gallantry-awards-for-fending-off-Taliban-attack-with-bayonet.html
Guess from where?
I’ve read somewhere (how’s that for a cite?) that modern militaries still drill in the use of the bayonet, not because they expect it to be practical, but to encourage aggression in the recruits.
Well, the Scots have their daggers and the Gurkhas their khukuris, but what is the national knife of Wales? My wife, who boasts of her Welsh heritage, might suggest it’s the switchblade. 
Yep. Still carry it on our tactical vests. Looks more like a knife instead of a sword now though.
Two guys on a Basic cut their palms open doing drill with fixed bayonets. Shoulder arms. Dumbasses.
Minor nitpick- warfare in the 17th century had evolved into the Spanish “Tercio”, which was a mixed formation of pikemen, swordsmen and musketeers that mutually supported each other. Over time, they lost the swordsmen, leaving just pikemen and musketeers.
The bayonet arose when someone got the bright idea of affixing a bayonet to the end of the musket, making it a pike in effect, combining the two jobs into one.
The standard assault tactic with smoothbore muskets was to advance, fire a devastating volley, and charge with fixed bayonets. That’s why they were so prominent in casualty totals.
By the time of the US Civil War, rifled muskets had become accurate and long ranged enough that this tactic was suicidal- an enemy formation could be brought under effective rifle fire from 200+ yards out, rather than the 70 or so for a smoothbore musket like the British “Brown Bess”.
Nowadays, they’re still issued and trained, but only used in extremes; the last major US bayonet charge was during the Korean War, and there have only been a handful of British ones in the Falklands and Iraq/Afghanistan.
In WW1 British soldiers were told that shear bravery and courage alone will prevail against modern weapons like machine guns and so were still trained in tactics involving bayonet charges. Obviously the bloody fields of Flanders and the Somme proved that theory wrong.
My Dad who was an MP said they still worked well for crowd control.
Was at a place where guards used shotguns, killed to many young thieves.
They switched to rifles, just one bullet at a time, The country kids could shoot too well, killed to many young thieves.
They switched to blanks & bayonets. Still killed a couple of slow thieves.
When I left, the guards had baseball bats. The local black market was doing a landslide business. The USA is so smarts about this kind of thing.
This was 55 years ago. USA is still as stupid as ever about this stuff.
YMMV
I know this is annoying without providing a cite, but many superb threads with this OP can be found here.
Leo, did you leave something out of that post? It doesn’t seem to make sense as-is.
Does mounting a bayonet noticeably affect the aim or recoil of the rifle? Since it’s changing the weight balance?
I know what he meant, which was, “If the OP had made the slightest effort he could have found this information elsewhere,” which is true. However, I would not have gotten Poysyn’s and GusNSpot’s charming anecdotes. Sure, I’d see anecdotes, but they are better when told by friends.
Just a thought: Do some infantry officers dream of the day they can cry, “Fix bayonets?” I know that, despite their hard-bitten demeanors, many military people are romantics, like when capturing the U-505 the captain of the USS Pillsbury gave the command, “Away all boarders,” for the first time since the War of 1812. When the US sent troops into Bosnia a general was on TV describing the route they would take, “then into Thessalonika, Thrace, and Macedonia,” as if he were describing a trip by Alexander–I think the sidetrip into Thrace was because he was a general and could. The US 7th Cavalry still marches to “Garry Owen,” like Custer and his men. Did someone play “Boots and Saddles” on his iPhone when those mounted American soldiers in Afghanistan saddled up?
I interpreted the “OP” in Leo’s post to mean “original post”, not “original poster” (it can mean either). In other words, he was just saying that there are many interesting threads on bayonets here at the SDMB.
I guess Leo will have to clarify what he actually meant.
I am astonished that no-one has yet pointed out that the primary purpose of the bayonet was to keep cavalry at bay. Fix bayonets, form square, and the cavalry are in for are in for a hard time unless someone brings up some artillery.
See the Napoleonic wars.
Actually, I don’t care which he meant. I didn’t take it personally or think he was insulting either me or my child.