Question on Bayonet...Iraqi or Chinese

[Donaguirre]

Hi all,

I am looking at this bayonet and the advertiser is listing it as an Iraqi bayonet. To me it appears to be a Chinese Ak bayonet. Am I wrong? I have attached 2 pictures. Thanks.

[DougD]

Did the Iraqi Army use Chinese AKs and Bayonets? Interesting question, not sure if we have any mid-east experts but Tal is very good in this area, maybe he can tackle it.

Welcome to the forum,

DougD

[Kirchgoens]

This could easily be an Iraqi-made bayonet. I spent a year over there in '04-'05, and saw many just like this, including the brown plastic and brown leather strap. Unless someone sees markings that clearly say otherwise, I wouldn't doubt the claim. Also, even if not Iraqi-made, it would probably be Iraqi-used. There was a ton of this stuff floating around. I'm sure your average GI on the street will also tell you that it is still floating around.

The Iraqis manufactured large numbers of AK47's, RPD's, RPK's, and PKMs. They are not as good as East Block production, but they work...

Question: on the other side of the scabbard the side not in your photographs), are there any symbols molded into the plastic? Maybe a triangle with arrow?

...Brian

[HuliganRS]

The best thing for you to do is ask the AK experts here: AK Forum

Rusty

[asjemenou]

The bayonet looks very (Soviet) Russian to me. For all kind of AK47 bayonets you can also look at; Chinese made AK47 Varieties . Like Girchgoens wrote, he saw all kind of AK47’s and bayonets in Iraq. It could be that the Iraqi’s have their own AK47 variant but the Iraqi army also used a lot of AK47’s imported from other countries. So, it could be that this bayonet was delivered to and used by the Iraqi army.

The book “Kalashnikov, rifle without borders” shows a picture of Iraqi volunteers on parade (see picture). The caption of this picture;
A parade of volunteers in Iraq celebrating the end of their military training, Baghdad, September 2000. Visible in the photograph are East German (in the foreground, with brown synthetic butt), Romanian (with wooden pistol grip for the magazine) and Chinese Kalashnikovs (at the back on the left, with bayonet under the barrel).

[Donaguirre]

All:

Thanks for the excellent remarks. I will look into this some more and will probably get the bayonet. Once again thanks to all and it is nice to have a forum where Soviet military collectors can get feedback from one another.

[lewcifer820]

I just signed up to these forums today... Hope it's not too late for you, because that is indeed an Iraqi made AKM type II bayonet and is worth quite a bit of money. It was made on equipment that was bought from Yugoslavia and the bayonets were issued out to the Republican Guard.

The Chinese AKM bayonets do not have serial numbers on them, and the Russian AKM bayonets have 3 digit serial numbers electro-penciled on them.

[redcom17]

chinese have no hole for use as a wire cutter. it could be polish

[lewcifer820]

Originally Posted by redcom17

chinese have no hole for use as a wire cutter. it could be polish

Actually, the Chinese did produce a Type II bayonet with the hole in the blade for use as a wirecutter. They were produced for commercial sale by norinco and were included with SVD's that were imported to the U.S. I'm not sure how many were made, but they are relatively rare. I don't have one in my collection yet anyway.

Also, the Polish Type II bayonets have only one grip screw in the handle. So do the Chinese Type II bayonets I mentioned before.

Iraqi bayonets have the two grip screws in the handle as seen in the picture provided in the first post. Plus, the serial number configuration seen in the photos are only used on Iraqi and Yugo bayonets. The Yugo's are black of course, the orange ones are Iraqi.