British Lee Enfield No. 5 Jungle Carbine Bayonet by Wilkinson
Single-fullered bowie knife blade with clipped point. Wood scale grips secured with two screws. Mk II steel scabbard with rimmed brass mouthpiece, round frog stud and drainage hole at the chape. Green canvas frog with retaining loop.
The ricasso of the blade is stamped on one side with the maker’s mark ‘W.S.C.’ for the Wilkinson Sword Company, and on the other side with a broad arrow, a letter ‘B’ and an ‘X’ indicating the blade passed a manufacturer’s bending test. The reverse of the frog is very faintly ink stamped, but this is too rubbed to be legible (I think there may be the date ‘1940’ in there).
The No. 5 Bayonet was developed during WW2 amidst ongoing discussions about the future of British bayonet design. The long 1907 Pattern sword bayonets were clearly a thing of the past, while the very short No. 4 spike bayonets were easy to manufacture but crude, and of little use as anything but a bayonet. The Armament Design Department based at Cheshunt designed a shortened knife blade bayonet, with prototyping done by Wilkinson. By 1943 the blade shape had settled on that of a Bowie knife, and production began at Wilkinson.
The No. 5 fitted to the new Lee Enfield No. 5 Mk I rifle designed at the same time: a shortened and lightened form of the No. 4 originally intended for airborne troops. In the event the No. 5 saw most use in the Far East, both during WW2 and in postwar conflicts, earning it the nickname ‘Jungle Carbine’.
This rifle had a new flared flash hider which made it incompatible with any older bayonets – the noticeably large muzzle ring of the No. 5 bayonet was shaped to accommodate it. It also fitted to the Sterling submachine gun designed in the same period. Around 330,000 No. 5 bayonets were manufactured between 1943 and 1945.
This example has particularly good surviving finishes: the blade is nicely parkerised and has no edge damage, with only a few very lightly rubbed areas from sheathing and drawing and one tiny scratch on one side towards the ricasso. The base of the blade retains its original blued finish while the hilt and pommel have a black lacquered finish with only a few tiny spots of chipping revealing steel. The wood grips are undamaged with some dents, their overall polish lustrous. The scabbard is free of dents and blued overall. The frog has only light rubbing in places, no fraying and all of its stitching intact.
