Now that's a bayonet

[MOC031]

"it recognized that the ways and tactics of war were already changing by the end of WWII."

That is the general thinking. However, when it comes down to that most elite club, the last 100 yards of the battlefield, not very much has changed.

Being a member of that hardly exclusive and not elite club, and also having taught FIBUA/MOUT or whatever you want to call it as recently as 2016, I generally agree with most of what you posted. But very much disagree that not much has changed; it has changed a fair bit since I joined in 1985 to when I retired.

You are correct that there is still very good reason to continue to have the ability to affix a sharp pointy object to the end of a bang stick. We are increasingly training troops we expect to be likely to be doing house clearing to draw their pistol if they fire their rifle to slide lock or have a FTF/FTE. BUT, we have yet to arm every designed hajji killer with a sidearm as well as their rifle.

As far as that goes, if that fight happens inside a place the size of a grape hut in Afghanistan and your rifle malfunctions, the most likely way to survive that fight when you're at spitting distance is to immediately go mad gorilla with what you already have in your hands - your rifle, with or without bayonet.

And yes, you can beat the hell out of something with an M16/M4 and it will not shatter like your Gramma's fine china. It may not take to it as well or as many times as a Lee Enfield, a Garand, or an FN SLR - but the gun plumbers will give you another one.

But tactics like stacking and then mouseholing with water charges and other innovations, fighting down from the top instead of fighting up from the bottom... there is a continuing evolution to make winning that fight less costly.

I expect, and will not be surprised, to see a day in the near future where urban ops house clearing is done via an infantryman carrying a lunchbox sized box containing a small swarm of tiny drones, each just big enough to carry enough explosives to kill an enemy combatant - and the technology to recognize and sort armed combatants from civilians within that structure without control of external operators.

But that infantryman will still be carrying a bayonet - and his rifle will still have the bayonet lugs that allow for it to be mounted. Unless some penny pinching geniuses like the ones that decided the F4 Phantom didn't need a cannon in the age of nukes and rockets gets involved.

[Larry Gibson]

There is nothing new about "going gorilla" with whatever you have, that has been done for eons. Many of us disagree with "stacking' which is a way to minimize property damage and/or potential collateral damage at the expense of your own casualties. Much better/safer [but not always permitted] is to blow mouseholes or use grenades before entry. The "stack" also is not new but an adaptation of police technique where mouseholes can't be blown or grenades used. Unfortunately, that leads to unnecessary casualties.

The concept of clearing building from the top down is also not new. The problem is getting on the top and then gaining entrance. Thus, most often buildings are cleared from the bottom up. Nothing new to that before WWII and/or after.

BTW, I not only trained in MOUT and CQB but did in fact execute that raining as I served in 2 wars and numerous other "places" during my 42 years of service. I also contracted for 3 years after retirement facilitating realistic training with realistic pyro and role players for Marines, Army and Seabee's at numerous MOUT and other training locations. That last 100 yards of a true battlefield is indeed an elite club. Just having served and trained does not get you into the club. However, please don't get me wrong or get offended, your service is very much appreciated and respected.

[challenger_i]

I always preferred clearing a building with a 500# HE, but that is just me. Blame it on my Aviation background...

[Adam Helmer]

Yes, the bayonet will always have its applications. Most vets I talked to from WWII never bayoneted a Kraut. All said they could, and did, shoot a fellow soldier, but did not have the grit to stab them. Whatever.

My studies of Civil War casualties disclosed very few bayonet wounds. Most bayonet wounds were fatal per medical documents, so were not listed on medical wound treatment records. Most close encounter wounds were listed as a result of "clubbed muskets." I collect bayonets and like the history they represent.

Be well.

Adam

[Larry Gibson]

If one were to read the actual first hand [I have] accounts of many other contemporary battles such as Asandlwana, Rourke's Drift and many others you will find the use of the bayonet was frequent.

[challenger_i]

How does that saying go? "Remain calm, and FIX BAYONETS!"

[MOC031]

Many of us disagree with "stacking' which is a way to minimize property damage and/or potential collateral damage at the expense of your own casualties.

I was never taught, nor did I ever teach, that the idea behind stacking for an entry was to minimize property damage on a battlefield. Or potential collateral damage. It was always about minimizing OUR casualties.

Much better/safer [but not always permitted] is to blow mouseholes or use grenades before entry. The "stack" also is not new but an adaptation of police technique where mouseholes can't be blown or grenades used.

Creating mouseholes is what the stack expects to go through. And generally the only reason to not simply flatten the building is there's something inside that there is either strategic or tactical value to leaving intact. Police might have to use doorways, we don't.

Nor is mouseholing an adaption of a police technique: the Canadians were using mouseholing techniques when they fought German paratroopers house to house in Ortona in WWII. The Brits were doing the same with PIATs during Marketgarden, and probably elsewhere. I would not be surprised if the Germans vs. Russians were doing the same over in Stalingrad on the Eastern Front. Ditto pretty much every military in that conflict; infantry are never shy about copying what works and avoiding repeating what doesn't.

That was long before there was ever any such thing as a police SWAT team. The formative years of the first SWAT teams in Los Angeles probably had a fair amount of input from military veterans when some urban situations started resembling military battlefields.

That last 100 yards of a true battlefield is indeed an elite club. Just having served and trained does not get you into the club. However, please don't get me wrong or get offended, your service is very much appreciated and respected.

Please don't get me wrong, but if it's an elite club, it sure has a lot of members getting admittance over the last 20 years. And I very much appreciate and respect your service for being there beside the rest of us in that club.

[challenger_i]

Front line grunts are VERY MUCH the "Elite Club". Aviation takes a bit of fire, Arty has to deal with counter-battery fire, but the grunts are, quite frankly, at the very forefront of the "Sharp End". I'll buy'em a beer any time, no coin needed.

[Larry Gibson]

Front line grunts are VERY MUCH the "Elite Club". Aviation takes a bit of fire, Arty has to deal with counter-battery fire, but the grunts are, quite frankly, at the very forefront of the "Sharp End". I'll buy'em a beer any time, no coin needed.

Exactly........"the last hundred yards of the battlefield" is synonymous to those who actually attack/defend on the ground.

MOC031

Because you weren't taught it doesn't mean it isn't so. Consider you were only told what they wanted you to know. I've watched many a "stack" in training and for real, and all except in one instance, they went in through a door. If one is going through a door, the stack when properly executed is, indeed, the best was to minimize casualties. The point is, going through a door has you channelized in a kill zone the enemy [if trained] is well aware of and is probably expecting you to come through.

That one instance was back in the mid '80s I was working with the Australian SAS. I watched the Squadron on counter terrorist duty take down a build [in training] blowing a mouse hole and ground team entering there, two going through top floor windows off rope on moving helicopter and two more onto the roof all at the same time. Building was "secured" with hostage rescue and all terrorists "sorted out" in very little time. It was live fire also.

In '07 - '10 I facilitated the training of thousands of Marines, Soldiers and Seabee's. Never once, not even a single time did any of them discuss or consider a mouse hole during MOUT. They all formed "stack" and went through doors just as trained to do. My role players "killed" many of them and could have killed them all but we were there for training, not to win. When I was in Iraq thousands, more probably millions, of dollars were paid to hadji for "damage" to their buildings. Thus orders were not to shot at the buildings, mud walls or otherwise damage them, entries were to be made through doorways......

That scenario was with a small group of enemy in a known fixed location. The tactics were well planned and executed. Quite different is that last hundred yards of the battlefield where there is little if any time for such planning and resourcing. The situation is very fluid because the enemy has their own plans. the "grunt" must make decisions react instantly based on what he has right then and there.

[fgd135]

It's well documented that soldiers in WW1, on both sides of the Western Front, preferred sharpened entrenching tools and clubs as melee weapons over bayonets. Long bayonets on long rifles of the day, designed in the 19th C to hold off cavalry charges, were difficult and awkward to use in trenches, regardless of what movies you're watched. This was one of the reasons that the US incorporated trench shotguns into infantry units; handy, devastating at short range, and yes, they had bayonets, too, but bayonets were actually used as much for collecting and guarding, escorting POW's as anything else.
The need for more useful, shorter bayonets, in cqb, was one of the lessons learned in WW1, at least by the US and a few other nations, Germany, for example, even the Italians. Into WW2, US bayonets were either being shortened from existing models, or manufactured as shorter weapons compared to the long bayonets of earlier eras.

No one has mentioned yet that Russian rifles, first Berdans, and later most models of Russian Mosin Nagants, were sighted in at the factories with their bayonets fixed, and carried that way, as it was their tactical doctrine even into WW2.
Japan, too, fought with the bayonet as a very important weapon thruout WW2.

[challenger_i]

Is why the U.S. Army adopted, and fielded, the M1917 (M97 Winchester) Trench Gun. Talk about clearing a trench! As far as I know, the only U.S. implement of war the Germans (you know, the guys that gave us Phosgene gas and the flame thrower!) cried foul and petitioned to have outlawed as inhumane, and a violation of the Rules of War...
As far as the bayonet not being useful in the trenches, the French would argue that point. During the Battle of Verdun, there are several recorded incidents where German attacks on French lines were effectively repelled by the poilus standing shoulder to shoulder and presenting a forest of Cold Steel to the German infantry coming over the parapet. As for the entrenching tool being a melee weapon, there are many Nam Vets that will attest to its usefulness in close-quarters unpleasantness.

[Larry Gibson]

"Is why the U.S. Army adopted, and fielded, the M1917 (M97 Winchester) Trench Gun."

Yes, and it also had sturdy provision for attachment of a bayonet.

"As far as the bayonet not being useful in the trenches, the French would argue that point. During the Battle of Verdun, there are several recorded incidents where German attacks on French lines were effectively repelled by the poilus standing shoulder to shoulder and presenting a forest of Cold Steel to the German infantry coming over the parapet."

Indeed! There were many instances during WWI of bayonet use.

"As for the entrenching tool being a melee weapon, there are many Nam Vets that will attest to its usefulness in close-quarters unpleasantness."

In the mid and later parts of our involvement in the late SE Asian festivities the bayonet on the M16 was disdained by command as it was believed the M16 was strong enough for the use of the bayonet. While an E tool can be a formidable weapon in the actual heat of CQG trying to uncase one to use or finding one laying around is not nearly as fast or as deadly as already having a bayonet on the end of your rifle.

However, earlier the bayonet, affixed to M14 and M16, was used several times that I know of. Charlie and Nathanial also came at us with bayonets fixed on their MN rifles and Type 53s, their SKSs and their AKs. I have firsthand knowledge of such on two separate battles occurring on November 8th '65 and March 16th '66.