20th+

Saturday, November 23, 2013

Commandos, WW2 ..
Fairbairn & Sykes ..

Kinesiology of Parkour ..
SOE training ..

William Ewart Fairbairn (28 February 1885 – 20 June 1960) was a British Royal Marine and police officer. He developed hand-to-hand combat methods for the Shanghai Police during the interwar period, as well as for the allied special forces during WW2. He created his own fighting system known as Defendu. Notably, this included innovative pistol shooting techniques and the development of the Fairbairn-Sykes Fighting Knife.

Fairbairn served with the Royal Marine Light Infantry starting in 1901, and joined the Shanghai Municipal Police (SMP) in 1907. He served in one of the red light districts. After joining the SMP, he studied boxing, wrestling, savate, Shin no Shinto ryu jujutsu (Yoshin ryu) from Okada-sensei, Kodokan judo in which he gained a 2nd dan black belt, and then Chinese martial arts. He developed his own fighting system—Defendu—and taught it to members of that police force in order to reduce officer fatalities. Fairbairn created, organised, and trained a special anti-riot squad for the Shanghai police force. He also developed numerous firearms training courses and items of police equipment, including a special metal-lined bulletproof vest designed to stop high-velocity bullets from the 7.63x25mm Mauser pistol.

During WW2, he was recruited by the British Special Operations Executive as an Army officer, where he was given the nickname "Dangerous Dan". Together with fellow close-combat instructor Eric Sykes, Fairbairn was commissioned on the General List in 1941. Fairbairn and Sykes were both commissioned as second lieutenants on 15 July 1940.

Eric Anthony Sykes (5 February 1883 – 12 May 1945), born Eric Anthony Schwabe in Barton-upon-Irwell, Eccles, Greater Manchester, England, was a soldier and firearms expert. He is most famous for his work with William E. Fairbairn in the development of the eponymous Fairbairn-Sykes Fighting Knife and modern British Close Quarters Battle (CQB) martial arts during WW2. Originally working for an import/export company selling weapons in East Asia, he claimed he volunteered for and served in the British Army as a sharpshooter on the Western Front during WW1. Returning to China in 1917, he joined the volunteer branch of the Shanghai Municipal Police (SMP) Specials with the rank of Inspector in 1926.

Sykes first arrived in Shanghai in 1907 while working for Reiss & Co. He met Fairbairn in 1919, then with the Shanghai Municipal Police, beginning their famous professional association. In 1923 Sykes was working for the China & Japan Trading Co, China representative for Remington and Colt. It was not until 1926 that Sykes officially joined the SMP as an unpaid, part-time volunteer officer in the reserve, and in 1929 he joined S.J. David & Co., where he worked until his departure from China in 1940.

While working for S.J. David & Co., his experience in sharpshooting and his personal friendship with Fairbairn led him to form and oversee a team of civilian and police snipers for the SMP. He became the head of this unit in 1937, working part-time in this capacity until he resigned this position in 1939. Also in 1939 Sykes joined the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS - MI6), where he worked with SIS at the Special Training Centre in Lochailort, Scotland. In 1940, Fairbairn resigned from the Shanghai Municipal Police and returned to Britain, with Sykes following. The pair had apparently planned this, since they shipped crates full of illegal weapons from lax Shanghai into Britain on their boat.

Fairbairn and Sykes were both commissioned as second lieutenants on the British Army, General List on 15 July 1940.

After training special forces units throughout 1940, the two were finally commissioned into the British Army on the General List of 1941. Their 1942 book Shooting to Live, published in 1942, is considered by many to be the classic text of pistol combat, and one of the best codifications of the high-stress point shooting method. Nevertheless, this was the last time the pair worked together in any capacity; by mid-1942 the pair's friendship had split, with Sykes claiming that Fairbairn treated him as an inferior. Soon thereafter, Fairbairn travelled to Canada to teach armed and unarmed combat to commandos and covert agents of the Americas at Camp X. Sykes stayed in Great Britain, training Special Operations Executive (SOE) agents at the various Special Training Centres before being assigned to train the joint UK/US Jedburgh teams at Milton Hall.

Fairbairn trained British, American and Canadian Commandos and No. 2 Dutch Troop 10th Inter-Allied Commando forces, along with Ranger candidates in close-combat, pistol-shooting and knife-fighting techniques. Fairbairn emphasised the necessity of forgetting any idea of gentlemanly conduct or fighting fair: "Get tough, get down in the gutter, win at all costs... I teach what is called 'Gutter Fighting.' There's no fair play, no rules except one: kill or be killed," he declared. One of his pupils was Raymond Westerling, who fought behind enemy lines in Burma and Indonesia.

For his achievements in training OSS personnel, Fairbairn eventually rose to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel by the end of the war, and received the U.S. Legion of Merit (Officer grade) at the specific request of OSS-founder "Wild Bill" Donovan.
The Fairbairn–Sykes fighting knife is a double-edged fighting knife resembling a dagger or poignard with a foil grip developed by William Ewart Fairbairn and Eric Anthony Sykes in Shanghai based on ideas which the two men had before World War II while serving on the Shanghai Municipal Police in China.

In 1951, he went to Cyprus to train police and in 1952 (and 1956) Fairbairn provided training to the Singapore Police Force's Riot Squad unit, which is now Police Tactical Unit.

The F-S fighting knife was made famous during WW2 when issued to British Commandos, the Airborne Forces, the SAS and many other units, especially for the Normandy landings in June 1944. With its acutely tapered, sharply pointed blade, the F-S fighting knife is frequently described as a stiletto, a weapon optimised for thrusting, although the F-S knife is capable of being used to inflict slash cuts upon an opponent when its cutting edges are sharpened according to specification. The Wilkinson Sword Company made the knife with minor pommel and grip design variations.

Applegate-Fairbairn fighting knife .
All-In Fighting .
BC-41 .

Camp X .
Close combat .

Combatives .

Eric A. Sykes .
Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife .
Point shooting .
William E. Fairbairn .