stonebuster
Member
My father-in-law left this bayonet and scabbard behind and I'm looking for some info from the experts here. Gunny's bayonet thread got me wondering about this. Is this a Vietnam era bayonet and does the scabbard match?
M6 should be the M14 bayonet (M1 is the WWII Garand bayonet; don't remember what the 2 was, the M3 was the Trench Knife; M4 is the Trecnh kifes as bayonet for the Carbine; M5 is the Garand bayonet that had a stud instead of a loop).
M8 scabbard came out in very late 1945. The M8A1 came out after Korea an corrected some things found to be less than ideal with the M8.
So, the M8A1 scabbard is entirely correct for a M6 bayonet.
M14 was adopted circa 1958, after 13 years' development. Full deployment was not until about 1963.
If you wanted a very interesting accessory for the bayonet, the M-56 entrenching tool carrier had a tab and a loop to carry the bayonet scabbard (finding the correct e-tool with both pick and shovel is getting tougher than in years past). It's middling easy to find the e-tool carrier in near mint condition, since its use was curtailed by the widespread issue of the M9 and M17 pro-masks , which were worn where the e-tool carriier had been designed to.