Talk:Bayonet

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[edit] Some bayonets outlawed?

There is a claim (added by WojPob way back in Oct 2002) on this page that some types of bayonet are outlawed by the "Geneva Accords on Humane Warfare", which are mentioned nowhere else on the web. This sounds an awful lot like the similiar myth about shot guns and .50 cal ammo being illegal in war. Can anyone provide a confirmation of this rule, preferably with links to the text of the document? - JanSöderback 13:08, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

There is no such prohibition in any of the laws of war. The Hague Conventions explicitly prohibit fragmenting or expanding bullets, poison, and asphyxiating gases. It is also forbidden "To employ arms, projectiles, or material of a nature to cause superfluous injury." The Geneva Conventions do not ban classes of conventional weapons, to the best of my knowledge. That's it.--ArminTamzarian 02:11, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
I think I had read something similar in All Quiet on the Western Front about serrated bayonets. These can arguably be understood as being covered by Art. 22. (e) "To employ arms, projectiles, or material calculated to cause unnecessary suffering;" of Chapter I of the Hague Convention of 1907 [1]. If we have strong clues that it is not the case, it would anyway be appropriate to mention it. Rama 13:07, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
As I recall, the replacements were advised not to serrate their bayonets because they would be killed if captured with them. It had nothing to do with treaties on war.--ArminTamzarian 22:49, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Ive read about german soldiers using serrated bayonets during world war one and if british forces caught germans with those types of blades they would be executed straight away because of the injuries they would cause. The germans knew what would happen to them if they where caught with the serrated blades so more experienced german soldiers threw them away and got different bayonets. i had to do an exam on this when i was 14. also from what i know about the shotgun it was never banned but the german high command asked for it to be banned at some point.Corustar 01:53, 12 July 2006 (UTC) its sort of like the story of soldiers cutting a cross into there bullets to make them splinter when they hit if that is discovered a soldier can be put up for war crimes and that sort of law.Corustar 02:00, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Sawback bayonets were manufactured that way. Soldiers didn't cut the sawteeth themselves. If you've ever held one in your hand (I own several), there would be no doubt in your mind. The machining of the sawteeth is very intricate and precise. Sawback bayonets served two purposes: 1) they were a traditional German status symbol issued to NCO's and 2) for what everybody uses a saw for, to cut wood (e.g., machinegun crews used them to clear vegetation when emplacing their guns). During WW I, sawback bayonets were the subject of negative press coverage and the German government elected to remove the sawteeth from some bayonets to quell the press attention. However, many sawback bayonets survived the war intact. Switzerland also used sawback bayonets, issuing them to troops well into the 1950's. All of the talk about cruelty, war crimes, and executions is hooey. Regarding use of shotguns in combat, the US used them in combat during WW I, WW II, Korea, Vietnam, and are using them today in Iraq. No other country has made significant use of shotguns in combat, except the US. Marysdad 04:05, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

I thought the authorized use of shotguns was for guarding prisoners, with incidental use also in trench and jungle warfare (World War I, the Pacific in World War II, Vietnam) by individuals who found them useful in those conditions.Michael DoroshTalk 04:26, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
Shotguns today are employed more as a breaching tool than a weapon. They're used for taking out door locks and hinges. In my unit the Breacher (man with the shotgun) carries both his shotgun and his rifle in combat because the shotgun is limited as a weapon, due to it's short range and small magazine. The Army today uses the Mossberg 500 and also the older M97 shotguns. The Marine Corps uses a Mossberg 590. The bad rap sawback bayonets got was mostly due to clever American propaganda. Serrated or not the fact about a bayonet is that you're going to get stabbed one way or the other. The Army's current issue M9 bayonet features a sawback and the Marines OKC3S is partially serated. Here's a good article on it from [www.firstworldwar.com]
"Notoriously, the German army produced a 'saw-back' blade that, as its name suggests, gave the appearance of a saw with its double row of teeth on the back edge.
Produced chiefly for use by engineering units for specific tasks, the saw-back blade proved a blessing for Allied propaganda purposes. Keen to represent the Germans as ruthless, blood-thirsty 'Huns', the popular press widely propagated the notion that this type of bayonet had been specifically developed as a refinement of German brutality for use in close combat.
Although it could doubtless be put to such use, it was actually designed to be used as a saw when the need arose."
Ultratone85 08:08, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
see Combat shotgun.Geni 16:48, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fuller =/ blood groove

"it also allows air into the wound it produces, breaking the vacuum and making the bayonet easier to withdraw after a stabbing attack with it and less prone to getting stuck in the wound." Actually the above is partially false. There is no "vacuum" effect. A fuller serves to lighten and stiffen the blade but has no effect on the ease with which is can be removed from a body. See http://www.agrussell.com/knife_information/knife_encyclopedia/articles/blood_groove.html for a more detailed discussion. Hopefully someone with more Wikipedia savvy than I will clean this up and put the link in an appropriate external links section. --4.19.249.110, 19:38, 30 Dec 2004 (copied from article & history)

I've made the requested changes.--Polyparadigm 03:53, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Dissadvantages.

someone needs to add the dissadvantages of bayonets, such as the loss of zero. I would , but I would probbably butcher it in the process. Kudos to whoever put up a pic of the new marine bayonet. --Knife Knut 05:11, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Length of muskets

At time of writing, the article includes the following text:

A foot long bayonet, extending to a regulation 17 inches (approx 43 centimetres) during the Napoleonic period, on a 6 foot (almost 2 metre) tall musket achieved a reach similar to the infantry spear, and later halberd, of earlier times.

Aside from the awkward phrasing, were any regular army muskets actually 6 feet long?The Charleville musket is said to have been five feet long, but a 6-footer would be really slow to load. Can anybody provide a cite.

As you say, a six-foot musket would have been a bugger to load, and I'm satisfied that no such arm existed in a regular army. The only possibility would be the muskets traded with native people in North America, where the going rate was a stack of skins as tall as the weapon and so the weapons got longer to get a better price. On the other hand, I don't know exactly how long a napoleonic musket would have been, and it's not crucial to the meaning of the sentence, so I'll leave it for now. PeteVerdon 12:33, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Bayonet against body armor in modern warfare

In modern warfare, when body armor is so important in combat, wouldn't it be hard for soldiers to engage in hand-to-hand combat using bayonets when considering that the body armor both sides are likely wearing are built to stop even bullets? Taken this in to account, I don't see how bayonets are still useful as hand-to-hand combat weapons.--Ryz05 02:01, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Not all pats of the body are armored, nor are all fighters armored. The bullet proof vest is exactly that, a vest - something that only covers the chest. Helmets dont cover the entire face. If one can manage to bayonett someone in the arms, throat, face, legs or the crotch, you can badly hurt or even kill someone. Does anyone know how much more usefull a bayonett would be rather then just useing the knife? Eds01 03:25, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

More to the point, most soft body armor provides almost no protection against a stiff blade, such as a bayonet or large fighting knife. Surprising, I know, but aramid fibers like kevlar or dyneema work by "catching" a bullet with a network of fibers of very high tensile strength, which then allows the bullet to deform without passing through the armor. (Of course, this does nothing for the effects of blunt trauma, which is the impetus for so-called "trauma plates") A stiff blade point, in contrast to a cylindro-conical bullet, travels at an immensely slower speed and tends to spread apart fibers and slip through, or, alternatively it may cut through the fibers owing to: first, the fibers' much lower strength in shear, and the incredibly small surface area of the blade, leading to incredibly high PSI. Even if you doubt my explanation, simply look at the warning label on practically any piece of body armor; while it may well give, say a NIJ ballistic threat rating, it invariably warns that it is inneffective against blades and other sharp objects. Prison gurds, for example, wear vests that are entirely different than ballistic armoer for this very reason--they see a lot of shanks, but very few pistols. (Also, note that this explanation neglects hard inserts to body armor, which do offer significant protection against bladed weapons over their small surface areas.Reimelt 06:14, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

UK police forces have taken to wearing stab proof vests as a part of their uniforms.Corustar 13:32, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Paragraph badly interuping flow of the article

"In former times bayonets were sometimes used in sport shooting to finish off wounded animals: one old German word for "bayonet" meant "deer-knife"." I'm removing it for now, but leaving it here so if another editor can find a better place in the article for this, have at it. 64.241.37.140 23:57, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rate of fire of muskets

The article currently says (under "History") that: "The early muskets fired at a slow rate (about a round per minute when loading with loose powder and ball), and were unreliable.". This may be true if loading with loose powder from a powder flask, measuring the powder, wrapping bullet in wadding etc, but certainly by the 18th military musket drill relied upon the paper cartridge, with the correct amount of powder measured, easy to obtain with the ball and the cartridge paper used as wadding. The wikipedia article "musket" itself says that trained soldiers could fire around 3 shots a minute this way, 4 if they were very well trained and experienced. Its only a minor quibble, and the point of the section - that muskets were slow-firing enough that a bayonet charge was possible, whereas a bayonet charge over any distance against an enemy armed with breech loading or repeating rifles became suicidal- is still true, but i feel we should probably alter the sentence to conform to whats said elsewhere about musket firing rates.

Have gone ahead and altered the article very slightly as there has been no response to this for more than a month.

82.20.244.207 20:11, 10 August 2006 (UTC)Ian, 08.10.06

[edit] Bayoneteers

What are Bayoneteers? -- 172.182.10.5 09:50, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AK bayonet ideas in US bayonet

Wire cutter in the US bayonets is copy of USSR AK bayonet. Should that be in this text?

(I mean this idea, picture is bad, blade is upside down:) http://www.chicom47.net/Pics/RareRed.jpg

some bayonet information via britannica: http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/BAR_BEC/BAYONET.html


Mak 21.1.2008