AKM

Knife bayonet for use with the 7.62 mm. North Korean Type 68 rifle, a variant of the Kalashnikov AKM assault rifle.

The steel scabbard's web belt hanger measures 4.25 in. (108 mm.) long by 0.875 in. (22 mm.) wide. The tan webbing identifies this scabbard as Cuban. North Korean issue AKM bayonets have scabbards with green webbing.

This example has seen considerable use.  The blade has very neatly had the original clip-point blade profile altered to a spear point and been carefully sharpened. The edges of the pommel and grip scales have also been rounded off to make the bayonet a more effective fighting knife. It likely was taken during the 1980s, in Grenada or Panama, when the U.S. invasions took place.

Furnished by Cuba, these bayonets were used by Panamanian paramilitary “Dignity Battalions,” formed in 1988 to put down demonstrations against the Noriega government and to resist the expected U.S. invasion (which came in December 1989). The Dignity Battalions earned the lasting nickname, “dingbats,” when U.S. invasion commander, General Maxwell Thurman, was quoted in the Christmas Day edition of the New York Times, saying that Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega was holed-up in the Vatican Mission, which he (Thurman) had surrounded with a “goodly number” of U.S. troops because, “I don't want the dingbats blowing their way through the embassy.”

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