A fighting knife has a blade designed to most effectively inflict injury in close-quarters physical confrontations.Burton, Walter E., Knives For Fighting Men, Popular Science, July 1944, Vol. 145 No. 1, p. 150Hunsicker, A., Advanced Skills in Executive Protection, Boca Raton FL: Universal Publishers, , , p. 51Thompson, Leroy, Fairbairn–Sykes Commando Dagger, Oxford, UK: Osprey Publishing, , (2011), p. 71Lee, David, Up Close and Personal: The Reality of Close-quarter Fighting in World War II, Naval Institute Press, , 9781591149071 (2006), p. 117: "At the top of the list is the fighting knife. Using this weapon requires the soldier to close right in with his enemy. The fact that its use is going to be bloody and horrible means that only a strong or well conditioned individual is going to be able to use it in anger." The combat knife and the trench knife are examples of military fighting knives.Peterson, Harold L., Daggers and Fighting Knives of the Western World, Courier Dover Publications, , (2001), p. 80: "Right at the outset trench knives were introduced by both sides during World War I, so that the common soldier was once again equipped with a knife designed primarily for combat."
Fighting knives were traditionally designed as special-purpose weapons, intended primarily if not solely for use in personal or hand-to-hand combat. This singleness of purpose originally distinguished the fighting knife from the field knife, fighting utility knife, or in modern usage, the tactical knife. The tactical knife is a knife with one or more military features designed for use in extreme situations, which may or may not include a design capability as a fighting or combat weapon.Shideler, Dan, Sigler, Derrek, and Ramage, Ken (eds.), The Gun Digest Book Of Tactical Gear, Krause Publications, , (2008), p. 7 Since World War I, the fighting knife in military service has gradually evolved into a dual-purpose or "fighting-utility" knife, suited for both knife fighting and utility roles. As a consequence, the terms "fighting knife" and "tactical knife" are frequently employed interchangeably.
History
Ancient history
Utility knives with stone or flint blades have been used in personal combat since Paleolithic times. One of the earliest metal-blade fighting knives was the dagger. The first early Bronze Age daggers featured Beaker copper blades, likely made with stone tools. In 1984, a Beaker period (ca. 2500 – 2000 BC) copper dagger blade was recovered from the Sillees River near Ross Lough, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland that had a remarkably modern appearance.Sheridan, Alison, A Beaker Period Copper Dagger Blade from the Silees River near Ross Lough, Co. Fermanagh, Ulster Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 56 (1993), pp. 61-62 The flat, triangular-shaped copper blade was 171 mm (6.75 inches) long, 42.5 mm (1.65 inches) wide, and 2mm (0.078 inches) in maximum thickness, with bevelled edges and a pointed tip, and featured an integral tang that accepted a riveted handle. Analysis of the copper used in the dagger's construction revealed it to be of a type characteristic of the copper that was widely used in Ireland before the introduction of bronze tools and weapons. By around 2000 BC daggers were being cast of bronze, with blades formed by drawing and hammering the metal on bronze anvils set in guides.Coffey, George, The Bronze Age in Ireland , Dublin, IRL: Dublin University Press (1913), retrieved 31 July 2011
Post-classical history
An early iron-bladed knife that served a dual purpose as fighting knife and utility blade was the seax, a pattern-welded weapon which dates from the 5th century AD, and worn as standard armament by Anglo-Saxon warriors from northern Italy as far north as Scandinavia and as far west as Ireland.Underwood, Richard, Anglo Saxon Weapons & Warfare (2nd ed.), London: Tempus Publications Ltd., , (2001) The seax of the 5th and 6th century was shorter and narrower than those introduced later on, and could be described as either a large dagger or a short sword. As swords created from pattern-welded iron were enormously expensive weapons at the time, the early seax filled a need for an affordable blade that could be used as both a fighting knife and a utility knife.
With the development of steel and simplified forging techniques, the sword became the preferred bladed weapon for most professional fighting men. During the latter part of the 12th century, the steel-blade dagger became popular as a secondary weapon for knights as a standard part of their equipment. This new form of dagger was really a miniaturized sword, featuring a flat double-edged blade and central spine or fuller.
The first fighting daggers to become widely popular in Europe were the rondel dagger and the bollock dagger. The rondel dagger was a fighting knife with a double-edged, tapered blade and a hilt featuring circular guards. The bollock dagger dates from around 1300–1350, and had a distinctive hilt cap formed from two lobes that acted as a hand-stop.Walker, Greg, Battle Blades: A Professional's Guide to Combat/Fighting Knives, Boulder, CO: Paladin Press, (1993), pp. 28, 50-55, 130 It was especially popular with English and Norwegian combatants.Nøttveit, Ole-Magne, The Kidney Dagger as a Symbol of Masculine Identity, Norwegian Archeological Review, Vol. 39 No.2 (2006), pp. 138-150 French and Italian daggers of the 14th century were the first to introduce acutely tapered blades and reinforced points in response to improvements made in armor design and the need for penetration.
Modern history Early modern
In the Near East, fighting knives such as the pesh-kabz were developed originally to defeat enemy personnel wearing leather armour.Paul, E. Jaiwant, Arms and Armour: Traditional Weapons of India (1st ed.), Roli Books, , (2005), pp. 67-70 The pesh-kabz dates from the 17th century and is of Central Asian and Persian origin, but was later adopted by the Mughals, who brought the knife with them on their campaigns to conquer India. It was subsequently adopted throughout Afghanistan, northern India, and what is now Pakistan.
As the importance of the dagger declined in military service, the weapon became extremely popular in civilian society as an item of daily wear, being used for everything from personal defense to dinner cutlery. In Andalucian Spain the personal fighting knife was epitomized by the famous ratcheting folding knife known generally as the navaja.de Rementeria y Fica, Mariano, Manual of the Baratero (transl. and annot. by James Loriega), Boulder, CO: Paladin Press, (2005) The navaja was originally used primarily by the barateros of the underworld and the working class, but by the 1800s it had become an accepted personal weapon for Spanish men of all backgrounds, including the wealthy.
In Portugal, the faca, a large fixed-blade fighting and utility knife accompanied Portuguese explorers and settlers during their conquest of Brazil, where the pattern remains popular to this day. From the faca is derived the facón, the large fighting-utility knife of the gaucho. The facón is widely used in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay in an indigenous style of knife fighting inspired by Andalusian knife fighting techniques known as esgrima criolla ("Creole fencing").de Rementeria y Fica, Manual of the Baratero, pp 5-6, 9, 12: The esgrima de criolla method of knife fighting employed by the gaucho and his facón in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay, using clothing to protect the weaponless arm, is derived directly from el legado andalúz.
Late modern 19th century
In North America, the advantages of a large fighting knife were seized upon by American frontiersmen, who faced both animal and human opponents of considerable ferocity. This popularity spiked in 1827 with the introduction of Bowie Knife, a pattern inspired by the knives commissioned by Rezin Bowie, brother of the better known James "Jim" Bowie. James became famous after killing one Norris Wright in a bloody melee at the Vidalia Sandbar Fight, but brother Rezin was the knife lover in the family. After the Bowie knife pattern was standardized during the 1830s and 1840s, it proved to be an enormously popular design, so much so that during the mid-19th century it became synonymous with the term "fighting knife".Todd, Frederick P., American Military Equipage, 1851–1872, Scribners (1980), pp. 180-181: "The American fighting knife of the mid-19th century was par excellence the 'bowie knife'. The term itself defied definition in those days as it does today, but a rough description would be a large sheath knife, usually with a small cross guard and a clipped point, whose story began in the American Southwest about 1830." The fighting Bowies of 1830–1860 usually had 10 to 12 inch blades; some were even larger. The Bowie knife largely replaced earlier Native American tools and weapons such as the tomahawk. Before the introduction of reliable and powerful cap-and-ball revolvers on the American frontier, the Bowie knife was often preferred to a single-shot handgun or "horse pistol". During the later years of the 19th century, the classic Bowie knife pattern would be gradually reduced in size and length as its role changed from that of a dedicated fighting knife and weapon to a general-purpose knife and tool that could be used as a fighting knife in an emergency.
20th century By 1900, civilian fighting knives were being mass-produced in a countless variety of shapes and sizes, though they all shared the common characteristic of being primarily designed for use in physical combat. However, in military service, the traditional fighting knife began a gradual transition from a "pure" design intended solely for fighting to a knife that could fulfill other roles as well. This trend was not unprecedented, as many nations and cultures had already adopted various multi-purpose fighting knife patterns derived from popular general-purpose knives with cultural and historic roots, beginning with the Anglo Saxon seax of medieval times. Thus Chilean soldiers, for instance, were trained in the use of the Corvo, a traditional Chilean military weapon, while Gurkha regiments of the Indian Army serving the British Empire favored the Kukri, a broad-bladed, curved general-purpose cutting tool and weapon with Indian origins. In other countries the machete or Filipino Bolo were often used as fighting knives by indigenous military or paramilitary forces. Colonial powers that encountered these general-purpose weapons used as fighting knives during a military campaign occasionally adopted them in turn for use by their own military forces, as exemplified by the U.S. Army's Model 1910/17 "Bolo" brush-clearing knife, which would be later pressed into service as a fighting knife in both World Wars.Henry, Mark, R., The US Army of World War I, London: Osprey Publishing Ltd., (2003), p. 36Henry, Mark R., The US Army in World War II (1): The Pacific, London: Osprey Publishing Ltd., (2000) p. 33
In World War I, military use of the fighting knife saw the introduction of the "trench knife", a fighting knife designed solely for military use in the trench warfare of that conflict. On the Allied side, these "knives" were originally little more than sharpened spikes or cut-down bayonets fitted with handles. As the war progressed, French, British and U.S. ordnance branches began introducing fighting knives based on standardized patterns, such as the U.S. Mark I trench knife. In Western Europe, one dual-purpose fighting knife to be widely adopted by German forces during World War I was the Nahkampfmesser (Close Combat Knife), which despite its name was actually a general-purpose combat and field knife. The Nahkampfmesser was extremely popular in German military service, and would be issued again in slightly revised form during World War II as the Kampfmesser 42.
World War II