More Big Bowies from the South Pacific

Well, the North Pacific as well. First photo: Two FSSF men examining a Japanese knee mortar on Kiska in the Aleutians, Aug. 1943. The force, as part of the, ultimately unnecessary assault on Kiska, wore the insignia of Amphibian Training Force 9 AKA "Corlett's Long Knives".
The attack on Kiska had been expected to be grueling as it was a large installation with shore batteries and an air strip. This reasoning was based on an earlier operation against Attu, chosen because it seemed a "softer" target which turned out to be a Pyrrhic victory. The ratio of casualties suffered by American forces was second only to those of Iwo Jima and of the 2,650 Japanese defenders, only twenty-nine were taken prisoner. However, Kiska was a different story. The Japanese had evacuated to - everyone's surprise and relief.
But I digress - on the shoulder patch, notice a big Bowie. The swath cut by the famous "Gung Ho knife" of Guadalcanal fame being considerable over the previous 10 months, this was the image chosen as the symbol for the insignia of the ATF 9. Next pictured is an example of the patch, available with a knife, at Snyder's Treasures. Only $499.
What I'm really prattling about here is another big Bowie altogether. One our lads - and I assume, Brits, Kiwis and Aussies carried during the island hopping campaigns.
First of all, we have another nomenclature issue here. This knife is usually referred to as "The Ranger Knife" often the "1st Ranger Battalion Knife". Alas, the 1st Ranger Battalion served only in North Africa and Italy, a fair piece from Australia, where these knives are known to have originated. So these knives have as much to do with the Jellystone Park employee responsible for thwarting Yogi Bear's raids on pic-a-nic baskets as with any military organization.
First pictured is the most common, the brass handled model. I refer to it as "the cogwheel ranger knife". By all accounts these were pieces of crap. A smaller version sported a knuckle bow that most fingers wouldn't even fit into. Many examples have bent blades which points to a poor heat treatment, if they were so treated at all. The consensus seems to be that these were flogged off to GI's as souvenirs of Australia. One period account, by someone in some medical capacity states that he bought one in Australia thinking it would be useful in clearing brush around aid stations and the like. After a few weeks in the field, and apparently taking something of a ration of shit from the guys about his big knife, he found it too cumbersome and traded it off. In spite of this, they still command high prices in the collector market.The other two are examples of Ranger knives that probably originated in New Zealand, the Kiwi's being more prone to use aluminum as a handle material.


They appear to be far more practical with lighter handles - which look as if they're actually meant to be held by someone with an eye toward use - and a knuckle bow with three points. Hence, they're referred to as "Three Point Ranger Knives". Duh.
One of my favorite things about looking at knife pictures is noticing the backgrounds used in photos. On the second example, can anyone say "field jacket liner"?
I won't go off into some place where my bad attitude can have free reign. Instead I'll leave you with a picture of the original Collins #18 circa 1880.It got a tad shorter during the intervening fifty-odd years.

The Variable "V-44"

We've gone through this before, the V-44 nomenclature issue, so I'll just link back to where I covered that in case anyone needs to be brought up to speed.
Even though the actual Case V-44, a utilitarian, bolo-bladed mini-machete, was about the same size, all the big Bowies that came about as spinoffs from the Collins #18 machete (above at right) came to be called generically, V-44's. So be it.
They were popular. The Army Air Corps adopted the Collins as a survival-kit machete in the mid-thirties however, it became famous for it's contribution to the efforts on Guadalcanal. This background is all covered on my website. They were obviously popular even before as shown by the above photo. A Royal Australian Air Force ground crew pushing an aircraft in New Guinea at about the same time Evan Carlson was ordering his #18's. The guy on the right, as you can see, is packing.



The Collins Axe, Adze and Machete Co. of Connecticut had been in business for over a century before pilots even knew they needed survival machetes. They were founded in 1826 from an earlier, apparently successful venture in rum trading. They went from there straight to axes,etc, remaing in business until the mid-sixties. As shown above, their wares were quite pretty in the 19 century. Ornate, cast brass handles and the ubiquitous, double fuller along the spine of the blade, as shown on the example to the right.
The double fuller shows up predominantly in many of the third-world spinoffs of the Collins #18. Below are three photos, taken from Ron Flook's book "British and Commonwealth Knives", and showing the V-44 as interpreted in India.I like the modified handle shape but what I find interesting is that the makers of all three of had gone to the trouble of adding those purely decorative fullers.
The Australians didn't find the fullers so captivating. As shown below, only one of the three is so marked.
The middle example is one I find especially intriguing. Flook says they're somewhat common and the one shared factor is a "...low standard of manufacture". They were apparently purchased blades, put together with handles and guards in people's garages as a cottage industry. Another common feature is that the two halves of the handle have an off-center glue line. This means nothing but that the maker didn't want to chisel out both sides, but it's an oddity which seems common to all of this type. My theory is that there were plans either published or otherwise available so the average home handyman could get in on the WW2 knife trade, do his bit for the war effort.
In closing, the fullers are attractive if non-functional. In fact, I'm thinking about a jig to hold my angle-grinder and I'll move into the gratuitous, fuller-copying thing myself.
Finally, the New Zealander's contribution. No fullers I might add. This is the knife I copied for my own V-44 (see "website" link above) and is shown below on the left.
On the right we have Howard Cole's rendering of same but he gets it wrong. A Carlson, of Carlson's Raiders fame, did purchase 1000 of these aluminum-handled knives but, he was the Colonel's son - and his Marines weren't Raiders. Still I think it's a cool knife, and it's the one I'd choose if the world ended and I only got one pick for a blade to carry.

Whence Kabar?

I'm not going to screw this up with a lot of text since I've waxed long-winded a few times recently. Let me just say this: Often theater knives were made from existing, issued knives, most predominantly the M2 Utility/Fighting Knife erroneously referred to as the "Kabar".
Leading the lineup is a tricked out Case version of the V-44 (see here) followed by some "retrofitted" M2's and. just to add interest, a more interesting F/S Stiletto and a Smatchet.
With two exceptions, all these photos were lifted, without a thought to propriety, from the the most excellent publication, "Theater Made Military Knives of World War II" by Bill and Debbie Wright. If you find this interesting at all, buy the book

























Remember folks, where options are limited, innovations flourishes.

The Day Germany Lost the War

A bit of revisionist history for all the America Firsters and Taxpayer Patriots (my personal perjorative for those rabidly nationalistic folks whose sole contribution to the common good consists of having taxes withheld from their pay...and then complaining about it. Not to fault their "Support the Troops" magnet on the Excursion though, not in the least).
Contrary to what the Madogre and others believe about America's "kicking Germany's ass", it was the Ruskies, sorry. Check the stats: Russian war dead - 20,000,000 (that's six zeroes, guys, 20 million), U.S. - Can't exactly recall, around 750,000 - 900,000). I read somewhere, and I wish I remembered where, that 80% of German Wehrmacht dead were killed in Russia, or at least ground that was included in the USSR, post war.
Anyway, on this date, February 2, 1943, Field Marshall (he'd been promoted two days earlier by the above nut on the left, with the reminder that "...no German Field Marshall has ever surrendered) Friedrich Paulus, commander of the mighty Sixth Army, surrendered the remainder of his forces, 110,000 total, including 24 generals. His Army had been encircled by twenty divisions of Soviet troops since late November and, thanks to the two brilliant Russian generals, January and February, as well as Hitler's monomania, had been reduced to eating sawdust and motor oil. One of Hitler's staff, in protest, had started eating the same caloric input as the Stalingrad troops. After he'd lost twenty pounds (in heated offices primarily, mind you) they told him to start eating and get back to work.
It had been the Sixth that had triumphantly chewed up and spit out France and the Low Countries two years before but then found itself in the middle of a pissing contest between the two most powerful, pathological and egomaniacal members of the Worldwide Silly Mustache Club. The Sixth's ultimate claim to fame ended up being that of the principle pawn in the largest military defeat in history.
At the conclusion, Hitler had lost 400,000 men at Stalingrad in what was, when all was said and done, an ego trip and chicken contest with his Soviet counterpart.
Now, just to be fair, America was there: in the form of boots, rations, Studebaker trucks (still remembered fondly, along with the humble Jeep, by Russians) and tanks, the only part of the Lend-Lease program the Russians were unhappy with. The Sherman was too high-profile to avoid being shot at and had too little track width to avoid sinking into the snow. However, the Soviet T34, the universally acknowledged "Best Tank of the War", had none of these deficiencies. The Soviets were cranking them out at an average rate of 2200 per month and the Stalingrad tractor works, formerly known as the Red October, was sending them out, with fuel and ammo, unpainted into the fight.
The Sherman...sorry. It's only saving grace was that it existed in abundance. The Germans in North Africa called them "Tommy Cookers" after their propensity to burst into flames whenever hit, thus burning the Brits (Tommies...get it?) inside. The ugly side to this joke is that "Tommy Cooker" was the name that those Tommies had used in reference to their, often improvised, trench stoves in the First War.