50 Years Ago In BLADE: Knives Of The OSS

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50 Years Ago In BLADE: Knives Of The OSS
Three vintage OSS smatchets, from left: one with a “bright blade,” a very scarce variation of the top one featuring a Parkerized blade, and one with a wooden handle.

The May-June 1975 American Blade covered the CIA-forerunner’s knives.

Editor’s Note: BLADE Magazine is celebrating more than 50 years of bringing the knife community sharp coverage of the knife world at large. Given a more comprehensive picture of where the industry comes from—thus, where it’s going—we’re running a series of vignettes on important articles marking milestones in the knife design, knife making and knifemakers from 50 years ago.

Adrian Van Dyk was the military knife guru for The American Blade at the dawn of the magazine’s era, and OSS knives were one of his specialties.

Five World War II-era OSS gravity knives, from left: a trial piece with George Ibberson blade markings; one with a variation of an Ibberson marking; unmarked issue specimen; German-issue take-down model; and a German-issue non-take-down model.
Five World War II-era OSS gravity knives, from left: a trial piece with George Ibberson blade markings; one with a variation of an Ibberson marking; unmarked issue specimen; German-issue take-down model; and a German-issue non-take-down model.

In “Knives of the OSS” in the May-June 1975 issue, he wrote a comprehensive story on a number of OSS knives, including, among others, the smatchet, stiletto, escape knife and gravity knives. The smatchet is of particular interest here because APOC/Cas Iberia offers a new iteration that it will debut at the BLADE Show (see our 2025 BLADE Show Knife Debuts post).

According to Van Dyk, the smatchet was designed for heavy chopping and brush clearing.

World War II OSS knives, from top: an OSS stiletto with a pancake-flapper sheath and a standard-issue OSS escape knife, completely blued and unmarked.
World War II OSS knives, from top: an OSS stiletto with a pancake-flapper sheath and a standard-issue OSS escape knife, completely blued and unmarked.

“The name apparently derived from its intended use since it could serve both as a machete and a hatchet,” he wrote. “The knife was probably a design derivation of the Welsh machine gunner’s sidebar,” illustrated in A Primer of Military Knives by Gordon Hughes and Barry Jenkins. “It was also designed as a fighting weapon and techniques for using it in combat are described in the book Get Tough by William Fairbairn,” one of the designers of the famed Fairbairn-Sykes commando knife.

Van Dyke added that OSS-issued versions of the smatchet were manufactured by Case and were completely unmarked. Some variations have British military proof marks and are thought to have been issued to British commandos.

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