British bayonet charge in Basra

[noxnoctum]

Probably old news for most of you, but I just found out about it. Pretty amazing stuff. Can't imagine the feelings running inside their heads running 2 football fields while getting shot at!

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=0bd_1249524865

[dieseltaylor]

JC will love that.

[Stalins Organ]

And a solo effort in Afghanistan - "To be honest it was pretty terrifying." and that's the guy who was doing it!

Meanwhile the US army is no longer carrying out bayonet drills. Personally I doubt that this will be a problem - if you're in a situation where you need to use a bayonet chances are you'll manage to do it regardless of what you may or may not recall from basic training, and making soldiers fitter and giving them more relevant PE is a good thing.

I do recall that I did not bayonet drills in basic training.....but did actually fix bayonets once on exercise & charged over a hill (with 12 or 15 others) into the flank of a very surprised enemy that was only 10m away strung along a small gully. The Lt had told us what we were going to do beforehand, and we kept the sheaths on!

[Affentitten]

Yes I think bayonet drills are a bit of a Victorian era hangover and probably always had more to do with upper class fantasies of courage than reality. In a way, the fixed bayonet is more of a psy-ops weapon.

[dieseltaylor]

And what is wrong with psy-ops? : )

Actually I would imagine bayonet drill IS useful for morale purposes - psy-ops for the friendlies.

The theme here is that UK troops run out of ammo ...0.?

[JonS]

psy-ops for the friendlies.

Yeah, there is a semi-famous quite from a British soldier that runs roughly "There's nothing that concentrates the mind quite like the order to 'fix bayonets!'"

[Affentitten]

I wonder sometimes too about stuff like parachute training. Except for the insertion of elite recon squads or the like, parachuting is about the least likely delivery method you're going to get these days. Certainly the days of mass drops would be long gone.

[Michael Emrys]

Certainly the days of mass drops would be long gone.

As well they should. Mass drops for the most part proved of dubious value offensively in real war situations. Paratroops simply did not have enough firepower to go head to head with regular enemy formations and achieve much. Historically, their most effective use seems to have been company to battalion sized drops to seize high value targets and were either quickly extracted before the enemy could organize a coherent reaction, or be reinforced on the ground by regular formations of enough strength to defeat the enemy. If neither of those conditions were met, they suffered serious losses or were wiped out.

Michael