AMERICAN JUKENJUTSU - THE BAYONET SOCIETY: Study Guides
Note: These study guides are under construction. Last updates entered 2010-01-20.
I. BASIC KNOWLEDGE - Level 1 Examination
(1) General Principles of Bayonet Combat: The musket or rifle with the bayonet fixed is a fundamentally offensive weapon designed to be wielded by the individual soldier in close combat with the enemy. Defense is possible with the bayonet, but the ethos of the weapon is one of offense. On the battlefield soldiers defend with the bayonet against an attacking opponent when ammunition is exhausted or the enemy has closed to such a distance that firing the weapon is no longer practical. However, on the attack, the bayonet is a weapon of momentum and shock employed on the move even when it would be possible for the soldier to stop or slow and engage the opponent with fire. In addition, the bayonet has traditionally been employed as a weapon of surprise, especially in night attacks.
(2) The History and Basic Types of Bayonets: The bayonet originates with the need to solve the problem of how to mass firepower on the battlefield while at the same time protecting those who deliver that firepower. As the musket replaced the bow as the standard infantry projectile weapon in the 1500s, musketeers became increasingly important as the infantry's missile troops. However, muskets were slow to load and relatively inaccurate, and after one volley opponents armed with swords or hafted weapons (such as pikes or halberds) could close the distance before the musketeers could reload. As a result, the musketeers were very vulnerable, and required protection. The early solution was to cover musketeers with the large formations of pikemen that formed the shock mass of the infantry. However, this meant that you still needed to have large numbers of pikemen who had to actually close to thrusting distance to achieve success - and pike squares were very vulnerable to the evolving field artillery of the day.
At some point, and no one is sure when or where, the answer presented itself - jam the grip of a long knife in the muzzle of the musket and you convert the musketeer into a pikeman capable of defending himself against opposing swordsmen or cavalry. This was not as efficient a cold steel weapon as the pike, but it allowed more muskets to be put in the line of battle, and thus more firepower. These early plug bayonets appeared in the 1600s and were in general use by European armies by 1660. The source of the name Bayonet is unknown, but may derive from the French town of Bayonne, a center for the manufacture of edged weapons. This solution, elegant in its simplicity, had one major deficiency - once the bayonet was jammed in, the muzzle was plugged and the musket was now a short and inefficient pike, no longer a firearm.
The solution was to offset the blade so that a socket could hold the blade clear of the barrel, allowing the weapon to be loaded and fired with the bayonet fixed. This socket pattern bayonet was in general use in European armies by the early 1700s. Improvements to the socket mechanism increased the reliability of the weapon, and socket bayonets continued in general use in at least one army through World War II.
The problem with the socket bayonet was that it was just a bayonet - in this case a long thin metal weapon with a sharp point and dull sides, optimized for thrusting. It was rather ineffective used in any other way than on the end of a musket or rifle. The infantryman who needed a cutting weapon still had to carry some form of a short sword. To address this, in the early 1800s the sword bayonet appeared - an edged weapon for both cut and thrust fitted with an attachment that allowed it to serve as a bayonet or as an edged weapon in its own right. Sword bayonets varied in length; some were of sufficient length to serve as short swords, and all of them were at least large knives. However, the bigger the bayonet, the heavier it was, unbalancing the firearm and adding to the considerable weight the infantryman had to carry. And the realization set in that you did not need 18 inches of steel to inflict a convincing wound.
The final stage in evolution was the development of the knife bayonet, starting in the 1870s. These shorter bayonets were sufficient to do significant damage in combat, lighter, and more functional in other roles. The knife bayonet became the international standard after World War II, and bayonets are often designed as efficient field knives with a variety of functional features, such as wire cutters.
Throughout this history, there have been a wide variety of variant approaches to the bayonet. In some cases armies have gone backwards in time in design concepts; the adoption of spike bayonets, for example, is a reversion to the basic socket bayonet design. In other cases there have been attempts to make the bayonet serve in a variety of roles - one of the favorite has been the search for a combined bayonet and entrenching tool. However, regardless of design variants the bayonet has always remained a cold steel thrusting weapon true to the original concept of the 1600s.
(3) Bayonet Targets
(4) Safety
II. ADVANCED KNOWLEDGE - Level 5 Examination
(1) The History of the Bayonet
(2) General Principles of Bayonet Combat
(3) Bayonet Targets
(4) The Characteristics of Bayonet Injuries: The available data on the incidence of bayonet injuries in combat is limited. At the battle of Inkerman in the Crimean War one regiment, the Scotts Fusilier Guards, reported that of 120 severe and slight wounds, the bayonet accounted for 7 (approximately 6%) (see William Barwick Hodge's paper "On the Mortality arising from Military Operations" in Volume 19 of The Journal of the Statistical Society of London, 1856). Inkerman was noteworthy in that both the British and Russian reports of the battle stressed the desperate nature of the bayonet fighting. However, the low rate of injury appears consistent in general with casualties from edged weapons (including the sword and lance) in that war.
French data from the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 reports approximately 600 bayonet wounds of 98,000 total combat wounds. The percentage of bayonet injuries was noted in the Balkan Wars prior to World War I to have reached as high as 10 percent of combat wounds. A French military medical manual of 1915 (Edmond Delorme's War Surgery, published in English in 1915 by Paul B. Hoeber, New York) suggests that in the 1914-1915 period of World War I bayonet wounds accounted for approximately 5% of combat wounds.
Complicating the difficulty of establishing the effectiveness of the bayonet as a weapon is the probability that many bayonet wounds were fatal, due to the combination of significant blood loss, other wounds, rudimentary field first aid throughout much of the period, and delayed access to definitive treatment under combat conditions. Such deaths were reported as combat deaths, but the percentage of these deaths attributable to bayonet wounds is not generally reported. Anecdotes suggest the weapon is effective - for example, in a reported bayonet charge during a convoy ambush in the prolonged second war in Iraq in 2004, soldiers of the Argyl and Sutherland Highlanders and the Princess of Wales Regiment are reported to have killed 20 (of between 28 and 35 militia men killed) in close combat, including with the bayonet.
Bayonet wounds are primarily puncture wounds delivered with the stabbing motion of the thrust. The thrust with bayonets with sharpened edges can also be expected to inflict slicing incision injuries as it passes through the tissues of the body. The size and pattern of the blade determines the size of the wound, although even wounds with a narrow spike bayonet are potentially fatal. Bayonets with serrated back edges can be expected to lacerate tissue as well as to slice. With sword bayonets or the knife pattern bayonets in common modern use, a substantial number of bayonet injuries may be expected to be incision wounds on the surface from slashes with the blade. The primary areas of injury with the point thrust prior to 1915 were the abdomen and upper leg, although training from World War I forward also emphasized thrusts to the throat. Slash injuries can be expected to be primarily head, neck, torso, and arm injuries.
Wounds with any of these weapons can have three significant effects: (1) loss of function in the injured part, including loss of organ function, and the spilling of organ contents into the abdomen, (2) massive blood loss, and (3) the type of combination of systemic physiological impact (shock) with psychological impact found in any significant stab wound. Although the opponent may continue to fight, his or her effectiveness will be significantly degraded, and if the bayonet severs major blood vessels the opponent may die within 3 to 5 minutes from exsanguination.
(5) Individual and Small Unit Tactics
(6) Safety
(7) Equipment Maintenance.
III. INSTRUCTOR - Level 7 Examination
(1) The History of the Bayonet
(2) General Principles of Bayonet Combat
(3) Bayonet Targets
(4) The Characteristics of Bayonet Injuries: The available data on the incidence of bayonet injuries in combat is limited. At the battle of Inkerman in the Crimean War one regiment, the Scotts Fusilier Guards, reported that of 120 severe and slight wounds, the bayonet accounted for 7 (approximately 6%) (see William Barwick Hodge's paper "On the Mortality arising from Military Operations" in Volume 19 of The Journal of the Statistical Society of London, 1856). Inkerman was noteworthy in that both the British and Russian reports of the battle stressed the desperate nature of the bayonet fighting. However, the low rate of injury appears consistent in general with casualties from edged weapons (including the sword and lance) in that war.
French data from the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 reports approximately 600 bayonet wounds of 98,000 total combat wounds. The percentage of bayonet injuries was noted in the Balkan Wars prior to World War I to have reached as high as 10 percent of combat wounds. A French military medical manual of 1915 (Edmond Delorme's War Surgery, published in English in 1915 by Paul B. Hoeber, New York) suggests that in the 1914-1915 period of World War I bayonet wounds accounted for approximately 5% of combat wounds.
Complicating the difficulty of establishing the effectiveness of the bayonet as a weapon is the probability that many bayonet wounds were fatal, due to the combination of significant blood loss, other wounds, rudimentary field first aid throughout much of the period, and delayed access to definitive treatment under combat conditions. Such deaths were reported as combat deaths, but the percentage of these deaths attributable to bayonet wounds is not generally reported. Anecdotes suggest the weapon is effective - for example, in a reported bayonet charge during a convoy ambush in the prolonged second war in Iraq in 2004, soldiers of the Argyl and Sutherland Highlanders and the Princess of Wales Regiment are reported to have killed 20 (of between 28 and 35 militia men killed) in close combat, including with the bayonet.
Bayonet wounds are primarily puncture wounds delivered with the stabbing motion of the thrust. The thrust with bayonets with sharpened edges can also be expected to inflict slicing incision injuries as it passes through the tissues of the body. The size and pattern of the blade determines the size of the wound, although even wounds with a narrow spike bayonet are potentially fatal. Bayonets with serrated back edges can be expected to lacerate tissue as well as to slice. With sword bayonets or the knife pattern bayonets in common modern use, a substantial number of bayonet injuries may be expected to be incision wounds on the surface from slashes with the blade. The primary areas of injury with the point thrust prior to 1915 were the abdomen and upper leg, although training from World War I forward also emphasized thrusts to the throat. Slash injuries can be expected to be primarily head, neck, torso, and arm injuries.
Wounds with any of these weapons can have three significant effects: (1) loss of function in the injured part, including loss of organ function, and the spilling of organ contents into the abdomen, (2) massive blood loss, and (3) the type of combination of systemic physiological impact (shock) with psychological impact found in any significant stab wound. Although the opponent may continue to fight, his or her effectiveness will be significantly degraded, and if the bayonet severs major blood vessels the opponent may die within 3 to 5 minutes from exsanguination.
(5) Individual and Small Unit Tactics
(6) Safety
(7) Equipment Maintenance
(8) Principles of Individual Lessons and Group Instruction
(9) Methods of Bayonet Competition
(10) Design of Training Programs
(11) Risk Management.