[Travis McGee]

Pardon a war story, second hand. I went through frog school in 79, so all the instructors were VN vets. Lots of what I learned was from their stories. Here's one. A squad of seals (7 men) approached a lonely enemy hooch at oh dark 30, looking to make a snatch. But as they crept close, out comes papa san to take a leak in the gardet. The squad had a new guy, first tour, no blood, so the squad leader hand signaled him to go "take out" this guy with his knife. His knife was a standard issue USN K-Bar. Very big, very sharp. The said seal stalked up to kill him. It didn't go according to plan, the man turned, and took it in the chest, in a not immediately fatal spot. The strike was not well delivered, they both went down. The man with the knife a few inches in him did not cry out, but battled for his life. The rest of the seals thought this was hilarious, and just watched it play out on the ground. (Their many AWs were trained on the hooch, justin case they woke up.)

Anyway, you have this big strapping seal on top of papa san, trying to drive that big K-bar through that skinny but tough VNs chest. It took a LOT of doing, because apparantly a chest will "grip" a blade like crazy, when the victim is struggling for his life! Plus his hands are on it and your arms too, pushing it away.

It was a long struggle, and eventually it went in and the old guy expired. (RIP, no hard feelings.)

The moral of the story was that a K-bar is a great knife for many things, but it's too damn wide to be shoving through anybody's chest if you're in a hurry. The seal telling this story was of hte opinion that a narrower "dirk" like knife (Sykes Fairbairn or other) is better for sentry stalking. You may intend to go for the throat, but you may end up having to drive it in, and wide knives aren't so good for this purpose.

What made me think of this is that fat tipped spear point knife XSRDX posted a few up from here.

[xsrdx]

a narrower "dirk" like knife (Sykes Fairbairn or other) is better for sentry stalking.

The Busse is more of a chopper. It's a big, heavy, thick blade - almost a short sword - and a single powerful thrust, or solid whack in the right spot, should have the desired effect.

As to daggers, Gerber got it just about perfect with the MKII.