Duffy wrote:
I've searched the WWW to no avail (interesting in itself).
So to the LR brain trust...
How many bayonets does the armed forces of the US have in it's possession today?
How many in 1917?
Same for horses.
I know this is really stupid and pointless, but the difficulty in finding these numbers has me curious. It's like trying to find out how many actual dollars are spent on education in California (hint, it has gone up every year since as far back as 1975 despite the almost universal claim,
every year, that there are "drastic cuts").
I remember reading something about Marine Corps legendary general Lewis B. 'Chesty Puller who, upon seeing a flame thrower for the first time, asked: "Where does the bayonet go?" ;-)
Generally, for each rifle with the capability to support a bayonet, one is supposed to come with it. Over time, though, you can end up with many more bayonets than rifles, and vice-versa, in an infantry or other unit as troops lose them, keep them as souvenirs and so forth. Bayonets are maintained in a unit's armory and the armorers are responsible for keeping adequate numbers of them in accordance with the unit's TO, or Table of Organization or TO&E (Table of Organization and Equipment, though I think it's called something else nowadays). A bayonet is a specific piece of infantry rifle equipment and it differs from the so-called 'combat knife,' or Ka-Bar (in the Marine Corps and in Navy special warfare units), a lot of troops sport.
The 'bayonet charge' was instrumental in several US military actions of note, including at Little Round Top, at Gettysburg in the Civil War, where Union troops, nearly out of ammunition and in danger of having their lines broken and outflanked by charging Confederate troops, fixed bayonets and charged forward, turning the Confederates and putting them to rout. Bayonets were also fixed and US troops charged forward using them in WWW I and II in more than a few major battles as well as in Korea and even Vietnam, at Ia Drang in a couple of smaller unit melees and elsewhere. Knowing how to effectively fight with your rifle and bayonet combination is an indispensable part of the US infantryman's combat toolkit, God bless him. :-)