What type of knife is the best for close quarters combat?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “knife types combat“
About Adalynn
Written by: Adalynn
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What type of knife is the best for close quarters combat?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “knife types combat“
About Adalynn
TL;DR : Trench Knife is the way to go.
As a person who have devoted entire knife related life to a re-curved blade knife/sword such as Kukri, I am tempted to say Kukri is the best knife for Close Quarters Combet. However, I won’t fall into that trap.
Since it will be impossible to cover all of CQC situation in this particular page, let’s make some assumptions based on common sense.
First, modern day people do not wear any armor made of steel that covers most of body parts. So we can assume 1)In the CQC, the best armor you will fight against is a chest rig with ballistic plate on small section of chest and back.
Second, modern day people do not tend to carry long melee weapon such as pole axe, long spear, katana, yatagan…etc. So 2)In the CQC, one will expect to go against rifle, handgun, baseball bat or a knife under 30cm in length.
Third, in modern day, knife attack would be obsolete unless the knife attack is done in element of surprise, or one would be already shot. So 3)In the CQC, knife attack will be done swift manner with element of surprise. P.S : Most people don’t use bayonet anymore as well.
Of course, there are many other factors such as situational awareness, leather jacket, gunpoint robbing and such and such, but for the sake of argument, let’s say that two individuals know that fight is happening and there are many covers so that knife attacker has a fair change to the other individual armed with knife, handgun and rifle.
Then the best knife would be the one that does most damage in shorted amount that does not hinder the attacker.
Weight forward, re-curved blade such as Kukri would requires large motion to wield thus increasing the chance of attacked to be blocked and countered. It also requires relatively longer time to wield it, and it increase the change of counter attack. It also is not a best knife for stabbing, which would be crucial impediment since stabbing is one of most effective way of knife attack. Lastly, it would be difficult to execute an effective killing blow if an enemy is armed with helmet and an chest rig and such.
Knife such as Karambit not only requires special training, but it also has unconventional blade make it requires to the attacker to get even closer to execute an effective attack, thus also giving time to react. Not to mention difficulty of avoiding armored area and successfully slice the enemy.
Conventional straight drop point knife would be much more effective than forementioned blades as it will be able to execute multiple stab in short time to ensure maximum damage. Also it can be shoved into the enemy’s armors, thick clothing to ensure damage. However, since there is no device on the handle that prohibit blade from slipping, it could slice the attacker’s hand or lose the knife in violent act of stabbing.
So in the limited situation like this, the best knife would be a trench knife. It can stab multiple time fast, shoved into weak part of body and armor, brass-knuckle like handle prohibit from losing the blade or being disarmed and lastly, it is light enough to not to hinder the attacker.
It just not gonna be a good wilderness survival tool, though.
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My preferance is a gerber mkiii tempered to spring steel with a needle point and hardened razor edges. It just finds the untercostal spaces between ribs into kidneys and liver, will open up a diaphram, slides into the aorta and will go between the c1 vertebra and base of the skull very nicely. It also will do wonders on femoral, brachial and venacava locations as well.
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