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Bayonets

Bayonets are type of cold weapon that by their quantity occupy the top of the wide range of cold weapons. According to the simplest definition, a bayonet is a stabbing and cutting weapon for close combat, which is put on the barrel of the rifle, and can also be used without a rifle, both for attack and protection. Bayonets are among the few weapons that have survived the centuries until today, and evolved along the way gaining new features. Today, all armies use the bayonets as multipurpose weapons. Generally, soldiers utilize bayonets primarily as cold weapons, then as tools and then maybe as classic rifle knifes.

It is thought that the bayonets appeared in the 17th century in France. The term bayonette dates back to the end of the 16th century, but it is not clear if bayonets at the time were specialized weapons as they are today or simply a type of knifes. There is a legend that during the irregular military conflicts in rural France in the mid-17th century, the citizens of the town of Bayonne in South France, in the absence of gunpowder had put their long hunting knives into the barrels of their primitive muskets and thus, created spears to continue the fight.

Another possibility is that the bayonet originated as a hunting weapon: the first firearm was very imprecise and required a long time to load, so that the hunter of dangerous animals like wild pigs, could easily be jeopardized if his bullet missed the animal. A bayonet placed on the gun allowed the hunter to go up against the wild animal in the event of a missed shot. This idea was especially popular in Spain where hunting weapons were usually equipped with bayonets.

Bayonets were introduced into the French army by General Jean Martinet and were common in most European armies by 1660s. The usefulness of such a dual-purpose arm soon became apparent. Early muskets fired at a slow rate (about two rounds per minute when loading with loose powder and ball, and no more than three to four rounds per minute using paper cartridges), and could be both inaccurate and unreliable, depending on the quality of manufacture. Bayonets provided a useful addition to the weapons system when the enemy was charging to attack since the distance between the two opposing armies was less than 100 meters.

Bayonets with a length of 30-45 cm put on the muskets that were a length of about 1.5 meters, represented a dangerous weapon, similar to infantry spears from earlier times. The bayonet/musket combination was, however, considerably heavier than a polearm of the same length. Early bayonets were of the “plug” type. The bayonet had a round handle that slid directly into the musket barrel. This naturally prevented the gun from being fired. In 1671, plug bayonets were used by the French and later on by the English up until 1685. Because of the danger incurred by the use of this bayonet, another bayonet was invented in 1678 that fitted over the muzzle using a circular band of metal, allowing the musket to be loaded and fired. However, it was not widely adopted at the time.

The further fate of the bayonet and its survival was determined by the lost Battle of Killiecrankie, under the command of the English General Andrew Mackay, who estimating that the use of the plug-bayonet was the reason for his defeat, invented bayonet that with a steel ring was plugged on the barrel thus, solving the problem of use of fire rifle with the bayonet on the barrel simultaneously. This system in the late 17th century was introduced in France and Germany and soon after in the armed forces of other countries.

An unsuccessful trial with socket bayonets was made after the battle of Fleurus in 1690, in the presence of King Louis XIV, who refused to adopt them, as they had a tendency to fall off the musket. Shortly after, in 1697, the English and Germans abolished the pike and introduced ring bayonets. Henceforward, the socket bayonet became, with the musket or other firearm, the typical weapon of the French infantry and was adopted by most European armies.

The 19th century introduced the concept of the sword bayonet. It was a long-bladed weapon with a single or double-edged blade that could also be used as a short sword. Its initial purpose was to ensure that riflemen, when in ranks with musketmen, whose weapons were longer, could form square properly to fend off cavalry attacks, when sword bayonets were fitted. A prime early example of a sword bayonet-fitted rifle is the British Infantry Rifle of 1800-1840, later known as the “Baker Rifle”. When not placed on the rifle a sword bayonet could be used in combat as a side arm.

From 1869, some European nations began to develop new multi-purpose sword bayonets suitable for mass production and for use by police, pioneer, and engineer troops. The decision to redesign the bayonet into a multi-purpose tool was viewed by some as an acknowledgement of the decline in importance of the fixed bayonet as a weapon in the face of new advances in firearms technology. One of these multipurpose designs was the ‘sawback’ bayonet, which incorporated saw teeth on the spine of the blade. The sawback bayonet was intended for use as a generalpurpose utility tool as well as a weapon; the teeth were meant to facilitate the cutting of wood for various defensive works such as barbed-wire posts. It was initially adopted by Great Britain in 1869, Switzerland in 1878 and Germany in 1905. The sawback proved relatively ineffective as a cutting tool, and was soon outmoded. The German army discontinued use of the sawback bayonet in 1917 after protests that the serrated blade caused unnecessarily severe wounds when used as a fixed bayonet.

The trowel or spade bayonet was another multipurpose design, intended for use both as an offensive weapon as well as a digging tool for excavating entrenchments. From 1870, the US Army issued trowel bayonets to infantry regiments based on a design by Lieutenant-Colonel Edmund Rice, a US Army officer and Civil War veteran, which were manufactured by the Springfield Armory. Besides its utility as both a fixed bayonet and a digging implement, the Rice trowel bayonet could be used to plaster log huts and sharpened on one edge, it could cut tent poles and pins. Ten thousand were eventually issued, and Rice was given leave in 1877 to demonstrate his trowel bayonet to several nations in Europe. The Rice trowel bayonet was declared obsolete by the US Army in December 1881.

Prior to World War I, bayonet doctrine was largely founded upon the concept of “reach”; that is, a soldier’s theoretical ability, by use of an extremely long rifle and fixed bayonet, to stab an enemy soldier without having to approach within reach of his opponent’s blade. A combined length of rifle and bayonet was thought to impart a definite tactical advantage on the battlefield. In 1886, the French Army introduced a 52 cm (20 in.) long quadrangular spike for the bayonet of the Label Model 1886 rifle, resulting in a rifle and bayonet with an overall length of 1.83 meters. German authorities responded by introducing a long sword bayonet for the Model 1898 Mauser rifle, which had 50 cm and an overall length of 1.75 meters.

The 18th and 19th century military tactics included the introduction of tactical doctrines using a bayonet fixed on the infantryman’s musket, used with massed troop formations. One of the more notable of these was the bayonet charge, an attack by a formation of infantrymen with fixed bayonets, usually over short distances, to overrun enemy strong points, capture artillery batteries, or break up enemy troop formations. The socket bayonet was perfected by the British infantry during the European continental wars against France in the 18th century.

The Russian Army used the bayonet frequently during the Napoleonic wars. A Russian General Alexander Suvorov was was a great proponent of bayonets and he had a saying that vividly explained their power: “The bullet is foolish, the bayonet wise”. This meant that when the shooter fired the rifle, there was a chance to miss, however, with the bayonet of the rifle, the soldier had very little chance to miss the enemy soldier. For this reason, the Russian troops from the start of training were taught that the primary weapon of infantry soldiers was the bayonet, and secondary the bullet. Why? At that time, only a handful of Russian troops came across firearms in their lives. Mostly, they were peasants-serfs who have never seen a gun.

In addition, during the Napoleonic Wars, only the French rifle “M 1777” was accurate weapon - only the French used precision fire, while all other armies relied on grapeshot from a hundred or a thousand soldiers. Incredibly, according to the rule of that time, it was enough to put the rifle in a horizontal position and to fire the bullet. That is why artillery was considered a “queen” of the battlefield and bayonet a “king.”

The winning military had better and longer bayonets! After 1900, Switzerland, Britain, and the United States adopted rifles with barrel lengths shorter than that of a rifled musket, but longer than that of a carbine. These new rifles were intended for general use by both the infantry and cavalry. Due to the reduction in barrel length, the overall “reach” of the new short rifles with attached bayonet was reduced. In the case of Britain, this occurred when the British Army adopted a shortened Lee–Enfield rifle, the SMLE, in 1904. As a consequence, the German M1898 Mauser rifle and attached sword bayonet was a full eight inches longer than the British SMLE and its P1903 bayonet, which was 30 cm long. While the British P1903 and its similar predecessor, the P1888, had proved completely satisfactory in service, a storm of criticism soon arose regarding the effective reach of the new short rifles when equipped with a fixed bayonet. Military writers of the day warned: “The German soldier has eight inches the better of the argument over the British soldier when it comes to crossing bayonets, and the extra eight inches easily turns the battle in favour of the longer, if both men are of equal skill.

In 1905 the German Army adopted a shortened 37 cm bayonet for the rifle 98/06 for engineer and pioneer troops, and in 1908, a short rifle Model 1898AZ, which was produced in limited quantities for the cavalry, artillery, and other specialist troops. However, the long-barrelled 98 Mauser rifle remained in service as the primary infantry small arm. Moreover, German military authorities continued to promote the idea of outreaching one’s opponent on the battlefield by means of a longer rifle/bayonet combination, a concept prominently featured in its infantry bayonet training doctrines.

In response to criticism over the reduced reach of the SMLE rifle and bayonet, British ordnance authorities introduced the P1907 bayonet in 1908, which had an elongated blade of 43 cm to compensate for the reduced overall length of the SMLE rifle. US authorities in turn adopted a long 40,6 cm bayonet for the M1903 Springfield short rifle, the M1905 bayonet; later, a long sword bayonet was also provided for the M1917 Enfield rifle.

Bayonets are among the rare weapons that have survived centuries until today, and have evolved along the way gaining new features. Today, all armies use them as a multipurpose weapon. For now, bayonets are for every soldier primarily a cold weapon, then a tool, then maybe later a classic knife rifle.

The advent of modern warfare in the 20th century further decreased the bayonet’s usefulness, and for example in the American Civil War (1861–65) the bayonet was ultimately responsible for less than 1% of battlefield casualties. The bayonet was occasionally used for short range battles. The use of bayonets to force the enemy to retreat was very successful in numerous small unit engagements at short range in the American Civil War, as such charges inflicted few casualties and were decisive in short engagements and tactical possession of important defensive ground.

The experience of the Great War prompted a complete reversal in opinion on the relative value of long rifles and bayonets in typical infantry combat operations. Whether in the close confines of trench warfare, night time raiding and patrolling, or attacking across open ground, soldiers of both sides soon recognized the inherent limitations of a long and ungainly rifle and bayonet when used as a close-quarters battle weapon.

Once Allied soldiers had been trained to defend themselves from attack with a bayonet, the method lost most of its tactical value on the Great War battlefield. The bayonet attack was easily parried by a soldier who was trained to expect it. Instead of longer bayonets, infantry forces on both sides began experimenting with other weapons as auxiliary close-quarter arms, including the trench knife, pistol, hand grenade, and entrenching tool. Soldiers soon began employing the bayonet as a knife as well as an attachment for the rifle, and bayonets were often shortened officially or unofficially to make them more versatile and easier to use as tools, or to manoeuvre in close quarters.

During World War II, bayonets did not play a decisive role, but on the Eastern Front, often due to lack of ammunition, they were the only weapon of the Red Army. For that reason, until the end of the war, Germans feared Russian knives, especially after the slaughterhouse at Stalingrad, where in the hand to hand fight, the bayonet played decisive role. During World War II, bayonets were further shortened into knife-sized weapons in order to give them additional utility as fighting or utility knives.

The vast majority of modern bayonets introduced after World War II were knife bayonets. After World War II bayonets were used in the Korean War on both sides. They were used during the Vietnam War when the last “storm of knife” by the US military was registered officially on 31st December 1951.

The AKM Type I bayonet introduced in 1959 in the Sovet Union was a revolutionary design. The Soviets took a Bowie style blade with saw-teeth along the spine to serve as a multi-purpose knife and wire-cutter when combined with its steel scabbard. The revolutionary design involved that the blade in its secondary purpose was mounted on the rifle and is actually a simple fighting weapon. It is small, lightweight and compact. The blade has saw-teeth on the false edge and the usual hole for use as a wire-cutter.

Even Americans rejected their, up until then, used knives to “construct” blade “M-9”, which was an advanced version of the knife gun “AK-47” with a similar appearance and the same function of combining the use of a knife and cover for cutting the wire. In the modern context, bayonets are still being used as a “last resort” in close combat, in situations where the soldier runs out of bullets or if his weapon is stuck or damaged. In general, the bayonets are not placed on modern weapons, except when they are used as a primary weapon. This is because the weight of the bayonet mounted on the barrel of the gun affect the accuracy of bullet casings. Today all armies still use the multipurpose knives as weapons.

It’s unlikely that soon there will be any novelty in the world of bayonets. Aside from their former extensive use, bayonets remain useful weapons, they substitute multipurpose army knives and some authorities insist that the bayonets can be used in training as a useful tool in building the morale of the soldiers.