Bayonet
A bayonet is a knife, dagger, sword, or spike-shaped melee weapon designed to be mounted on the end of the barrel of a rifle, carbine, musket or similar long firearm, allowing the gun to be effectively used as a spear in close combat.
The term is derived from the town of Bayonne in southwestern France, where bayonets were supposedly first used by Basques in the 17th century. From the early 17th to the early 20th century, it was an infantry melee weapon used for both offensive and defensive tactics, usually when charging in mass formations. In contemporary times, bayonets are considered a weapon of last resort, and are rarely used in combat, although they are still used for ceremonial purposes.
History
The term bayonette itself dates back to the 16th century, but it is not clear whether bayonets at the time were knives that could be fitted to the ends of firearms, or simply a type of knife.For example, Cotgrave's 1611 Dictionarie describes the bayonet as "a kind of small flat pocket dagger, furnished with knives; or a great knife to hang at the girdle".
Likewise, Pierre Borel wrote in 1655 that a kind of long-knife called a bayonette was made in Bayonne but does not give any further description.
There are some accounts that place the invention of the bayonet in either France or Germany as early as 1570.
Plug bayonets
The first recorded instance of a bayonet proper is found in the Chinese military treatise, published in 1606. It was in the form of the, a breech-loading musket that was issued with a roughly long plug bayonet, giving it an overall length of with the bayonet attached. It was labelled as a "gun-knife" with it being described as a "short sword that can be inserted into the barrel and secured by twisting it slightly" that it is to be used "when the battle have depleted both gunpowder and bullets as well as fighting against bandits, when forces are closing into melee or encountering an ambush" and if one "cannot load the gun within the time it takes to cover two bu of ground they are to attach the bayonet and hold it like a spear".Early bayonets were of the "plug" type, where the bayonet was fitted directly into the barrel of the musket. This allowed light infantry to be converted to heavy infantry and hold off cavalry charges.
The bayonet had a round handle that slid directly into the musket barrel. This naturally prevented the gun from being fired.
The first known mention of the use of bayonets in European warfare was in the memoirs of Jacques de Chastenet, Vicomte de Puységur. He described the French using crude plug bayonets during the Thirty Years' War.
However, it was not until 1671 that General Jean Martinet standardized and issued plug bayonets to the French regiment of fusiliers then raised. They were issued to part of an English dragoon regiment raised in 1672, and to the Royal Fusiliers when raised in 1685.
Socket bayonets
The major problem with plug bayonets was that when attached they made it impossible to fire the musket, requiring soldiers to wait until the last possible moment before a melee to fix the bayonet.The defeat of forces loyal to William of Orange by Jacobite Highlanders at the Battle of Killiecrankie in 1689 was due to the use of the plug bayonet. The Highlanders closed to, fired a single volley, dropped their muskets, and using axes and swords quickly overwhelmed the loyalists before they had time to fix bayonets. Shortly thereafter, the defeated leader, Hugh Mackay, is believed to have introduced a socket bayonet of his own invention.
Soon "socket" bayonets would incorporate both socket mounts and an offset blade that fit around the musket's barrel, which allowed the musket to be fired and reloaded while the bayonet was attached.
An unsuccessful trial with socket or zigzag 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 the Peace of Ryswick, the English and Germans abolished the pike and introduced socket bayonets.
The British socket bayonet had a spike with a triangular cross-section rather than a flat blade, with a flat side towards the muzzle and two fluted sides outermost to a length of. It had no lock to keep it fast to the muzzle, and was well-documented for falling off in the heat of battle.
By the mid-18th century, socket bayonets had been adopted by most European armies. In 1703, the French infantry adopted a spring-loaded locking system that prevented the bayonet from accidentally separating from the musket.
A triangular blade was introduced around 1715 and was stronger than the previous single or double-edged model.
Sword bayonets
The 18th century introduced the concept of the sword bayonet, a long-bladed weapon with a single- or double-edged blade that could also be used as a shortsword.Its initial purpose was to ensure that riflemen could form an infantry square properly to fend off cavalry attacks when in ranks with musketmen, whose weapons were longer. A prime early example of a sword bayonet-fitted rifle is the Pattern 1800 Infantry Rifle, later known as the "Baker Rifle".
Sword bayonets were used by German Jagers in the 18th century. The hilt usually had quillons modified to accommodate the gun barrel and a hilt mechanism that enabled the bayonet to be attached to a bayonet lug.
A sword bayonet could be used in combat as a sidearm, when detached from the musket or rifle. When the bayonet was attached to the musket or rifle, it effectively turned all long guns into a spear or glaive, which made it suitable for both thrusting and cutting attacks.
While the British Army eventually discarded the sword bayonet, the socket bayonet survived the introduction of the rifled musket into British service in 1854. The new rifled musket copied the French locking ring system.
The new bayonet proved its worth at the Battle of Alma and the Battle of Inkerman during the Crimean War, where the Imperial Russian Army learned to fear it.
In the 1860s, European nations began to develop new bolt-action breechloading rifles and sword bayonets suitable for mass production and used by police, pioneer, and engineer troops.
The decision to redesign the bayonet into a short sword 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. British magazine Punch wrote that "the committee, in recommending this new sword bayonet, appear to have had in view the fact that bayonets will henceforth be less frequently used than in former times as a weapon of offence and defence; they desired, therefore, to substitute an instrument of more general utility."
Multipurpose bayonets
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 general-purpose 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, as well as for butchering livestock.
It was initially adopted by the German states in 1865; until the middle of WWI approximately 5% of every bayonet style was complemented with a sawback version, for example in Belgium in 1868, Great Britain in 1869 and Switzerland in 1878.
The original sawback bayonets were typically of the heavy sword-type, they were issued to engineers, with to some extent the bayonet aspect being secondary to the "tool" aspect.
Later German sawbacks were more of a rank indicator than a functional saw. Generally, an average of 6% of all bayonets were sawbacks for non-commissioned officers. There were some exceptions, such as the kurzes Seitengewehr 1898 model, all of which were of the sawback design and meant for what was considered more prestigious units, such as machine gunners, telegraph troop and colonial troops.
The sawback proved relatively ineffective as a cutting tool, and was soon outmoded by improvements in military logistics and transportation; most nations dropped the sawback feature by the early 20th century.
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.
In 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 stone chimneys for winter quarters; sharpened on one edge, it could cut tent poles and pins. Ten thousand were eventually issued, and the design saw service during the 1877 Nez Perce campaign. Rice was given leave in 1877 to demonstrate his trowel bayonet to several nations in Europe.
One infantry officer recommended it to the exclusion of all other designs, noting that "the entrenching tools of an army rarely get up to the front until the exigency for their use has passed." The Rice trowel bayonet was declared obsolete by the US Army in December 1881.
Contemporary bayonets
Today, the bayonet is rarely used in one-to-one combat.Despite its limitations, many modern assault rifles retain a bayonet lug and the bayonet is issued by many armies. The bayonet is used for controlling prisoners, or as a weapon of last resort.
In addition, some authorities have concluded that the bayonet serves as a useful training aid in building morale and increasing desired aggressiveness in troops.
Today's bayonets often double as multi-purpose utility knives, bottle openers or other tools. Issuing one modern multi-purpose bayonet/knife is also more cost effective than issuing separate speciality bayonets, and field or combat knives.