1907 Shanghai, China.

A young British police constable walks through the international settlement on his first patrol.

He never finishes it.

Gang members drag him into an alley, stab him more than a dozen times, and leave him bleeding in the gutter.

Somehow, he survives.

And during his hospital recovery, William Fairburn makes a decision that will echo through military history for the next century.

He will learn how to kill with a knife better than anyone alive.

33 years later, the blade he designed would make German centuries so terrified of the dark that commanders struggled to find men willing to stand watch alone.

This is the story of the Fairbend Sykes fighting knife.

The British murder weapon that taught an entire generation of commandos how to kill silently.

Shanghai in the 1920s and30s was arguably the most dangerous city on Earth.

The French concession and international settlement existed as islands of colonial order surrounded by absolute chaos.

Historian Frederick Wakeakeman documented the scale of the problem.

Approximately 100,000 gangsters operated within the city, roughly 3% of the entire population.

The Green Gang alone controlled narcotics operations, generating $6 million monthly in payoffs.

An estimated 100,000 prostitutes worked the streets.

Kidnapping, assassination, and extortion were daily business.

Bodies floated in the Hangpoo River with such regularity that police barely investigated anymore.

Into this nightmare walked two men who had become the most experienced close combat instructors in modern military history.

William Uert Fairburn joined the Shanghai Municipal Police in 1907 and stayed for 33 years.

His partner Eric Anthony Sykes arrived the same year as a businessman representing Remington and Cult Firearms, eventually joining the police as a volunteer officer in 1926.

Together they witnessed and participated in violence on a scale no peaceime officer had ever experienced before or since.

By his own account and contemporary police records, Fairbank fought in hundreds of violent encounters during his career, with some estimates placing the figure around 600.

His body told the story.

His arms, legs, torso, and even his palms were covered with knife scars.

That first ambush nearly killed him, but it also created something dangerous.

According to his own account, Fairbear noticed a plaque in the hospital reading Professor Okarda, jiu-jitsu, and bone setting.

He began training immediately.

Over three decades, he mastered judo, becoming the first westerner to earn a second Dan black belt from the Kodakan in Tokyo.

He studied Chinese bar, boxing, wrestling, and French surveate.

He took every technique that worked in real street fights and discarded everything that did not.

By 1919, Fairbann had met Sykes, an expert marksman and former big game hunter with his own formidable skills.

Police records from their time together documented their presence at more than 2,000 riots and street fights with hundreds of shooting incidents.

This was not theory.

This was survival.

Fairburn developed a fighting system he called Defendu, publishing it in 1926.

His philosophy was brutal in its honesty.

Get tough.

Get down in the gutter.

Win at all costs.

There is no fair play.

No rules except one.

Kill or be killed.

When war came to Europe, Britain found itself desperately short of men who understood real violence.

The regular army trained soldiers to fight with rifles and bayonets in formations.

But Winston Churchill wanted something different.

He wanted raiders who could strike from the darkness, kill without warning, and vanish before the enemy knew what had happened.

In July 1940, both Fairburn and Sykes, now 55 and 57 years old, respectively, were commissioned as second left tenants and sent to special training center lock in Scotland.

They brought Shanghai with them, but they needed a proper weapon.

Existing military knives were designed for trench fighting or utility work.

None were optimized purely for assassination.

On November 4th, 1940, Fairburn and Sykes walked into the Wilkinson Sword Company offices in London.

They met with John Wilkinson Laam and chief engineer Charles Rose.

The conversation that followed would produce the most iconic fighting knife of the 20th century.

Fairburn explained exactly what he needed.

The blade must have a sharp stabbing point and excellent cutting edges.

An artery that is torn tends to contract and slow the bleeding.

But if a main artery is cleanly severed, the wounded man loses consciousness in seconds and dies shortly after.

The knife had to slip between ribs easily.

Fairburn insisted it must penetrate a Soviet greatcoat, passing through 3 in of heavy wool and still reaching vital organs.

It had to be balanced so the blade would not drag from wet or bloody fingers during combat.

Wilkinson Sword delivered the first prototype batch of 50 knives in January 1941.

The design was pure stiletto, a double-edged blade roughly 6 1/2 in long with an overall length of 11 1/2 in.

The first pattern featured a solid brass handle with nurling for grip, bright nickelplated because Fairburn insisted knife should be bright and highly polished, striking awe in the mind of the victim.

The balance point sat heavy at the hilt.

When asked why the blade was so thin, Fairburn answered simply, “It does not leave any marks on the body, scarcely more than a tiny drop of blood.

” Following successful trials, Wilkinson Sword produced 6,779 first pattern knives in total.

As Commando operations expanded, demand exploded.

The second patent introduced holoccast brass handles to save material.

By October 1943, the third patent emerged with zinc alloy handles featuring 27 distinctive rings.

Over 100 manufacturers eventually joined production.

By the end of the war, nearly 2 million Fairburn Sykes fighting knives had been produced.

Training took place at locations across Britain and Canada, but the most famous was Akna Castle in the Scottish Highlands, home of the Commando Basic Training Center.

Between 1942 and 1946, more than 25,000 men passed through its brutal curriculum.

Fairburn earned the nickname Dangerous Dan.

Some trainees died during live ammunition exercises.

Many more wish they had.

Sykes formalized the silent killing course in June 1942.

The official course description made no attempt at euphemism, designed to teach how to fight and kill without firearms.

Since the course includes the use of the knife, close combat is not strictly correct.

Silent killing is a more appropriate description.

At Campex in Canada and other overseas training centers, Fairburn instructed hundreds of SOE and OSS agents.

He introduced them to the House of Horrors, a pitch dark structure filled with pop-up targets, blind curves, and startling noises designed to condition men to kill without hesitation.

Fairburn’s timet of death listed specific targets with their expected incapacitation times.

The subclavian artery, unconsciousness in 2 seconds, death in 3 and 1/2 seconds.

The corroted artery, unconsciousness in 5 seconds, death in 12 seconds.

the brachial artery, unconsciousness in 14 seconds, death in 1 and 1/2 minutes.

A direct heart strike meant instantaneous unconsciousness and death within 3 seconds.

These times were optimistic, but they gave commandos concrete objectives in the chaos of close combat.

The signature sentry removal technique designated hold number 13 in Fairburn’s manual, Get Tough, specified approaching from behind, striking the throat with the left forearm while simultaneously punching the small of the back.

The victim would reflexively gasp, at which point the attacker covered both mouth and nose, making it impossible to scream.

Then came the knife.

Documented knife kills from World War II are remarkably rare in the historical record.

Co operations produced sparse afteraction reports and veterans rarely discussed knife combat even decades later.

This psychological weight was different from shooting, but some accounts survived.

One British commando veteran recalled house-to-house fighting.

I was in a doorway and I had a feeling.

The door behind me opened slowly.

When it was half open, I gave it a kick and standing there was a German officer.

Without even having to think, I whipped my knife out and stabbed him.

But then I could not bring myself to pull it out of him.

The legendary Jack Churchill, nicknamed Mad Jack, preferred his Scottish broadsword, but used knife tactics to capture 42 German prisoners single-handedly at Salerno in September 1943.

And Lassen, a Danish commando who would eventually earn aostumous Victoria Cross, became infamous for his silent work with the fighting knife.

The operation that changed everything occurred on the night of October 3rd, 1942.

Operation Basalt sent a small commando team to the island of Sark in the occupied Channel Islands.

Lassen killed a German sentry silently with his commando knife.

During the extraction, bound German prisoners attempted to escape.

In the struggle, several were killed.

When news reached Berlin, Hitler was furious.

On October 18th, 1942, the Furer issued the Commando Befail, the Commando Order, with only 12 copies distributed.

From now on, all men operating against German troops in so-called commando raids in Europe or in Africa are to be annihilated to the last man.

This is to be carried out whether they be soldiers in uniform or saboturs with or without arms.

The order violated the Geneva Convention and would later be used as evidence at the Nuremberg trials.

But it also confirmed something important.

The commandos had gotten inside German heads.

Verified German responses to commando operations included 30,000 additional troops sent to reinforce Norway after the Vagsoy raid.

After operation Basalt, the Germans laid 13,17 mines on the tiny island of Sarkc.

Commanders deemed insufficiently vigilant were replaced.

Coastal fortifications were strengthened across occupied Europe.

A counter training manual titled defense against British gangster methods was produced and distributed in 1942 specifically addressing silent attack techniques.

The Fairborn Sykes was not without critics, particularly among those who actually used it in the field.

American and Commonwealth forces sometimes preferred alternatives.

The carbar adopted by the United States Marine Corps featured a 7-in single-edged blade with leather washer handles designed for both fighting and utility work.

One special forces veteran with 30 years experience across three armies complained bluntly.

We hated the Sykes Fairb as the blade tip snapped off in bone and the grip was designed by a surgeon who thought he was doing brain surgery.

You could soak the carbar grip in water or blood and still keep a good working grip on it.

German infantry carried their own Nakam Messa boot knives with single-edge 5 to 6in blades and wooden handles.

These were utilitarian designs, useful for cutting rope or preparing food as well as fighting.

Technically sound but uninspiring.

The American V42 stiletto designed for the first special service force under Fairben’s influence added a skull crushing pommel and could pierce a steel helmet, but only 3,000 were manufactured before production stopped due to breakage issues.

The Fairb Sykes had real limitations.

The thin blade tips broke when hitting bone.

The round handle was difficult to index in darkness.

It was completely useless as a utility tool.

Rex Applegate, who trained under Fairben, later developed the Applegate Fairbank knife with an oval handle cross-section and increased blade thickness to address these problems.

Yet, the original achieved mythical status while technically superior designs faded into obscurity.

The reason was simple.

No other knife had the Commandos behind it.

Today, a solid gold Fairband Sykes fighting knife forms part of the Commando’s memorial at Westminster Abbey.

The silhouette appears in the insignia of British Three Commando Brigade, Belgian Commandos, Dutch Commando Corps, Australian First and Second Commando Regiments, United States Army Rangers, and the recently updated Army Special Operations Brigade.

The United Kingdom Government Specification E/1323E established in 1949, remains current for modern production.

Sheffield manufacturers including J Noel and Suns continue making the knives.

Sterile unmarked versions are produced for NATO used by the Egenon Group.

Nations ordering FS knives included Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Ghana, Kenya, Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, and Poland.

In December 2019, a special boat service commando reportedly used his Fairbend Sykes fighting knife during an ISIS ambush in Afghanistan when his firearm was knocked away.

If confirmed, it would be the first FS fatality in nearly 50 years.

The knife designed to kill Nazis was reportedly still killing enemies of Britain eight decades later.

Fairb died peacefully in Sussex on June 20th, 1960 at age 75.

Sykes had died on May 12th, 1945, just as the war ended.

Their friendship had fractured in 1942 when Sykes reported Fairbann’s plan to join a commando raid.

Fearing his capture would compromise too many secrets, the knife they created together outlived both of them by generations, it remains in frontline service 84 years after production began, still teaching the same lesson Fairb learned bleeding in a Shanghai alley.

In close combat, the man with the better blade and the will to use it wins.

Modern tactical knife design owes an enormous debt to what Fairburn and Sykes created.

The Gerber M2, iconic during the Vietnam War, descended directly from FS philosophy while addressing the originals weaknesses.

The Soji Pentagon, the EK Commando knife, and the Yabra knife issued to United States Army special forces all acknowledge the Fairband Sykes as their conceptual ancestor.

Every stiletto style fighting knife produced since 1941 exists in its shadow.

Consider what these two men accomplished.

They took decades of brutal street experience from the most violent city in the world, distilled it into a fighting system, designed a weapon specifically to execute that system and trained tens of thousands of special operators in its use.

The psychological impact alone, the fear their trained commandos inspired contributed to Hitler ordering the execution of captured special forces soldiers in violation of international law.

That is the British engineering philosophy at its most brutal.

Not the most comfortable solution, not the most versatile, but for one specific job, killing a man silently in the dark, nothing else has ever done it better.

Two scarred veterans of Shanghai’s gang wars, aged 55 and 57, taught young commandos how to kill using techniques proven in hundreds of street fights.

The knife they designed remains in operational use 84 years later.

That documented legacy needs no embellishment.