bayonets of quality

J

John Trout

Joined
Jul 30, 2004
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315
Maybe this question is too broad, but in general what countries made the highest quality ww2 bayonets? What models were good? Germany? US? Someone else? Are some countries' bayonets total junk? Thanks guys...
 
Like the infantry rifles they augmented, no industrialized nation during the war equipped its men with blatant garbage.
Early German bayonettes were nice but wastefully overfinished. At the other end of the spectrum, British spike bayonettes were cheap, crude and tough. All did their job.
 
I think that they design features are much more diverse than bayonet quality. I would look for designs that you find interesting. The Mauser bayonets I have seen were all rather tough, with a metal framed handle, but seem a little light for their size. I sawed the 12" blade off of one and used it as a throwing knife for years. The Garand bayonet is heavier for its size and pretty tough. The US carbine bayonet was shorter and lighter and used a stacked leather handle that was subject to bending if you threw it (are you detecting my testing method?).

The softest bayonet I played with was also my favorite toy. In 1938 the Italians decided that they wanted to be able to fold their detachable bayonet under the barrel of the Carcano carbine the same way that you could fold the bayonet that was integral to earlier carbines. This bayonet only has about a 7-inch blade and is reduced to about a 3-inch blade when folded. If you trim off the mounting ring it makes a good camp/hunting knife, but the blade is real soft.
 
Those old Swedish Mauser bayonets used some pretty good steel. Of course, the all metal sheath didn't help with the edge holding though.
 
Danbo said:
Those old Swedish Mauser bayonets used some pretty good steel. Of course, the all metal sheath didn't help with the edge holding though.
Click to expand...
I have one of these. Very hard steel, hard to sharpen. Hollow handle.
 
Bayonet collecting is a very interesting field. Within a short 300 years, the bayonet makers tested just about every edged weapon and tool ever made, and their develoment walks hand in hand with the evolution of modern warfare. In general, the bayonets from the 19th century are the most evolved, while some of the better privately purchased 17 and 18th century examples were aristocratic works of art.

I have a few bayonets listed on my home page. Let me know if any of them look like what you are interested in and I will try to get some more information for you.

http://home.bellsouth.net/p/s/community.dll?ep=87&subpageid=47653&ck=

You can find just about any edge weapons design mounted at the end of a rifle during the 19th century; the global military experimented with roman swords, entrenching shovels, bowies, machetes, epees, and just about everything else. This was back when mass formations were still marching in set piece battlefields, and the infantry line was still trying to deny the ground to mounted calvary. After the US Civil War, the military establishment begins to realize that industrialization and mass mobilization has forever changed the face of battle; as a result we see the bayonet and other edged weapons begin their decline into obsolesecence. By the First World War the bayonets are around 6 inches shorter then they use to be; they shrink yet another 6 inches by the second World War, and yet another 2 inches since then.

The quality is usually good. There were some case hardened military gear which was found to be faulty in the field, but these were fairly notorious and wouldn't survive for very long. Most of them are made from simple carbon tool steel and heat treated for thoughness. The handles were design to sustain very high levels of stress and usually had very large oversized tangs, with brass, wood, alloyed, or pressed leather scales.

It is a very interesting field; especially if you enjoy military history.

n2s
 
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