Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we are taking
a look at British socket bayonets.
Which I'm defining for the purposes of this video
as all of the bayonets that would fit
a Number 4 Lee-Enfield rifle.
Not the early muskety socket stuff,
that's a different subject.
When the British came out of World War One they were using this, which is the pattern 1907.
And it is a giant old sword-style bayonet, very typical from the time.
There were a few countries that had started to go beyond this, but
after World War One it became clear that this has some real downsides.
Now the benefit of having something like this is it allows your soldiers,
especially soldiers who have shorter rifles, say the sort of universal short rifle style,
well, you can get as much bayonet reach as someone who's got an old-style long infantry rifle.
So if you're bayonet fighting with someone you're not at a disadvantage, in theory.
It also means you've got enough reach to [let] a soldier defend himself against a man on horseback.
Well, by the end of World War One that's not happening so much, and
the whole like sword-style duelling with bayonetted rifles,
that's not really a thing actually, it turns out.
And so the British started thinking about, "Well, maybe we ... can get rid of some of this."
So these bayonets are easily bent and broken because they are very long.
Even in bayonet practice against just bags stuffed with straw,
not that uncommon to bend or break these blades.
It's a little grisly, but if you actually stab someone with this
it tends to get stuck, and it's hard to get out.
And that's a problem if you're in a position where
you actually have to stab someone with one of these.
So the British military looks at, "What are the actual requirements?
Like really, what do you actually need to stab someone?"
And they came to the conclusion that a 6 inch long bayonet
would really cover the worst case scenario of heavy winter clothing and that sort of thing.
And so they start looking at a bayonet pattern much more like this.
Initially in 1924 they ... basically copy a Swiss pattern of cruciform spike bayonet,
do a little bit of preliminary testing, decide this has some real potential.
And so in 1926 when the first of the rifles that would eventually become the Number 4
went into trials development, they were developed with a cruciform spike bayonet.
Now this would go through a number of ... short developmental experimental iterations.
We're going to pick up the story in 1931,
when basically the first batch of Number 4 Mark I rifles goes into troop trials.
OK, sorry, I actually kind of lied.
The first one we have here is actually officially a Number 2 Mark I bayonet,
which is the cruciform spike that was issued for the Number 1 Mark VI trials rifles.
1,050 of these were made in 1931.
So we're really close to the time frame that I told you, but technically this is 1931.
And you can see that in the little 1931 date there.
For these Mark VI rifle trials bayonets, this is the sort of
proof marking that you'll see on them, without any other markings.
Now just in case you're not familiar, the way this works is
there's a little spring catch on the bottom here.
And this fits over the muzzle of the rifle.
We have to engage the spring right there,
and then it snaps in place like that.
So, overall length on this is 8 inches from the tip to the end of the socket right here,
and that would remain standard basically through the whole program.
But that is our very first trials bayonet.
And we'll follow that up with this is actually the first bayonet for the Number 4 Mark I rifle,
which is actually for once conveniently also named the Number 4 Mark I bayonet.
A little more than 2,000 of these were manufactured
for the first Number 4 Mark I trials rifles.
We have a wholly different set of markings here.
This would not last, but it's got the King George ... cipher on there,
the designation Number 4 Mark I, these were manufactured by Enfield in 1933.
And ... a little more than 2,000 of them were manufactured
for troop trials with the new Number 4 Mark I rifles.
I will also point out the scabbard.
The scabbard here would remain basically unchanged and interchangeable
throughout all of the modifications of these bayonets.
It's a simple metal tube with a button to attach to a leather, or canvas, or any other sort of frog.
And it just takes the bayonet like that.
That trials bayonet up here would be adopted basically without any changes at all.
And when the Number 4 Mark I Lee-Enfield went into production in 1941,
it was with an 8 inch cruciform spike socket bayonet.
The markings have changed again, and this is sort of their standard form.
We ... have a simplified Royal cipher, the designation, and then "SM".
This is actually "SMC", but the C is mostly gone, and that stands for Singer Manufacturing Company.
That's not the Singer you might think of in the US that did some 1911s,
that is a company in Clydebank in Scotland
who did all of these original cruciform spiked bayonets.
They got a contract for 75,000, and that's all that were made.
This is a very scarce pattern of bayonet today.
Even while the cruciform spikes were still in production people realised that,
"That's kind of expensive, and they can simplify them quite a lot if they just get rid of the flutes.
There's a lot of machine time and care that goes into that,
and do we really care about a little bit of extra weight in the bayonet?
You know, we've got Germany to deal with, we kind of need a lot of these."
And so before production even ended on these,
they were already making Number 4 Mark II bayonets.
Which are still a single continuous piece (not counting the little spring-loaded bits),
but now they have a round spike without the flutes
simply because it's easier and cheaper to make.
And they were able to cut the cost of production by a solid like 40% by doing this.
So that's a big improvement, and they would start making quite a lot of these.
But even before they start producing these,
and by the way, we're talking about like 1941 here that these changes are being made.
The cruciform spike has been adopted in '39,
but rifle production doesn't really get going until the summer of '41.
So that's the time frame of actual issuance of these.
At any rate, before they are really even making these guys, the Mark IIs,
they have already approved a Mark II* version.
And that is one where the spike is a separate piece from the socket.
And this again reduces the cost,
because ... if you're going to make this as a single forging, that's a big forging die,
and it's a much bigger piece of original stock material to work with.
If you can split it right here, forge the complicated part,
and then just have a very simple piece of round stock basically,
with a screwdriver point ground onto it.
Again we can simplify cost even further.
The markings on these are a little bit hard to read, but there's our Royal crest,
and this is the Number 4 Mark II, and it's still made by Singer up in Scotland.
The markings have changed location a little bit here, but now we have
the Number 4 Mark II*star, and this is PSK, I think it's PSK.
At any rate, it stands for Prince-Smith & Stells of Keighley,
which was the company that got the contract to do a lot of this.
By the time we get to this point in ... development, they have ... diversified parts production.
So they have subcontractors making every independent piece of this,
some people are making spikes, some are making forgings,
some are making latches, some are making springs.
And then they're all being assembled by yet other subcontractors.
Just when you think they might have figured out how to make a cheap bayonet,
nope, it's going to get even one step cheaper.
And that comes in the form of the Number 4 Mark III bayonet here,
which was approved for use in February of 1943.
What they've done here is instead of forging the main socket component,
it's just being cast - because how strong does it really need to be?
And casting is a cheaper and simpler process than drop forging.
So that is the ... Number 4 Mark III.
Not a whole lot of these would be made, basically because
by the time their production was up and running there was a good supply on hand,
the demand was much less urgent.
And ultimately a couple of hundred thousand of these would be made,
which sounds like a lot, but really is a small fraction of the
well over a million of the Mark IIs and Mark II*s that were produced.
Now the next bayonet we are going to is really a substantial change in pattern.
Obviously this looks more like an actual knife, it's not a spike any more.
And this is the Number 7 Mark I bayonet.
So we are skipping a couple. The Number 5 bayonet was a blade bayonet
actually similar to this blade, intended for the Number 5 rifle, the Jungle Carbine.
The Number 6 bayonet was a similar sort of short blade intended for the old SMLE Number 1 rifles.
We're skipping those because they don't fit the Number 4.
That brings us to the Number 7 here.
So this was actually originally designed for the Sten gun, the Mark V Sten.
And the idea was it would be both a bayonet and a utility knife.
It has a little ... sliding latch here on top, and if you want to use it on a rifle
or a submachine gun you have to rotate it up, because this is where the muzzle is.
And if you don't rotate it, you're shooting straight into the bayonet handle, that's not going to work.
It doesn't actually need the socket out here, but it's on there anyway.
So ... like I said, designed for the Sten gun, but it will actually fit a Number 4.
It's just a little wonky because of course your muzzle's here,
and you've got a handle sticking out way in front of the muzzle.
The next bayonet the British would make that would fit the Number 4,
which is actually the last one in this series, was the Number 9 Mark I, and that's this guy.
Once again we are skipping the Number 8 bayonet because that was a bayonet
intended for the SLEM prototype semi-auto rifles that never went into production.
So we end with the bayonet Number 9 which is basically the blade off of this
(which is off of the Number 5 bayonet for the Jungle Carbine),
fitted to the socket for the Number 4 rifles.
These were adopted in July of 1948.
They were intended for the Number 4 rifles, but they also fit the Sten.
So sort of opposite the situation of the Number 7 here.
Ultimately these would get rendered obsolete
by the adoption of the SLR, the FN FAL, by British forces.
So that's the last pattern that you have.
Just to be clear, what we've been looking at here are British made examples.
There were a lot of these bayonets, in particular these guys,
that were also manufactured in the United States and in Canada.
As well as a whole series of bayonets manufactured by the Ishapore Arsenal for example.
So for the sake of this video I have just limited this to British manufactured examples.
It's probably occurred to you when you saw them, that things like the trials pattern bayonets
are of course really, really scarce today to actually find.
So it was really cool to have access to a collection here where I can
pull out examples of the whole story and show you all of them back to back.
I think that sort of context really helps to build understanding of what was going on here.
So hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
A big thanks to the collector who gave me access to these to show you.
Thanks for watching.