The Fierce British Wrist Weapon That Merged a Cosh, Garrote, and Hidden Dagger into a Single Tool

 

It looked like a torch or perhaps a piece of plumbing.

7 in of dark metal tubing with a ball on one end strapped to your wrist.

Anyone who saw it would assume it was some kind of tool, maybe something an electrician carried.

They would be wrong.

Inside that innocent cylinder was a lead weighted kosh capable of crushing a skull, a 24-in piano wire gar that could strangle a man in seconds, and a spring-loaded stiletto blade that deployed with a single shake of the wrist.

Three ways to kill hidden inside one device.

Collector records suggest only about two dozen were ever made.

This is the story of the Mcclego and Pescuit close combat weapon.

One of S so SOE’s most unusual combination close combat tools of the Second World War 1941.

Britain stood alone against Nazi Germany.

The Vermach had conquered France in 6 weeks.

Norway had fallen.

The Low Countries were occupied.

Greece and Yugoslavia had collapsed under the Blitzgreg.

Across this vast territory, from the Arctic Circle to the Mediterranean, German centuries stood guard.

Every bridge, every railway junction, every ammunition dump, every coastal radar station, thousands of targets protected by hundreds of thousands of soldiers who needed to die quietly if Britain saboturs were going to succeed.

In London, a new organization was learning how to make that happen.

The special operations executive so had been created in July 1940 with a single instruction from Winston Churchill.

Set Europe ablaze.

That meant sabotage on an industrial scale.

It meant building resistance networks from nothing.

It meant training ordinary civilians to become killers.

And when necessary, it meant silent murder.

The problem facing so agents was brutally simple.

How do you eliminate an enemy sentry without alerting everyone within half a mile? A pistol shot, even a suppressed one, created noise that traveled.

A struggle might give the sentry time to cry out to fire his weapon to bring reinforcements running.

The killing had to be instant, silent, and certain.

One moment the German would be standing at his post, rifle slung, perhaps thinking of home.

The next he would be dead on the ground and the S SOA operative would already be moving toward the target.

No alarm raised, no patrol alerted, just a body cooling in the darkness.

Existing weapons each solved part of the problem.

The famous Fairburn Sykes fighting knife designed by William Fairburn and Eric Sykes based on their experience with the Shanghai Municipal Police excelled at stabbing.

Its needle-sharp blade, 7 and 1/2 in of double-edged steel, could slide between ribs to pierce the heart.

Fairburn himself taught the technique.

Approach from behind.

Clamp your left hand over the mouth and nose.

Drive the blade upward into the kidney or across the throat.

But a knife required you to close within arms reach.

And if your first thrust missed, if the sentry twisted at the wrong moment, you faced a fight against a trained soldier.

The garat offered a different solution.

A loop of wire or cord pulled tight around the throat killed silently and certainly.

Once the wire bit into the flesh, the victim had perhaps 10 seconds of consciousness, 15 at most.

No time to cry out, no time to fight effectively.

But the garage only worked from behind.

If your target turned at the wrong moment, if he heard your footstep on a twig, you were holding a piece of string against a man with a rifle and bayonet.

Akos, a weighted bludgeon, could knock a man unconscious with a single blow to the skull.

British police had used them for decades.

A leather sleeve filled with lead shot or a solid metal bar wrapped in tape.

Swing it hard against the temple or the base of the skull, and your target dropped instantly, but a stunned enemy might recover.

A blow that did not land perfectly might leave him dazed but conscious, able to shout, able to pull a trigger, and even a successful strike left a body that might groan, might twitch, might attract attention from a passing patrol.

So operatives often carried all three, a fairy on the belt, a garat coiled in the pocket, a kosh up the sleeve.

But in the chaos of a night operation, fumbling for the right weapon could cost precious seconds.

The sentry might turn.

The patrol schedule might shift.

A dog might bark.

Every moment of delay increased the chance of discovery.

And discovery behind enemy lines meant death.

Two men believed they had the solution.

John Edward Pescuit became managing director of Cogwell and Harrison Limited in 1938.

The company established in 1770 at 108 Piccadilli ranked among London’s most prestigious gun makers.

They built fine shotguns for aristocrats who hunted grouse on Scottish moors.

They supplied military contracts dating back generations.

Pescuit had access to master craftsmen capable of precision manufacturing that few facilities in wartime Britain could match.

When the military needed something special built, something that required absolute precision and total secrecy, Cogwell and Harrison could deliver.

His collaborator was altogether more colorful.

Sydney Temple Leopold Mcclegelan, born in 1884 in Stephanie, was the brother of Victor Mcclegelan, the Oscar-winning Hollywood actor famous for The Informer and numerous John Ford westerns.

But while Victor conquered the silver screen, Sydney pursued a different path.

He styled himself the world jujitsu champion after a bout in London in 1907.

He authored combat manuals including modernized Yugjutsu lessons and during the war an armed attack and defense for commandos, home guards and civilians.

He claimed service in the boar war.

He toured internationally teaching his Mleelen bayonet system.

By 1944 he held a commissioned lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve.

Sydney Mcclegelan was by most accounts a rogue.

His own brother, Victor, publicly called him an impostor in 1911.

Historians have described him as a constant liar whose credentials were embellished at best, fabricated at worst.

But his combat theories found military utility.

Someone in British intelligence saw value in his ideas about close quarters killing enough to give him a naval commission and attach his name to a classified weapons project.

Together, the precision craftsman and the self-taught combat theorist conceived something unprecedented.

A single weapon that combined all three killing methods, kosh, garat, and dagger, unified in one wristmounted device that an operative could deploy in any situation.

British patent GB59747 filed on August 10th, 1942, describes it officially improvements in or relating to close combat weapons.

The patent abstract states it consists of the combination of two or more close combat weapons such as a dagger and a strangulation cord with a club or kosh clinical language for a brutal instrument designed for one purpose silent killing at intimate range.

The finished weapon according to surviving examples and auction catalog descriptions measured 7 in when closed roughly the length of a man’s hand from wrist to fingertip.

Extended with the blade deployed, it reached 12 and 1/4 in.

The cylindrical body tube finished in darkerized is steel to prevent reflection in moonlight measured 5 and 5/8 in long with a maximum diameter of 7/8 of an inch.

Total weight came to approximately 500 to 600 g according to collector records.

Heavy enough for effective striking, light enough for extended wear on the forearm without fatigue.

The kosh mechanism occupied the top of the device.

A heavy ball of cast lead and steel measuring roughly 1 and 38 in in diameter mounted rotatably at top the cylinder.

The designers intended this weighted sphere to deliver incapacitating force when swung downward against the skull.

The ball’s mass concentrated at the end of a lever arm.

The weapon’s body multiplied striking power.

According to the patent, this ball served a dual purpose.

When rotated, it wound and unwound the Gat wire stored inside.

According to auction descriptions, approximately 24 in of piano wire coiled around the ball’s internal stem.

The patent and surviving examples indicate piano wire was chosen for its strength and minimal stretch.

The designers intended a non-elastic hightensil cord that would bite into flesh rather than elongate under load.

one end fixed permanently inside the body.

The free end emerged through a small hole near the top, equipped with a ring grip for the operative’s finger.

To deploy, the user loosened a set screw beneath the ball, drew out the wire to its full length, and could wind it back afterward by rotating the weighted sphere.

The wire’s length allowed operatives to approach sentries from behind, loop the garat around their throat, cross their wrists behind the victim’s head, and apply lethal strangling force.

The dagger component occupied the opposite end.

A 5 1/2 in stiletto blade, thin and spike shaped, optimized for thrusting rather than cutting, nested inside the hollow body.

The release mechanism was elegantly simple.

A spring-loaded button on the side controlled a lateral arm attached to the blade.

When depressed, gravity did the rest.

Point the weapon downward, shake your wrist, and the blade slid out and locked into position with an audible click.

This gravity deployment meant the blade would deploy reliably, even with wet or bloodied hands, even in total darkness, even under the stress of combat.

The entire assembly attached to the forearm via a heavy web wrist strap with a split ring.

An operative could wear it under a jacket sleeve, invisible to casual inspection, yet instantly accessible regardless of what they carried in their hands.

Development began around 1941 with a prototype emerging before the patent application.

This early version, which surfaced at auction in 2022 with Providence tracing to the Wilkinson sword tool room, revealed several critical flaws that required correction before production could proceed.

The prototype’s ball was not heavy enough for effective Kosh function.

Striking power depends on mass and velocity.

reduce the mass and you need more velocity to achieve the same impact.

More velocity means a longer swing.

A longer swing means more time for your target to react.

The blade measured only 8 cm, roughly 3 in, too short for reliable killing.

The Fairborn Sykes achieved its lethality partly through blade length.

7 1/2 in could reach vital organs from multiple angles.

3 in might not penetrate deep enough to kill quickly.

Most critically, the wire spool proved too small, causing stress failures in the garat wire during deployment.

The wire kinkedked where it wound too tightly around the small diameter spool.

A kinkedked wire under tension was a wire about to snap.

A gar that snapped during use would doom an operative.

Pescuit’s craftsmen at Cogwell and Harrison addressed each deficiency in the production version.

They enlarged and weighted the ball for greater striking power.

They extended the blade to a combat effective 5 1/2 in.

They redesigned the internal wire storage with a larger diameter spool to prevent stress failures.

According to small arms review and specialist dealer cataloges, production numbers remained extraordinarily limited.

Collector and auction records consistently described the Mlealin peskuit as extremely rare, with most specialists estimating only about two dozen were made.

Some surviving examples examined by auction houses bear stamped markings and serial numbers, including references to patent pending status.

One sold example reportedly carried a strap marking that collectors have interpreted as denoting the first special service brigade, though such attributions should be verified against individual lot photographs.

The intended recipients included so operatives and after America entered the war in December 1941 their counterparts in the United States office of strategic services the OSA some sources connect the weapon to the famous first special service force the legendary devil’s brigade that conducted operations in Italy and southern France the weapon came issued with its wrist strap and a special belt scabbard allowing operatives to carry it concealed beneath clothing for rapid deployment.

Here is where the story takes an unexpected turn.

No confirmed documented operational use has been found in accessible so mission reports, veteran memoirs, or afteraction files.

The weapon appears in museum displays and collector catalogs, but not in mission logs.

This may reflect archive gaps or informal field use that went unrecorded, but based on available evidence, the Mleagel and Pescuit seems to have remained unused in combat.

Robert G.

Seagull, writing in Small Arms Review, delivered a blunt assessment.

There is no evidence that these were ever used in actual operations, let alone credited with an actual kill.

While these specialized blades were designed for use by operatives and were purchased by them, they appeared to be more a souvenir than an actual field service item.

Why did this ingenious design fail to achieve operational use? Extreme rarity meant limited distribution.

With only about two dozen reportedly produced, the weapon could equip fewer than 25 operatives across all of SOE and Oganizations that employed thousands of agents across multiple continents.

Timing proved problematic.

By the time the patent published in March 1944, SOE had already established its preferred weapon suite.

Operatives trusted the proven Fairburn Sykes knife with its 2 million production run.

They relied on standard Gats and suppressed firearms like the well-rod pistol.

Introducing an unfamiliar combination weapon midwar offered uncertain benefits against established tools that already worked compromised diluted effectiveness.

Combining three weapons meant each component was inferior to a purpose-built alternative.

The kosh ball was smaller and lighter than a proper blackjack.

The stiletto blade was thinner than a Fairburn Sykes.

The garatwire wound on a tiny internal spool lacked the leverage handles of a dedicated strangling cord.

One military historian offered a darker explanation.

Such a specialized and obvious assassination device would have risked exposing an operative if discovered.

Unlike a fighting knife, which might pass as standard military equipment, the Mleel and Pescuit’s unique design could mark its owner as someone the Gestapo would want to interrogate.

Against German equivalents, the Mccleol and Pescuit had no true competitor.

Germany never developed multi-function combination close combat weapons.

Their Fleer Capmaser gravity knife served paratroopers as a utility tool.

Their SS and SA daggers were ceremonial rather than tactical.

In silent killing capability, British engineering led the world.

American O weapons took different approaches.

The V42 Stiletto issued exclusively to the first special service force was a superb fighting knife, but only a knife.

The bizarre Sedley O glove pistol, a.

38 special singleshot device worn on the back of the hand and fired by punching, represented American ingenuity in concealment, but proved even more impractical with only 52 to 200 ever produced.

Against its British stablemates, the Mleel and Pescuit suffered by comparison.

The Fairburn Sykes fighting knife achieved legendary status.

It remains in British military ceremonial use today.

Carried by Royal Marines and commandos, the well-rod suppressed pistol developed at SOE’s station 9 facility offered genuinely silent killing at 73 dB, quieter than a closing door with confirmed operational use from Norway to Burma.

When so disbanded in January 1946, its exotic weapons scattered.

The Mleagelin Pescuit with its tiny production run largely vanished from view.

Surviving examples now command extraordinary collector interest.

In December 2022, Booseley’s military auctioneers sold a prototype for $900.

Marked production versions list at $5,000 to $7,500 from specialist dealers with only about two dozen reportedly made and an unknown number surviving.

Authentic examples rank among the rarest Second World War weapons in existence.

Sydney Mcclegelan died in Newton Abbott, Devon in 1951.

His wartime contributions largely forgotten.

His brother Victor continued making films until 1959, winning a claim in Hollywood while Sydney’s name faded into obscurity.

John Pesc continued at Cogwell and Harrison, eventually repurchasing the company from Innerarmms Company in 1963 and remaining until the mid 1960s.

The prestigious gun maker still operates today.

Though they no longer manufacture assassination devices for British intelligence.

The best documented public display of the Mccleal and Pescuit is at the secret army exhibition at Bolu in Hampshire which maintains a permanent collection on so operations.

The Imperial War Museum holds extensive so collections and specialist publications continue to document the weapon for historians and collectors who appreciate its unique place in clandestine warfare history.

No postwar military service occurred.

British intelligence services did not adopt the weapon for the Cold War, preferring the well-rodu success designs and conventional tools.

The threein-one concept influenced no known later developments.

It remained a singular experiment, a road not taken in the evolution of covert weapons.

7 in of dark metal, three ways to kill, perhaps two dozen ever made, none confirmed to have taken a life.

The Mcclegel and Pescuit represents something important about Britain’s secret war.

When conventional methods failed, British engineers explored every conceivable solution.

Some, like the wellrod, proved devastatingly effective.

Others, like explosive rats and coal bombs, succeeded brilliantly in their missions, and some, like the Mccleal and Pescuit, remained elegant theories that never quite worked in practice.

But that willingness to try everything, to combine, to innovate under pressure defined British special operations engineering throughout the war.

The weapon exists today as testament to creative desperation, to the dark ingenuity of total war, when Britain’s clandestine forces explored every possible method of killing enemies silently and by any means necessary.

That innocent looking cylinder strapped to a wrist concealing three ways to kill.

It may never have taken a life, but it remains proof of how far British engineers were willing to go.

 

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