Sam Alexander

Everyone else has like, you know, the bayonets going to detach from the rifle.

Yeah.

You stick it on your belt.

The Russians, even back, I mean, Burdan 1, I don't think had this issue, but I also haven't seen anything one way or the other.

Burdan 2 either, but by the time they get to the Mosin at least, they're of the mind that the bayonet gets permanently attached to the rifle.

Maybe it has something to do, I mean, granted, all European powers at this point are using conscripts, but maybe it has something to do with the expectations on Russian conscripts that they're going to lose these things too fucking much.

I don't know.

That's a weird one.

Well, that and warfare shrank considerably in World War I. Because prior to that, everyone is assuming, again, that's why you have volley sights on rifles, because...

And through the late 19th century, everyone's assuming the mode of war is going to retain larger formations of troops shooting at each other from a thousand yards away, slowly closing distance.

They're not fixated on the bayonet being the deciding factor like you would be in Napoleonic warfare.

Actually, it'd be a little bit pre-Napoleonic warfare anyway.

The bayonet being kind of the deciding factor in a frontal assault goes out with the Civil War.

Because by the time you get to the U.S.

Civil War, everybody who knows anything about warfare.

So this is why you don't like frontal assaults.

By the time the rifled musket becomes the main thing, the frontal assault becomes suicidal.

But that momentum stays with the bayonet until it finally starts to shrug off in World War I, where bayonets go from being sword length, because now we're no longer worried about cavalry, so we don't need a fucking pike, and they get shorter and shorter and shorter.

Yeah.

For a little context, Jace, two years ago, Vince shot a very, very small deer.