FROM THE BOOK: “PIERCING THE REICH”
AUTHOR: JOSEPH E. PERSICO
They learned the art of silent killing, perfected by W.E. Fairbairn, the legendary British Major, sometimes known as “Delicate Dan.” Knife strokes taught, should be upward, from the testicles to the chin. The hand in a “tiger claw” position was most effective for gouging out eyes. A single sheet of newspaper, they learned, could become a crude dagger. Fold the paper to approximately six inches by two inches. Then fold it diagonally to form a sharp point at one end. Drive the pointed end hard into the stomach or under the jaw, just behind the chin.
FROM THE BOOK: “BEHIND JAPANESE LINES”
AUTHOR: RICHARD DUNLOP
British Major Dan Fairbairn, who had been chief of police in Shanghai before the Japanese capture of the city, taught the Fairbairn method of assault and murder. His course was not restricted to Camp X but later given at OSS camps in the United States. All of us who were taught by Major Fairbairn soon realized that he had an honest dislike for anything that smacked of decency in fighting.
“To him, there were no rules in staying alive. He taught us to enter a fight with one idea; to kill an opponent quickly and efficiently,” said Ray Peers.
Fairbairn had invented a stiletto as precise as a surgeon’s scalpel. He wielded it with a flashing, slashing vigor that invariably proved fatal to an opponent.
“Why is it so long and thin?” I asked him one day in a question period during my own course of instruction. “It doesn’t have a cutting edge.”
“It doesn’t leave any marks on the body,” he replied. “Scarcely more than a tiny drop of blood.”
Fairbairn taught his trainees to fire anything from a pistol to a BAR at close quarters, by aiming with the body. In unarmed combat he overcame one hulking trainee after another. With a wry smile the wiry major would admonish his bruised and bleeding students, “Don’t let anybody lead you down the garden path.”
FROM THE BOOK: “THE FIRST COMMANDO KNIVES”
AUTHOR: PROF. KELLY YEATON, LT. COL. SAMUEL S. YEATON (USMC)
AND COL. REX APPLEGATE
On January 24th, 1933, he wrote me:
“This man Fairbairn is beyond the shadow of a doubt the greatest of “the greatest of them all.” I’ve had about 12 hours of conferences with him and done a couple of hour’s work on the mats. His stuff is not jiu-jitsu or judo – he gave us an exhibition of judo using five men, two third-degree black belts, two second, and one first, to prove it. He uses some of their falls and a few holds, but not more than about 20% of it and most with variations. It’s not Chinese boxing, of which 80% is mere ritual. It’s a collection of all the known methods of dirty fighting and it will beat them all. He knows it will, he’s done it. Judo is to clean on every hold a judo man’s eyes and testicles are vulnerable. But it is awful fast; still, it’s not as fast as boxing. We proved that, and to the Japanese, at that. Given men of equal speed, it’s the man who is not surprised by the others method of attack who will win. We put Sam Taxis [the third Sam] who boxes featherweight now against a third degree judo man [the punches not to be delivered and the throws not to be carried out] and it was a draw. But we had a man hold up his hand as a target and Sammy Taxis put a one-two on it while a man stood beside the hand and tried to grab his hands. All they got was his necktie. The remarkable thing about Fairbairn is that although he damn near does know it all, he doesn’t seem to think he does. If you’ve got an idea, he’ll not only listen to you and point out what’s wrong, if anything, but he’ll admit if it’s new to him and as good as or better than his own current methods.”
One of the motivating causes for the interest in the fighting knife was the discovery that even Fairbairn (“The Greatest of Them all”) had no real defense against a knife in the hands of trained fighters. We knew a number of ways of disarming men with pistols, some of them relatively safe. Even trying to disarm a person with a knife is dangerous, unless the person attacks with the dramatic “assassin’s stab” holding the knife like an ice-pick overhead. For that kind of stupidity there is a clear and positive response, fortunately. But even for the Paris “Apache’s” style coming in low, with the knife edge upward and aiming at the guts, Fairbairn had only two suggestions
A. RUN
B. “With a lighting-like kick of either foot, kick him in the testicles or stomach.”
But when my brother asked him to demonstrate this move, “Willie never even got up from his desk he just said, ‘You missed the phrase lighting-like I don’t do lighting-like any more.’”
Incoming search terms:
- Fairbairn Sykes AND variations
- Fairbairn Sykes the art of killing