Effectiveness of a sword as a weapon
 

...in the right hands (there seem to be a pun hidden here somewhere...)

I was reading the other day The Imperial War Museum Book of War Behind Enemy Lines: Special Forces in Action, 1940-45, and about the Chindits in particular, when I came across the story about George Albert Cairns VC.

Now what do you guys say about this:
"During this action, in which Lieutenant Cairns took a foremost part, he was attacked by a Japanese officer, who, with his sword hacked off Lieutenant Cairns left arm. http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...milies/eek.gif Lieutenant Cairns killed this Officer; picked up the sword and continued to lead his men in the attack and slashing left and right with the captured sword killed and wounded several Japanese before he himself fell to the ground." This text is from http://www.chindits.info/Awards/VCCairns.html .

I know that a sword is not the magical death wand that you see in the movies, but being able to any sort of action when your left hand has been hacked off seem to be quite beyond capabilities of ordinary men.

I haven't found any information, whether Cairns had any weapons when the Japanese officer attacked him, or what he used to kill the said officer, but if the counts of the incident are truthfull, then it is possible that Cairns was weaponless. This may very well be the only recorded (modern) incident of mutodori!

Remarkable...

Make that a Katate-Mutodori. http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...ilies/wink.gif

There was a U.S. Ranger in Vietnam who had part of an arm shot up, tied it back on itself to keep it from flapping around, was shot several times in the stomach, tied a towel around himself to keep his guts in, was shot several times in other places, and used a shotgun one handed while defending his LRRP team during an extraction for a mission that went tits up in a bad way. Their position over run and everything in chaos, he ran through enemy formations to retrieve a jungle penetrator line and dragged it to other wounded comrades to get the up into the chopper, several times during the engagement. He received the Medal of Honor for it, and is still alive so far as I know. Some people are just extraordinary.

Maccuswael's post reminded me of this article I stumbled across a while ago - 5 Real Life Soldiers Who Make Rambo Look Like a Pussy: http://www.cracked.com/article_17019...ike-bitch.html

#3 is fairly relevant to the topic, I think. Captain Jack Malcolm Thorpe Fleming Churchill.

He is best known for saying that "any officer who goes into action without his sword is improperly dressed" and, in following with this, for carrying a sword into battle. In WWII. And not one of those sissy ceremonial things the Marines have. No, Jack carried a fucking claymore. And he used it, too. He is credited with capturing a total of 42 Germans and a mortar squad in the middle of the night, using only his sword. Absolutely off his rocker. Managed to live through the war just fine, and died in 1996 at a ripe old age.

did he have pipers to march him into the battle? maybe he also had few shot of scotch before every battle also.

pete

That was a good article, I liked the white ghost, #5 myself, 704 confirmed kills, that's one scary guy.

good find!!!

They should have included this guy in the article:

http://www.medalofhonor.com/DanielInouye.htm#combat

The VC was certainly earned, but he paid one hell of a price.

Sorry, in battle a want a firearm, the idea is to kill as many enemy as possible while they are at a distance, much safer that way. Grenade’s, landmines any type of explosives will help. No firearms or bombs? Then a bow and arrow will do nicely. Kill as many as you can from a distance, and maybe the rest will simply go away. Keep yourself safely away for as long as possible.

A sword for close quarter only, when they’ve closed the distance and where no one else has a firearm. A sword is a nice long weapon, again keeping the enemy as far away as possible while you kill him.

Man, these guys in modern warfare using swords, you just have to give them credit.

this is my local museum... http://www.greenhowards.org.uk/medals.php
quite an interesting read as everyone listed lived within 5 miles of the museum.
One guy who is not listed here, but is part of the VC medals display, is some lunatic in WW1 who with 3 bullets and a bayonet captured 80 prisoners, several machine guns etc etc by himself...you can imagine him walking back to his trench lines..."Who goes there?" "only me and 80 prisoners sir!" "well hurry along, you're blocking the view!"

another favourite from the Victoria Cross list...

BADLU SINGH. (Reg. No. 45).
Rissaldar* 14th Lancers (Scinde Horse) attchd. 29th Lancers (Deccan Horse).
London Gazetted on 27th November 1918.
Born on at Dhakla (village)in the Rhotak District of the Punjab, India.
Died on the 23rd September 1918 at River Jordan in Palestine. (Killed in action).
Memorial on the Heliopolis Memorial, the Heliopolis War Cemetery, Egypt
Digest of Citation reads:
On 23rd September 1918 on the West Bank of the River Jordan, Palestine, when his squadron was charging a strong enemy position, Ressaidar * Badlu Singh realised that heavy casualties were being inflicted from a small hill occupied by machine-guns and 200 infantry. Without any hesitation he collected six other ranks and with entire disregard of danger he charged and captured the position. He was mortally wounded on the very top of the hill when capturing one of the machine-guns single handed, but all the guns and infantry had surrendered to him before he died.
* Captain.

It is rumoured he did 500 tonda suburi as a warm up before climbing the hill.http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...es/biggrin.gif

Yeah, Simo Häyhä. Look him up in wiki. Small guy, I have seen a couple of documentaries about him with interviews, very laid back and modest. He said allways that his number one skill that made him succesfull was his patience. He would crawl to position in the dark, stay put and crawl out again in the dark, no matter what happens, how hungry or thirsty. "Movement kills". We have a sniper competition in his honour here in Finland. It still cracks me up when someone says that he's not the greatest sniper ever, "because he used an smg sometimes" http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...s/rolleyes.gif

And he used iron sights. Only iron sights.

"because he used an smg sometimes", which presumably means he was very close to his target because WW2 SMG had an appalling effective range up close and personal would be one way to describe it
basically feck em mans a hero simply put

It's always the quite ones you need to be concerned about, this web page has a pretty colorful segment on him, along with some other note worthy people. I didn't realize they tried to give him a scoped rifle but he turned it down, scary, scary guy who you defiantly would not want to meet on the field.