S.D. Manufacturer on Cutting Edge as Army Brings Back Bayonets

“What’s the spirit of the bayonet?”

-Army drill sergeant

“To kill, drill sergeant, to kill!”

--Reply of recruits

Charles Albert Mickey Finn used to carve sandwiches, but for the past three years he has plied a new trade--designing knives. Now, the former delicatessen owner has produced an Army bayonet that promises to carve, among other things, wood, ice and metal like no other bayonet before.

Working out of a cramped industrial building, Finn manufactured a versatile weapon that he expects one day to accompany U.S. infantrymen into the reaches of outer space, where battles will be fought on barren asteroids with laser weapons. It is the best, and last, bayonet the Army will ever own, Finn said.

The bayonet, seen by some critics as a medieval weapon, is once again in vogue among the world’s armies, and the U.S. Army is no exception. But the renewed interest in the ancient weapon has less to do with bayonet charges and more with meeting the practical and, some would say, less than glamorous needs of today’s fighting man.

Ask the Israelis about the need for a modern, do-it-all bayonet. After one of their many desert skirmishes, the Israelis alerted military men worldwide that a bottle opener saw more use in the desert than the bayonet. This presented an obvious problem to the military industrial complex--how to synthesize the household utensil with a weapon designed for sticking people.

Much to the Army’s delight, Finn met that challenge and several others. Now, 10 years after the Army declared the bayonet an anachronism on the modern battlefield, the low-tech weapon has received a high-tech face lift.

Instead of merely attaching to the end of a rifle, the Army’s new bayonet will perform what Army planners call “multiple individual soldier tasks.” Put more simply, American troops will no longer have to carry a bottle opener into combat.

Although the bayonet has been a standard infantry weapon for more than three centuries, the Army gave up on the current double-edged blade bayonet in 1976. Army battlefield planners abandoned the unsophisticated bayonet in favor of computerized weapons systems that were not designed for close-quarters combat.

Though the weapon fell out of favor, the bayonet, with the words “Follow Me” printed above the point, remains the insignia of the U.S. Army Infantry School at Fort Benning, Ga. But until 1983, when the secretary of the Army ordered the resumption of bayonet training, the only emphasis placed on the weapon was symbolic.

Even as late as 1985, no mention was made of the bayonet in the Army’s inventory of current and proposed weapons. This is likely to change in March, when the first 600 of the exotic bayonets will be issued to the 75th Ranger Battalion at Fort Benning.

Recently, the Army announced that it had awarded a $15.6 million contract to Finn’s company, Phrobis III Ltd., to manufacture 20th-century bayonets that will replace the much maligned “pigsticker” that has been issued to U.S. infantrymen for 25 years. Eventually, 320,000 bayonets, with six-inch blades of forged steel, will be issued to U.S. troops.

Finn is not shy about telling anyone who will listen that “This will be the last bayonet the U.S. government will own.” And considering that these days the bayonet is used lastly as a weapon, Finn may be right.

A recent survey of the British Army and Royal Marines revealed that the bayonet’s primary use nowadays is hardly life-threatening. British soldiers, like most soldiers worldwide, use the bayonet for mundane missions, like opening bottles and cans. Rarely is it used as a fighting knife or battlefield weapon.

Bayonets, however, have led infantry charges since 1640, when it was invented in Bayonne, France. But there have not been any bayonet charges by U.S. troops since the Korean War. The bayonet was an endangered species in Vietnam, where machetes and power saws were more common in the jungle.

In fact, the standard bayonet is not even listed in Shelby L. Stanton’s “Vietnam Order of Battle,” the most comprehensive book of its kind written about the Army’s role in the Vietnam War.

Critics of the old $18 bayonet pointed out that its singular purpose was to kill. By contrast, Finn’s bayonet, officially designated as the M-9 Multi-Purpose Bayonet System and priced at $49.50 apiece, rivals the Swiss army knife in versatility. The old bayonet’s twin blades were almost impossible to sharpen, but consider the new weapon’s features:

- A serrated top edge saws through rope, wood, ice and aircraft skin. The M-9 is designed to cut through helicopters to free trapped pilots.

- The top knife edge can be used with the scabbard as a wire cutter to cut barbed wire.

- The glass-filled handle is insulated to withstand electrical shocks of up to 240 volts.

- The blade can cut through the steel bands used to seal ammunition boxes.

- It includes a built-in bottle opener and whetstone for sharpening the blade.

Still, the weapon is far from perfect. In this age of camouflaged fatigues and camouflaged vehicles, the knife’s blade is conspicuous. The blade has a battlefield shine that tells the enemy “here I am.”

The blade’s mirror-shine, however, has not diminished the Army’s zeal for the weapon.

“It is a multipurpose weapon, but I don’t think that the Army is going to change the yell that has become traditional on the bayonet assault course,” said Capt. Guy Shields, a spokesman for the 7th Infantry Division, also known as the “Bayonet Division.”

“I mean, we don’t expect the troops to shout that the spirit of the bayonet is to cut through wire and cut through aircraft. It’s still a fighting knife.”

The 7th Infantry Division, which got its nickname from bayonet charges in Korea, is stationed at Fort Ord, Calif. It is a light-infantry division, part of the Rapid Deployment Force and scheduled to be among the first recipients of the bayonet.

Finn, who landed the biggest-ever contract for his small research and development firm, believes that his bayonet is the finest in the world; better than the Soviet model, which was praised by Soldier of Fortune magazine.

“There is absolutely no question that this is the best bayonet ever produced. The bayonet is awfully important to a soldier, and to have the finest in the world is definitely a morale booster,” Finn said. Finn’s company also works on classified projects for the military, but he declined to discuss that business.

Bill Thetford, a retired infantryman and spokesman for the Army Infantry School, agreed that the new U.S. bayonet is better than any found in the other military arsenals. Thetford said the Army’s current bayonet is more likely to amuse, rather than frighten, an enemy soldier.

“Bayonet assaults have largely gone by the wayside in modern warfare. But a good bayonet is invaluable for espirt de corps. If a soldier is ever forced to get down to a bayonet fight . . . when the enemy spots that weapon, it ought to look like a weapon. And the visual impact of this knife is that it is a weapon,” Thetford said.

The development process of the new bayonet was relatively short by government standards. The Army decided to abandon the traditional bayonet because it learned that many combat soldiers were carrying extra knives and wire cutters to perform tasks that the bayonet could not handle.

Bids for the weapon were solicited in August, 1985, and Thetford says proudly that it will only be 18 months from the time the first bids were received to the time that the first bayonets will be issued in March.

“The development process for this new weapon is almost unheard of,” Thetford said. “Everything went just right, and we got the best piece of equipment in the world.”

The Phrobis knife won out over entries from Britain, Spain, West Germany and two other U.S. firms.

“Ours was the highest bid, but we were the only company whose product went through the entire testing period without any breakage and failures,” Finn said. “Most people tried to convert something that already existed in an attempt to meet the Army’s requirements.”

The Army attempts to instill espirt de corps on the bayonet assault course by teaching its troops that there are two kinds of bayonet fighters--the quick and the dead. The new bayonet’s versatility is not expected to change this.

“That’s still true,” Thetford said. “Our troops will continue to be quick and ready to handle any situation that requires the new bayonet, whether it’s cutting through barbed wire or opening a bottle.”