Bayonet Battle: Bayonet Warfare in the 20th century

[regimentalrogue]

Please allow me to decide what I wish to say. The purpose of the forum is to engage in debate. You seem to take a difference of opinion as a personal affront.

No, I took an affront to your choosing to ignore my earlier comments without replying to them and then also to question whether I had personal experience with bayonets. Perhaps if you had offered any relevance to that question or provided your own to establish credentials beyond your length of time on this forum I would have been less perturbed.

[phil andrade]

There is much anecdotal evidence that, when actual hand to hand combat occurred, men preferred to beat each other with clubbed rifles, or slash each other with entrenching tools, rather than run each other through with the bayonet.

All the same, I am sure that bayonet training imbued people with the necessary killer instinct, and probably gave some re-assurance to those carrying the weapon.

The fact that it still exists after centuries of developing firepower testifies to its importance, whether psychological or physical.

Phil (PJA)

[Capt_Starlight]

I can really only comment upon the efficacy of the bayonet having seen (and had to treat) several people mange to impale their several feet during bayonet training ("...stick it in the sandbag, foot on standbag to steady and withdraw..." seem to confuse the poor people occassionaly). The look of shock and chagrin upon their faces as they stand their with their foot, leaking blood, neatly attached to a sandbag..... It is not a nice wound if it driven home in the wrong spot. I still see one foellow occassionally limping down the street.

Its efficiency is another question that must be viewed in the context of the time and, as pointed out earlier, it should not always be assesed on the basis of the number of people with wounds caused by it.

[SiegeGunner]

Britain's government and military hierarchy have evidently decided that we can manage without an aircraft carrier for most of the coming decade, but I haven't heard any suggestion of stopping issuing bayonets. In fact, if I remember rightly, there was an earlier discussion here on the continuing usefulness of bayonets, and someone produced an account of a British unit carrying out a bayonet charge in Afghanistan quite recently.

[auchonvillerssomme]

I can really only comment upon the efficacy of the bayonet having seen (and had to treat) several people mange to impale their several feet during bayonet training ("...stick it in the sandbag, foot on standbag to steady and withdraw..." seem to confuse the poor people occassionaly). The look of shock and chagrin upon their faces as they stand their with their foot, leaking blood, neatly attached to a sandbag..... It is not a nice wound if it driven home in the wrong spot. I still see one foellow occassionally limping down the street.

Its efficiency is another question that must be viewed in the context of the time and, as pointed out earlier, it should not always be assesed on the basis of the number of people with wounds caused by it.

I would guess that was a while ago, it would be impossible to accidently stab yourself in the foot with a bayonet attached to an SA80 unless you were either very very short and/or a contortionist.