"Is the bayonet useless?" Topic

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Amicalement
Armand

Not useless. Not particularly relevant most of the time… BUT… for the cost (and weight) of a bayonet, a weapon so lo-tech its impossible to make it stop working short of breaking it in half… it is well worth it to keep using them.

Much better to shoot your opponent at 200m. Still, its a good idea to have a bayonet when you are fighting at 2m, and you can not quickly change magazines, or you suffer a jam. And still used on occasion in modern conflicts.

Chalfant

Having had to fight at 1m with a Bren l sure would like to have had a bayonet on it. San fairy Ann i lived so maybe it was not a benefit

x42

The Battle of Danny Boy – Iraq 2004.

Yep, the counter attack at Danny Boy certainly shows that the bayonet is far from useless,

Tally Ho!

If you've got one,you're never out of ammo.

No it is not … Who made this dumb video !?!?

Someone looking to annoy people like us.

To quote Kafka, "Better to have, and not need, than to need, and not have."

Only a POG would think a bayonet is useless.

And still a darn good can-opener too!

Yes it is. For 99% of troops in 99% of situations.

Happy to be called a POG.

POG, I take it that's a bit like REMF or PONTI?

Someone looking to annoy people like us.

Seems there is no shortage of those … even on TMP !

Yeah a POG is kind'a like a REMF …

Never!
"The bullet is a fool, the bayonet, a hero." -- General Suvarov

Psychologically, it's important. Remember how the attitude and performance of dispirited American infantry improved in Korea after General Ridgway ordered all attacks to be made with bayonets fixed?

An aggressive, combative spirit is beyond price, and anything that fosters it is to be valued. The bayonet signals a willingness to close with the enemy and destroy him.

Yes, but that would mean you would actually want to kill the enemy who are other human beings. And that is not politically correct in the current world view of the intellectual academic globalists.

Hopefully WANTING to kill the enemy is NEVER considered politically correct – perhaps necessary but never correct.

My father-in-law was wounded by a bayonet shortly after D-Day, always wondered if the German who stabbed him got his, but will never know.

POG is a modern diminution of the older Pogue or pogey. Originaly a marine or navy term a pogey was a ships boy who could be bribed with sweets for certain navy type activities, hence the term pogey bait.

I have been told it originaly came from the royal navy from the woodenships iron men era, but have found nothing written down about it. it is older by a lot than the term grunt.

Great piece of gear, great for anything from guard duty to crowd control, or keeping you and your rifle company while staying awake in fighting hole at night.

We Australian's are still using them in Afghanistan. Its certainly not option A but if you're at close quarters in a village or compound it can be very fast and facing a bayonet charge still cracks the morale of the Taliban.

POG = Person Other than Grunt, in modern USMCese.

PONTI must be a UKism.

And yes, bayonets are a very valuable thing.

PONTI = Person Of No Tactical Importance.

In 91 during GW1 an order came down that we were to stop calling REMFs "REMFs" as they were getting upset. Hence PONTI, well, we weren't calling them REMFs anymore!

Very enlightening Fox !

Hopefully WANTING to kill the enemy is NEVER considered politically correct – perhaps necessary but never correct.

Yes and no … You may WANT to kill the enemy so they won't kill you and your comrades. The only "predilection" there is based on survival.

However, there may be some on either side that would, for whatever reason, beyond survival. WANT to kill the enemy …

And generally Political Correctness has little to do with being on the battlefield … Only following the laws of land warfare, GVs, etc., … Even if in recent conflicts the "enemy" does not follow any such conventions, etc., …

The question is how often are they used? The answer is not very often.

So yes, somewhat useless as a combat weapon. However modern US and Russian bayonets are multi-purpose knives that can also double up as a wire cutter. Austrian bayonets made by Glock actually are multi-use tools first and bayonets second.

So they're more useful as a utility tool.

The other thing that makes a bayonet less useful is that a modern fireteam has a number of weapons that you can't fit a bayonet to – usually some SAWs, maybe a GPMG and not all rifles with UGL can fit a bayonet.

A somewhat dated article stated that a modern British squad can only fit bayonets to a third of weapons. The rest are Minimis, GPMG and L85 with UGLs as well as some sniper rifles.

The other key component of a bayonet charge is that it's usually only successful if conducted by a disciplined force against one lacking discipline.

The Japanese were shocked when bayonet charges didn't work against USMC at Guadalcanal. USMC discipline meant the Marines didn't run but instead used firepower to stop the charge.

A bayonet charge by British troops in Basra in 2004 revealed the same thing. The British were disciplined whilst the Mahdi militia were poorly disciplined and were expecting British to withdraw.

Recount and analysis of 2004 charge:

sadefensejournal.com/wp/?p=391

This question brings to mind a point made by a former fighter pilot who servedd during Vietnam. When the first F4 Phantoms were put into service, they had "No Gun", armed w/ missles only.

As the pilot stated:
"The 'experts' had agreed the days of the dogfight were over."
And that all air to air combat would be done at max or beyond visual range by the use of radar and missles.

Relative Point: Regarless of the level of technology we may reach, warfare is brutal even barbaric but, when or if an enemy gets in close i.e. (point blank) a soldier NEEDs what may be his last option.

This bloke had a bayonet attached to his personal weapon.
He lived.

link

"I either wasted vital seconds changing the magazine on my rifle or went over the top and did it more quickly with the bayonet.
"I took the second option. I jumped up over the bank of the river. He was just over the other side, almost touching distance.
"We caught each other's eye as I went towards him but by then, for him, it was too late. There was no inner monologue going on in my head I was just reacting in the way that I was trained.
"He was alive when it went in – he wasn't alive when it came out – it was that simple."
Recalling his feelings in the moments afterwards Lt Adamson, said: "He was young, with dark hair. He only had kind of whispy hair on his chin, not a proper beard, so he wasn't that old, maybe a teenager.
"Afterwards, when he was dead, I picked up his PKM (Russian-made belt-fed machine gun) machine gun and slung it over my back.
"We then had to wait for more of my men to join us. We thought there could be more Taliban about and we were just watching our arcs of fire, waiting for more to come out of a big field of maize which came right up to the river we had been wading through.
"One of my men, Corporal Billy Carnegie, reached us, looked at the two dead Taliban on the ground and then saw the blood on my bayonet and said "boss what the **** have you been doing?"
The firefight, in July 2008, began during the middle an operation to push the Taliban out of an area close to the town of Musa Qala in northern Helmand.

Yes, our bayonets had wire cutters too. But again, not used often. However, like some things in the military, bayonets are better to have than not to.

This question brings to mind a point made by a former fighter pilot who servedd during Vietnam. When the first F4 Phantoms were put into service, they had "No Gun", armed w/ missles only.

As the pilot stated:
"The 'experts' had agreed the days of the dogfight were over."
And that all air to air combat would be done at max or beyond visual range by the use of radar and missles.

The experts were right but they were a bit before their time.

Missiles and radars available to the US in Vietnam were primitive and unreliable. The Rules of Engagement were also restrictive.

In the last 30 years most A2A kills are universally missile. And many have been BVR.

Modern jets retain a cannon but with very limited ammunition:

F-35A – 1 cannon with 182 rounds
F-35B/C – 220 rounds in an external pod. Ie gun is optional and actually reduces stealth advantage.
Eurofighter – 1 cannon with 150 rounds
JAS-39 Gripen – 1 cannon with 120 rounds
Rafale – 1 cannon with 125 rounds

Even the Ruskis prefer to rely on missiles with only 150 rounds per gun and guns with lower velocities than Western ones.

Compare that to use Teen series fighters (F-14/-15/-16/-18)as well as F-22 which had 500-950 rounds of ammunition and a much quicker firing gun than some of the modern ones.

Basically the gun has been left much like the bayonet – a just in case tool

There is no such thing as an obsolete weapon or tool, merely obsolete thinking in its employ.

Capncarp – A well turned phrase indeed. Bravo.

B

And a weapon is only as good as the person behind it …

Deadles, so who strafes ground units these days? Is the venerable machine gun strafing from the skies a relic of the past? Or relegated to specialist aircraft? And how many missiles would a modern fighter carry? Enough for a long-range "dogfight" or to make sustained ground attacks, or are they very limited strike weapons?

No it is not useless.

When I was in Panama my squad came face to face with a VERY large creature in the dark. It was about twice the size of a man but due to the poor visibility we never determined what it was. We were on the verge of panicking until my squad leader ordered us to fix bayonets. Suddenly we were no longer victims we were armed with make shift spears. The SAW gunners equipped themselves with machetes. We stood our ground huddled close together with our bayonets like Napoleonic soldiers ready to receive a cavalry charge. Whatever it was decided to withdraw into the night.

I was damn glad to have my bayonet that night!

Most of the time my bayonet was an over sized utility knife.

@Piper: As far as I've read, there has been very little strafing of ground targets that wasn't done by an A10. With Small Diameter Bombs you can pack 4 in the same volume as a 2000lb bomb. So an F18C/D could carry 16-20 of them, with 4x AMRAAMs. Probably 16x GBU39 SDBs, to leave the belly station open for a fuel tank.

Dragon Gunner … There was a lot of "creatures" out there in the dark jungles around the Canal Zone. Vampire bats, howler monkeys, sloths, etc., ? Deployed there 3 times with the 101. Was some very good training and experience.

It was so dark in the jungle, we rarely moved at night. Or very far if that. Set up a 360 NDP … watch and wait for dawn. If anything was moving, it wasn't us.

Piper, speaking purely from my last tour as a JTAC in Helmand, for fast jets strafe was generally the first weapon solution discussed, due to collateral being the big issue there was very little appetite for bombs (despite it often being the best solution, ground commanders often think they know best) The A10s moved to Bagram so were too far north to support us, it didn't matter what A/C it was, guns were always an option. The dive angle and heading are generally the deciding factor.

Good intel Fox !

Would probably get me some looks if I restored the bayonet lug on the PSL-54c and attached one while hunting (which is all I have done or expect to do with it), but I have read that with its thin barrel attaching the bayonet actually improves the accuracy of the rifle.

So for me at least a bayonet would still be useful.

Still, Tangos link the other day to the Cracked article on the five incidents where one man made the difference in an act had one in particular where the bayonet was still decisive. In the portion of the article actually quoted on TMP the Indian CSM bayoneted one machine gun crew after running out of ammo for his Sten. From what I have seen, never having handled one, I imagine the Sten would have not been the best club.

70 years later there are still instances as recounted above when it comes to close quarters and a blade is useful.

That's quite a story Dragon Gunner… I guess it's either Bear, Jaguar, or Giant Ant-Eater, right?
;)

guess it's either Bear, Jaguar, or Giant Ant-Eater, right?

You'd hope ! The jungle really is no place for most humans, generally. And it reminds you of it frequently. Even if the worse that happens is Howler Monkeys throwing their at you. Kind of like a primate version of "Yankee Go Home" !

@rtjebadia

It could have been a cow or a giant pig, our imaginations were running wild out in the jungle.

"Even if the worse that happens is Howler Monkeys throwing their at you. Kind of like a primate version of "Yankee Go Home" !"-Legion

They would stand in the trees above us and urinate on us.

Yep, they were rude little Muth'a !

giant pig

Giant pigs are dangerous. In Australia pig dogs wear leather armour to limit impact of goring. And from what my father-in-law said, all the hunters carry a .357 Magnum revolver in addition to a big bore rifle.

You'd probably need to pump a fair bit of 5.56 to stop something like this charging at you.

Wow!

Amicalement
Armand

bacon…yippee!

Yeah, some [expletives deleted] tried to introduce feral hogs to Idaho a couple years ago. Fortunately, it seems that we got them wiped out before they could get established.

Otherwise, we'd be in the same position as Texas or Oregon, where you can kill half a million hogs a year and not even make a dent in the population.

Just about everyone in the state was chanting for the heads of the idiots who released the hogs. Bad sign when the farmers, ranchers, hunters, government, *and* environmentalists are all on the same side of the discussion!