Bayonet obsolete? Not yet, apparently -

[Kal]

Hey Britney, I was merely stating that I would rather face the arty because I can wrap my head around it a little easier and separate the emotion out of it.  As for fighting the guys with fully loaded weapons, I wouldn't expect to kill very many, but I would at least go down fighting and try to take at least one with me.  Now, sometimes engagement ranges can be very short, as you may well know.  In the jungle, it was found to be only 5 feet sometimes in Vietnam, in those instances I would rather have my bayonet and know how to use it and not need it, rather than not having it or not knowing how to use it and need it, I'm sure any trained individual would agree.  It wasn't covered in the SQ course I was on, but I can tell you I have done some extensive training with it.  Actually, I'm a stick/impact weapon instructor, in which half the material in done with a rifle.

 

[JimmyPeeOn]

I heard from a few different locals on roto that the placement of bayonets on our vest  is actually quite intimidating.  Besides if I ever did run out of ammo in a combat situation, I would rather be fighting with a bayonet than my gerber.

 

[KevinB]

:

I'll give you a hint what I prefer to the bayonet...

Yep a PISTOL

For one - I will shoot a tgt rather than bayonetting it - why?  For I just took my primary weapon out of action if I bayonet a tgt on the ground -  What happens if the blade sticks? and another threat appears.

Secondly that mass bayonet charge was STUPID - yes it worked - but it s not a tactic to emulate - WHY?  Well what would have happend if one of those Insurgents had decided to USE his AK?  Well guess what he would likely be the most celebrated insurgent in the war so far...
 

Now given this is my issue gun

Do you really think I want to get close and stab someone - no thanks...

I have a knife to use as a tool - and IF necessary a weapon but the carbine and pistol are way ahead on my list of weapon to kill with over a knife.


Some who are overly romaticising the bayoney should get out more...  Ever try to negotiate a hallway and do CQB with a bayonet on?  Didn't think so.

 

[a_majoor]

What an astounding thread! Although it has been pointed out as far back as the American Civil War that only about 1% of battlfield injuries were caused by the bayonet, it still has a fearsom psycological impact on potential enemies. The sight of cold steel collapses morale in a way that a blazing AK does not.

My own examples are limited; talking to British soldiers who had experience in Northern Ireland, but often the story sounded like "then our brick was surrounded by a mob throwing rocks and bottles. We were backed into a wall when the Corporal ordered us to fix bayonets. The mob fell back and stayed away until the "Pig" came to pick us up."

Fighting requires the ability to attack their will to fight as well as their their bodies; I will still keep the bayonet.

 

[Kal]

I don't think anyone who has responded to this thread would only want to fight with a bayonet, or make it their primary weapon.  Any trained operatior would rather shoot the enemy than slug or stab it out with them, but any trained operator would also know to train and utilize all tools and weapons at their disposal.  If I were ever separated from my team and the mob was bearing down, intent on killing me in the back allies, should my primary and seconday weapons go down then what are you to do?  Roll over on the ground and let them slot you?  Not for me thanks, I would still fight, if you know you're going to go down, or knowing your chances aren't good, then why not go down fighting?  I believe the origins of this thread was the physcological impact of the bayonet rather than it's combat effectiveness...

 

[Britney Spears]

My own examples are limited; talking to British soldiers who had experience in Northern Ireland, but often the story sounded like "then our brick was surrounded by a mob throwing rocks and bottles. We were backed into a wall when the Corporal ordered us to fix bayonets. The mob fell back and stayed away until the "Pig" came to pick us up."

OK, so then it's not a weapon. If you want to argue its merits as a crowd control device, well thats something else entirely. We have better things for that (e.g. M-203 launched tear gas bombs, non lethal rifle grenades) than bayonets.

I don't buy the psycological impact business. Psycological impact is when your buddy gets nailed by a  Macmillan from 2 clicks away.

Besides, since there are only 4 bayonets in a section its all a moot point today anyway.

 

[mainerjohnthomas]

The bayonet is not obsolete.  It is not intended to be used in place of a firearm, it is for use when the firearm isn't useful.  At zero range the old FN butstroke would shatter a skull without much ado, the C7 sucks for anything other than its intended purpose (firearm), unless you top it with a bit of old sharptooth.  In crowd control situations, the mob has been conditioned to think that they are NOT GOING TO BE SHOT, and they believe this until someone starts shooting, which usually results in some deaths (trampling mostly) and an inquiry, and some ruined careers.  Welcome to life in the CF.  The wonderful thing about a bayonet, is it focuses the mind like nobodies business.  It is impossible for the untrained, or semitrained, to ignore the lethality of the bayonet pointed at them, it makes them think of their own hides, and short circuits the mob aggression.  Consider a second scenario, you confront an intruder with a .22 pistol or a 10gauge shotgun; I can shoot your eyes out with the .22, but it is unlikely to inspire enough fear to make the intruder run, I will HAVE TO SHOOT, the visual impact of the shotgun will make the intruder (more often than not) think twice and beat feet.  I have personally seen the sight of bared steel back off a crowd that was NOT intimidated by guns alone.  In peacekeeping or crowd control, or in situations like close range flank attacks, psychological impact is a force multiplier.  Napoleon said the moral was to the physical as three is to one.  Overstated in modern warfare, but if a weapon has the shock capacity to keep the enemy from using his own weapons while you use yours, then it worked.  Is the bayonet different from the MBT?  Consider half of the argument about keeping the MBT was its shock effect, clearly that is the argument in favour of the bayonet.  It should also be noted it doesn't jam, is ammo independent, is a good screwdriver, wire stripper, wire cutter, mine probe, field expedient hammer, scissors, half decent hatchet, decent digging implement, and the only thing that doesn't dissolve in some of the MRE sauces.  Do I think the average soldier is going to use one like the Prince of Wales boys did, odds are against it; but when the situation arises, there really is nothing like the shock value of a charge of cold steel.

 

[Britney Spears]

In light of the evidence produced by mainerjohnthomas and a_majoor, I'm definetly willing to concede that a rifle/bayonet combo is useful for crowd control situations. As such, I will revise my position to say that bayonets are obsolete for anything other than cowering  unarmed crowds of protestors.

Consider a second scenario, you confront an intruder with a .22 pistol or a 10gauge shotgun; I can shoot your eyes out with the .22, but it is unlikely to inspire enough fear to make the intruder run, I will HAVE TO SHOOT, the visual impact of the shotgun will make the intruder (more often than not) think twice and beat feet.

Thank you,  I think we're hitting the crux of the debate. There are two schools of thought WRT to your scenario which can also be applied to crowd control situations, both of which have merits.

Your school maintains that the sound of a shotgun being racked is often enough to scare away intruders, and in this respect, a shotgun is more useful than a pistole for bedroom defence.

However, there is also another school, towards which I lean, that believes firearms of any sort should never be produced unless one intends to use it. What if the intruder also happened to be armed? More importantly, anyone in a self defence scenario must be in the mental state which has only one purpose, that is, the elimination of the threat at all costs. Any kind of halfway step will be counter intuitive to the stated purpose. Flashing a bayonet at a crowd will certainly be intimidating, but it only takes one schleevo soaked sod to make a grab for the rifle. Could there then be a situation where you would want to actually bayonet the guy but not shoot him? Unlikely I say.

I must disagree with your comparison of the bayonet to the MBT. 60+ tons of fire-spewing depleted unranium is definitly a tad more intimidating than a bunch of guys with pointy sticks.

Ultimately, we must always keep in mind that everything is a trade off. Having a bayonet means having less ammunition, a fact often under-appreiciated by those who do not regularly train with armour and support weapons, there's no way around it.

I cannot understand why "if I run out of ammo" is a good reason for bringing a bayonet. Your bayonet is not ammo, why didn't you leave it at home so you could carry MORE AMMO? Or take the time you spend poking sandbags and spend it on improving your marksmanship? 

Lastly, while you certainly can wave your bayonet around the air indefinetly, you'll find that the bayonet has a much shorter useful life if you actually start poking things(like hard surfaces, for example) with it. Not that it would make much difference, since you will most likely be swiss cheese at that point anyway.

 

[KevinB]

. Not that it would make much difference, since you will most likely be swiss cheese at that point anyway.

;D  an excellent point!

Now given the current equipment the sections had do you really think that 2-3 bayonets will do anything? 

, should my primary and seconday weapons go down then what are you to do? Roll over on the ground and let them slot you?

Well IF my primary and Secondary go down - I think I might have been able to pick up the occassional AK or other discarded weapons from my dead opponents.  Secondly - those who feel that they will just trundle down the road and bayonet someone - have you tried that in full kit and plates? - It aint going to happen. 
 

 

[QORvanweert]

In light of the evidence produced by mainerjohnthomas and a_majoor, I'm definetly willing to concede that a rifle/bayonet combo is useful for crowd control situations. As such, I will revise my position to say that bayonets are obsolete for anything other than cowering   unarmed crowds of protestors.

      Now try telling that to the Pte(?) who just earned a VC using a bayonet. Not only do they strike fear into the enemy, if you have ever been in a knife fight you know what I mean, but they also commit you to the battle. How often do you seen soldiers with fixed bayonets surrendering? They are the last step of desperation, once you are that close then you are screwed anyways, but it is better to be stabbing him in the face with your nice pointy stick then trying to beat him to death with your empty mag.
      Regardless of how many mags you carry, if the fight is intense enough to resort to bayonet fighting then you will run out of ammunition sooner or later. At which point you put on your trusty bayonet and hide out around a corner stabbing as many people as you can before they frag you. Or in your case, you will insert your last magazine (while shitting your pants because there is a bayonet charge) , fire it off and hopefully kill two or three enemies (most likely missing) and then run off around a corner and try to knock someone unconscious through their kevlar helmet with your empty magazine to take their rifle. Or even better, you have sentry takedown and you try and use your trusy KFS or gerber to cut his throat with. Or you are probing the dead to discover anyone faking and you miss someone because the muzzle on your C7 isn't all that sharp and he goes on to toss a grenade on your section. Or you are clearing a room and your action jams and buddy decides to walk around the corner and you have the drop on him but he quickly impales you on the wall while you are trying to clear your chamber. Or you have taken some prisoners and you need something to 'prod' them along with(cleaning rods don't work well here).
     "I cannot understand why "if I run out of ammo" is a good reason for bringing a bayonet. Your bayonet is not ammo, why didn't you leave it at home so you could carry MORE AMMO? Or take the time you spend poking sandbags and spend it on improving your marksmanship?"
Your bayonet is the ultimate source of ammunition. It never runs out, can get you more, can defend you while getting more, can 'close with and destroy the enemy' much more effectively then a buttstroke, never jams, is self-cleaning if you stab hard enough, weighs almost nothing, is SILENT and has a myriad of other uses.

 

[Kal]

;Well IF my primary and Secondary go down - I think I might have been able to pick up the occassional AK or other discarded weapons from my dead opponents. Secondly - those who feel that they will just trundle down the road and bayonet someone - have you tried that in full kit and plates? - It aint going to happen.

    I can understand where you're coming from, and that would be great if the discarded is laying at your feet, but like you said, if you gotta run down the road to get his rifle while in full kit.....?  Besides one may have to fight there way to the objective. (discarded weapon/ammo)  Better to fight my way there with a knife or my empty weapon than my bare hands.  I think we all know that for it to come this far too, you're either separated, or buddy is outta ammo too, or both, and while very unlikely of a situation it should not be neglected.  

Excellent point made by QORvanweert also, for sentry removal a silenced weapon would be optimal, but they're not in great quantity, so there's that trusty bayonet again.  I find that there is something almost primal and/or tribal about using your hands and an edged weapon, and when using such tools, it taps into that vicious, primal state that has been suppressed by being 'civilized'.  

 

[KevinB]

, is SILENT

Dude - I dont know how many people you've knifed - but everyone I 've seen has tried to howl like a banshee.  

You want someone dead "silently" buy a suppressed weapon.

And for me - I'd much rather give up a bayonet to have a can...

 

[Kal]

Dude - I dont know how many people you've knifed - but everyone I 've seen has tried to howl like a banshee. 

    That sounds pretty spot on, and I would have to agree, only because of the fact though that not enough training went into it.  I'm sure most of know this, but for those of use who don't, it isn't like the movies where the bay guy has a thin cut along his throat and dies immediately.  It's a matter of shutting the guy up for half a second so you can sink that knife into the side of his throat and rip it out the other side, tearing out the arteries, veins, breathing ways and vocal ties, may have to be repeated until the guy bleeds out, which should be only a matter of seconds.  I don't think that fits into the vision of the Canadian peacekeeper.  Caution, may be a little messy, too...

 

[Michael Dorosh]

Point of order, I thought the latest VC was for rescuing wounded men under fire, not bayonetting people...

 

[pbi]

Bayonets are obsolete

What the hell-carry, it, I say. It's a pretty useful tool (the incoming one will probably be even better) and, you never know, you might find yourself in a situation lke those Brits, who probably never expected to use it either. And, in my experience, bayonet and pugil training are great for building morale and confidence. As for the argument about dropping the bayonet so as to be able to carry more ammo---please...if you're that weak you shouldn't really be carrying a weapon anyway. Weigh a full mag against a bayonet and see which weighs more.

Cheers.

 

[big_johnson1]

Your bayonet is the ultimate source of ammunition. It never runs out, can get you more, can defend you while getting more, can 'close with and destroy the enemy' much more effectively then a buttstroke, never jams, is self-cleaning if you stab hard enough, weighs almost nothing, is SILENT and has a myriad of other uses.

Hehe, this is what I've been waiting for.. The old silent bayonet. Never mind the gurgling sound you'd get from slashing a guy's throat, what about the screams from cutting him open? What's that, you're slashing his entire throat out? Oh, well what about when his lung full of air rushes out? It's no gunshot, true, but it's going to be plenty loud if you're trying that hard to be quiet. Or what about the guy that tries to go for the heart, only to discover that the bayonet doens't always fit between the ribs (think about it), causing your enemy to freak out, and not be dead? If you have to be silent, a bayonet would not be the prefered tool.

As for carrying it, it was a pain in the neck literally on the TV (am I the only one that ever got one in the throat after crouching down too fast or something?), and while I prefer it on the belt like the webbing, it's still a good tool to have around, for mine sweeping or whatever.

 

[Britney Spears]

What the heck-carry, it, I say. It's a pretty useful tool (the incoming one will probably be even better) and, you never know, you might find yourself in a situation lke those Brits, who probably never expected to use it either. And, in my experience, bayonet and pugil training are great for building morale and confidence. As for the argument about dropping the bayonet so as to be able to carry more ammo---please...if you're that weak you shouldn't really be carrying a weapon anyway. Weigh a full mag against a bayonet and see which weighs more.

Heh, I guess I'm still a little too revolutionary for the tastes of many. Less gay useless kit ==happy troop (No offence to homosexuals intended)

Weight isn't the only consideration, there's also the issue of real estate on your chest, not to mention the comfort factor. Although I'm guessing the new Bayonet will not fit on the TV as per usual(Yay! Go CTS!), and we'll have to carry it between our teeth or something,  so that will also be a moot point.

I suppose it will encourage the sect. commander to lead from the front, since him and one or two  other troops will be the only ones equipped with bayonets. Make sure  he leaves the radio with the 2ic before starting the bayonet charge.

 

[Dark_Soldier]

For all the good points to carry the bayonet, there are reasons not to carry it.
I don't know about anyone else, but I have never (somehow) hooked a mag to the front of my tac vest (or even its placing on the web belt) where the bayonet is. The bayonet is lightweight, you have to be pretty weak if the weight of the bayonet will weigh you down, so carry it because you never know when you may need it.

One point I would like to make about bayonets when FISH (Fighting in Somebody's House) is that the C-7 is a long weapon for close quarters. You want to avoid exposing the barrel around the corner so that the enemy does not see it. With a bayonet attacked, this is harder, especially when you "bust a corner" (When you clear a corner with two men, one crouched and one standing). The crouched person has to have his weapon pointed downward so that it doesn't stick around the corner. To do this he has to lift the weapon and the barrel is only clearing the ground by a few inches maximum, clearly not enough room for a bayonet.

 

[Kal]

Hehe, this is what I've been waiting for.. The old silent bayonet. Never mind the gurgling sound you'd get from slashing a guy's throat, what about the screams from cutting him open? What's that, you're slashing his entire throat out? Oh, well what about when his lung full of air rushes out? It's no gunshot, true, but it's going to be plenty loud if you're trying that hard to be quiet. Or what about the guy that tries to go for the heart, only to discover that the bayonet doens't always fit between the ribs (think about it), causing your enemy to freak out, and not be dead? If you have to be silent, a bayonet would not be the prefered tool.

Good points, but I ask then, what would be the preferred tool?  Obviously the silenced weapon, but those are in short supply and not just any regular troop is going to have in issued to them, secondly, a silenced weapon is not exactly silent either, especially a silenced pistol.  That metal on metal racking of the slide isn't impossible to hear.  Going for the heart, that's okay, only that yeah the guy may have a vest and plates on, but say if he didn't, turning the blade over so that your thumb is on the flat side of the blade and stab at an upward angle bypassing the ribs, that may work, but even if you hit the heart, it's not guarented to drop him instantly anyways. 

Okay, so silenced weapon is good, but most of use won't see it, for now at least, the knife makes too much 'natural' body noises, so that's too loud.  What's next?  An impact weapon of some sort, I guess.  That would take a lot of training also seeing as if the guy has a helmet on one would have to strike across the jawline which is only a couple inches wide, and the only good tool for that would be a shovel or entrenching tool.  Next?  Bare hands?  Can be done, could break the guys neck, but that is going to have to be practiced the most to get it right and you're going to have to be very, very good at it. 

So what do we do then?  Can't get a silenced weapon, impact technique if im lucky enough to have a shovel and hit that small target, unarmed technique, but that needs loads of training time and an unskilled opponent, and highly skilled operator. Then there's the knife technique, well too much body noise and others aren't necessarily flawless anyways.  May as well not train any of them then and when needed call in the recce platoon or SF to get those silenced weapons.....

 

[Kal]

One point I would like to make about bayonets when FISH (Fighting in Somebody's House) is that the C-7 is a long weapon for close quarters. You want to avoid exposing the barrel around the corner so that the enemy does not see it. With a bayonet attacked, this is harder, especially when you "bust a corner" (When you clear a corner with two men, one crouched and one standing). The crouched person has to have his weapon pointed downward so that it doesn't stick around the corner. To do this he has to lift the weapon and the barrel is only clearing the ground by a few inches maximum, clearly not enough room for a bayonet.

This just comes back to knowing the environment you'll be fighting in, anyone that would want to fix a bayonet to an already full sized rifle shouldn't be fighting there in the first place, it's just unrealistic.  It isn't a wonder tool, nothing ever is, but we have to know it's pros and cons before we dismiss it out right though.