Fairbairn Fighting Knife

[Rick Leeson]

Reading "Kill or Get Killed" by Rex Applegate and the book includes a technical drawing with demensions of the original World War II commando knife. What people are calling Fairbairn Fighters today don't have much in common with the originals. Book can be gotten through an interlibrary loan request if your local library doesn't have it. Also, book is still in print at about $40 bucks.

 

[Medic1210]

I'm sure there is some good info in that book, but I saw one of Fairbairn's books on killing (might have been that one), where it gave certain vital targets and estimated times to death or unconsciousness. These times are a crock of BS for the most part. If I remember right, cutting someone's carotid will lead to unconsciousness/death in a matter of seconds. I hope that you don't rely on those times, expecting the bad guy to be incapacitated in a matter of seconds by slicing one of his carotids. First off, don't forget that people have a carotid artery on both sides of their neck, and cutting one only slows blood flow to the brain. It can take well over a minute or two for someone to exanguinate (bleed out) from a lacerated carotid. Far from the 3 seconds mentioned in the book. I have personally picked up a young girl that was involved in a very bad wreck in which her right carotid artery and jugular vein were both cut. Blood was spurting on our arrival. She is still alive today. It took us 5 minutes to get on scene after being paged, which was at least another minute or two after the wreck occurred, so you are looking at at least 7 minutes with a sliced carotid, and no attempt at stopping the bleeding (her arms were badly broken, and she couldn't occlude the bleeding herself). Also, you need to know something about arteries in general. Since they are lined with smoothe muscle, they will contract if they are sliced completely in two, actually slowing the bleeding down to minimal, as opposed to being sliced only partially, which would cause much more bleeding. Also, did anyone see the "Banned from TV" video where some demonstrator or something in another country was shot point blank in his heart with a shotgun by a trigger happy officer? This guy had a camera up close and personal in his face for over a minute, and he never went unconscious. This guys blood flow was virtually if not completely cut off to his brain (no heart, no bloodflow). Basically, my point is, these times that are given in one of his books are way off, and I'm not real sure where he got them from. Don't expect a perp to go down on "one shot" or "one cut", even if it is to a vital organ. It takes someone a long time to bleed out. The only way to truly immediately incapacitate a bad guy is to shoot them in the head. Even then, they might not die, but I've yet to see someone with a well placed head-shot (and I'v seen more than my share of shootings) be conscious on my arrival. I have, however, seen a couple not-so-well-placed head shots with small calibre guns in which the person was still walking on our arrival. These are rare though.

Mike

 

[fullplate]

The knife designed by Fairbairn and Sykes was a double edged dagger with a foil shaped grip and an S shaped guard.It prime function was the elimination of the enemy silently,it is not a combat knive in the same stle as a K_bar for example.The FS knife needed to be used excactly as intented by its designer,and in fact it proved effective if somewhat fragile in service.The Applegate-Fairbairn knife is much more substatial and was designed to overcome the original design problems and produce a more user friendly weapon for general issue.
Boker make the official Applegate knife,and an excellent FS replica can be had from a cutler here in New Zealand.
For further reading see "Get Tough" Fairbairn's original book on the topic,also Applegate's "Combat Files of Col Rex Applegate"

With regard to the times to death chart,it would be unwise to regard anything like this as gospel,although it is my belief it is included as a morale booster rather than science.It must also be said that if any man had the right to say "been there,done that" it was Captain W.E. Fairbairn

 

[Boink]

Maybe Mr. Fairburn forgot to mention that once the guy was cut in one of those spots, Fairburn basically stomped him to death.

 

[Jeff Clark]

The original Fairbairn dagger was designed by two US Marine officers in Shanghai in 1933. The handle was fatter, the cross guard was broader, and the handle was fatter than the WWII model. Fairbairn believed that cuts across bone were inclined to induce shock. For an interesting history of the beginnings of the design see Yeaton's "The First Commando Knives", Phillips Publications, ISBN: 0-932572-25-1.