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The Fairbairn Sykes did an important job in it's day. This knife was designed to be carried taking up as little space as possible and was often carried carefully concealed. It's job was simply to kill. After much honorable combat use in WWII a few problems became noticable (and documented). First problem was the handle, made on a lathe. The user could not rely on the perfectly round handle shape to orient the edge after dark and many sentrys had the flat of the blade rubbed across their throat. This did not have the result desired by the knife user. Another problem that came up was when the user held the knife in a fencing grip (thumb behind guard instead of wrapped around handle like hammer grip) and pushed it into something real hard, thumbnils got broken over backwards. This was because the guard was straight. Again, please let me state, lot's of these knives got made in a hurry in the war effort and turning handles on a lathe was a fast way to get lot's of work done. Britian was in a desperate situation back then and didn't have time to refine the design until the end of the war. Because of the above stated problems, documented from combat action reports, with the very honorable Fairbairn Sykes knife was redesigned by Fairbairn and Applegate towards the end of the war. The war ended before production began on the new design.
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