You may have realised a little something in most of my product images. Did you guess what it is ? Of course it’s the Fairbairn Sykes commando dagger, the staple image and icon of the Royal Marines commandos. This item has been apart of me since I joined the corps at 16 and it remains an item on my kit list now and for the years to come.
The Commando Regiment was formed in 1940 at the behest of Winston Churchill himself. The humiliating defeat at Dunkirk lead to the realisation that Britain was not in a position to launch a large scale military attack against the German army. Instead, Churchill determined that the British forces should have within their ranks a new group of fighting men dedicated to causing maximum disruption to the German army through morale-boosting, well prepared, surprise attacks on enemy installations.
The Fairbairn Sykes is described as a fighting knife, a double-edged knife resembling a dagger or poignard, developed by William Ewart Fairbairn and Eric Anthony Sykes in Shanghai based on ideas which the two men had before World War II while serving on the Shanghai Municipal Police in China. It has been adopted by all commando forces within the United Kingdom’s arsenal.
Primarily designed to be used in silent killing actions such as sentry take-outs. The techniques of effective use were taught to various special forces at Highland training centres such as Lochailort Special Training Centre (STC) and Achnacarry, which was the Commando Basic Training Centre (CBTC) from 1942-1945.
A story taken from online news source.
The special forces soldier stabbed the Islamic State fiend during an ambush in Afghanistan. It is thought the jihadi is the first person to be killed with a Fairburn-Sykes fighting knife in more than 50 years.The Daily Star Sunday has learned that the dagger was carried by the SBS commando almost as a lucky charm.The former Royal Marine was issued with it when he joined the regiment almost 16 years ago. He has carried it on dozens of operations. It is understood to have been used in anger for the first time earlier this year while the SBS were hunting for a “high-value target”.
Although I cannot verify this, the fact that the operator carries his fighting knife is nothing new and proves that even in today’s theatre where the utilisation of UAV drones, air strikes and ship to shore munitions is leading the way there’s still a place for a sneaky beaky operator to take out that un alert sentry and grab that upper hand.
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