[ US Trowel Bayonets ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at
the Rock Island Auction Company taking a look
at some of the accoutrements that they are selling
in their upcoming December of 2017
Premier Firearms Auction.
Specifically, today we're taking a look at a couple of trowel bayonets.
Now, it would be very easy and tempting to dismiss these as just
another instance of the good idea fairy whispering in someone's ear.
However, the truth is a little more interesting and complicated than that.
Now, what we have here is an 1869 pattern of US issue trowel bayonet.
This is basically the first version, not quite entirely,
the very first ones were developed in 1868 by a Lieutenant Edmund Rice.
And the very first ones actually were converted from standard socket bayonets.
So the socket bayonet fits right over the muzzle end of a rifle,
and on these original ones had a big long cruciform spike on it.
What they did to make the original trowel bayonets was cut the spike down to about
8 inches, and then basically weld on a trowel blade.
They ... made 200 of these.
And very shortly thereafter proceeded to make another
500 of the 1869 pattern, which was made from scratch.
So a lot of the same tooling that they used for the socket bayonets,
but they didn't actually like cut down bayonets, they made these from scratch.
So that's what we have here.
And this was developed as a trial pattern of tool,
and they were issued out to a couple of companies for field testing.
And what we would expect is that this thing would make a laughably terrible bayonet,
and a laughably terrible trowel, both at the same time.
However, much to my surprise reading some of the original trials reports,
(and by the way, if you take a look at the description text I have a link there to
it's about an 80 page pamphlet that has been digitised of the original trials report.
So if you're interested in exactly what every testing officer thought of these,
you can go and read their first-hand opinions.)
And almost every single one of them came back and said this was a really useful tool,
and they thought it ... should definitely be adopted.
Now the reason for this is this didn't replace an entrenching tool in US military service.
When this was introduced in well 1868/69, actually tested in 1870 or so,
the US trooper didn't have an entrenching tool of any sort.
And what's really interesting is, as several of the officers in this trial document point out,
they have actually come to the conclusion that the introduction of breech-loading rifles,
namely the Trapdoor Springfield, have made bayonets obsolete.
The bayonet was there for a muzzleloading rifle because you might very conceivably fire a shot,
and not have time to reload the rifle before you found yourself in close combat.
And at that point the rifle was useless as a firearm,
and it was simply a matter of using it as a bayonet mounted weapon.
Once you have a breech-loading rifle it's so much faster to reload
... the whole process is basically gone, you just open the breech and put a new cartridge in.
And there were plenty of officers at this time (in the 1870s)
who thought that this meant the bayonet was basically obsolete.
Now they weren't quite willing to just completely abandon them immediately.
As they say in this report, they kind of want to keep them around,
and just make sure that in ... the next one or two conflicts that they get into,
they want to make sure that people don't end up using the bayonet.
And then they'd be willing to just ditch it.
So when someone comes around and proposes ... a combination tool like this,
they're not the least bit concerned about deprecating the capability of the bayonet.
Because they're pretty much convinced that the bayonet
doesn't even need to be there in the first place.
Some of the other officers take a look at this and go,
"Wow, this is probably actually an even better bayonet, certainly from a psychological perspective.
This thing is kind of terrifying to have someone charging at you with mounted on the end of a rifle.
So maybe it's even better than having just a standard old spike bayonet."
Now the utility of this as a trowel is also something that we need to touch on.
This wasn't intended to like dig a foxhole, or dig a World War One trench network.
Obviously for that it's not a sufficient tool.
What it was intended for was basically to dig a relatively shallow fighting pit.
The idea was ... if you dug about a foot down,
and this was often in relatively soft prairie soils,
you dig about a foot down and you pile that dirt about a foot up in front of you,
and now you have two feet of cover in front.
And this created, according to the officers, in a relatively short time.
We're talking in some cases 20 minutes, in some cases maybe 30 or 40 minutes.
A group of troops could create an entrenchment that was bulletproof,
and would hide them entirely at distances of more than about 100 yards.
And there is definitely something to be said for that.
If you have a group of soldiers who are trekking
across the midlands of the US and come under attack,
if they're able to throw up a quick field entrenchment sort of thing, field battle works,
that could definitely be a valuable thing to have.
And that's basically ... the conclusion that they came to,
is this does give us a substantial new capability.
So as a result of these field trials, the Army came back and
approved the manufacture of 10,000 of a slightly improved pattern,
the 1873 pattern, which we have here on this Trapdoor rifle.
Those were issued out in 1875.
And they didn't last very long, in fact by 1876 they had stopped issuing them.
And the story gets a little bit murky at this point.
It appears that there was a combination of two things going on.
Part of it was politics that got in the way of this as an issued weapon,
someone else had different ideas and more political clout.
And the other thing that happened is the US started to ...
instead of trying to combine a trowel with a bayonet,
they started looking at combining an entrenching tool, a trowel, with a fighting knife.
And so you would see a developmental ordnance tool from 1873
that was basically a ... knife/trowel combination.
And then you'd have a more substantial issue in 1880 of a similar sort of thing,
a very wide-bladed knife that could be used for cutting sod, scraping a trench,
using as a rifle rest, and using as a utility knife.
And because this development path kind of took that turn towards knives,
the trowel bayonets wouldn't see any use, or any issue,
or any manufacture after the mid-1870s.
So the 1869 here came in this very much sort of old style of belt hanger.
Pull it out gently.
Interesting to note this is a very flat bayonet,
there's just a little bit of scalloping around the edge.
And one of the things that struck me is the strength of this centre rib
out here at the end of the ... trowel seems to me to be really quite thin.
And I would have expected the tip of this to bend or break very easily.
However, in the actual trials report that isn't really ever mentioned,
so perhaps it's stronger than it looks to me.
Now there were a couple of variations on this.
As I said, the very first ones were actually manufactured by welding
a trowel body onto a cut-down bayonet.
This is one of the ones that was manufactured from scratch as a trowel bayonet.
There was also a pattern that Rice patented that had a little folding what's called a tompion here,
basically a muzzle cap for the rifle, a little felt cover on it.
And you could flip it up, and it would ... cover the muzzle of the rifle
to ensure that you didn't damage the crown or get dirt into the muzzle.
And that stems from the concern
that guys would use these while they were actually mounted on the rifles.
Which I think to the average trooper seems like a fantastic idea,
because it's going to give you all sorts of leverage and make the job a lot easier
than holding onto this thing and trying to dig with it that way.
However, digging with this mounted to the rifle
runs a huge risk of ... damaging the crown,
or plugging the muzzle with dirt, or literally bending the barrel.
You get this thing under a rock and you really crank on it,
then yeah, you are going to bend the barrel, damage the rifle.
So these were intended to be used in the hand.
And that was one of the main complaints about this first pattern
is that with its sort of standard socket bayonet handle
including this locking ring,
this was really an uncomfortable handle to use as a digging implement.
As a result, when they decided to manufacture a substantial number of this 1873 pattern,
one of the things that it did differently was it had a much more smoothly contoured handle.
Which ... in fact ... feels a lot better in hand, this would be much more convenient to use.
Later on ... it appears that at one point they ultimately decided not to use these as bayonets,
but they did spend a little bit of time still trying to use them as entrenching tools.
And a guy named Chillingworth patented a ... wooden plug handle
that would go in the back here, and give you kind of a bird's head grip
to complete the trowel grip for one of these.
So that was also issued out at one point.
And the rifle mounting method for this, instead of having this clumsy locking ring to deal with,
the back half of the handle here rotates 90 degrees.
And you can see back here it has a little additional extended tower
for the front sight to go through.
So for this guy we're going to mount the bayonet all the way on like so.
And then we can just rotate that half of the handle
down behind the front sight.
That securely fixes the bayonet,
you still have a nice sight picture, and there you go.
With both of these trowel bayonets the blade of the item is actually sitting to the right,
vertically on the right of the muzzle when you actually have it installed on the rifle.
So there's our front sight and cleaning rod, and the whole surface here on the right.
So the US isn't the only country to have ever used a trowel bayonet,
the other one that comes to mind is the Mexican Army.
The official issue bayonet for the 1908 semi-automatic Mondragon
combat rifle was in fact a trowel bayonet.
It doesn't appear to have seen any longer or better service than the US version, but it was out there.
And I'm sure there were a couple of others, although they don't spring to mind immediately.
If you would like to have either of these for yourself,
the 1869 here is an extremely rare pattern to find.
And this one's in quite good condition, along with its scabbard.
Both this and the 1873, which ... actually comes with a Trapdoor rifle,
these are both coming up for sale here at Rock Island.
If you take a look at the description text below you will also find links to the
catalogue pages for both of these. And you can take a look there at Rock Island's pictures,
and description, and price estimates, and all that sort of stuff.
And place bids right through their website if you're interested.
Thanks for watching.