[Bill Harsey]

In May of 1996 I was at Col. Rex Applegates making a delivery of some Applegate/Fairbairn custom knives made by me. Col. Applegate handed me a book called "The First Commando Knives" by a Prof. Kelly Yeaton, Lt. Col. Samuel Yeaton (USMC) and Rex Applegate.

This is the most detailed reference I've seen regarding the development of the Fairbairn Sykes Commando Knives and is the source of information I will quote. In the 1930's Fairbairn and Sykes worked for the Shanghai Police Dept. Short version here, Shanghai was kinda wide open then. Gunfights occurred about every 5 hours. Street crime at any level you wanted was available.

This is how these guys got good at CQB (Close Quarters Combat). I've seen the pictures and would have to agree that the prototype for what was to become the Fairbairn/Sykes Commando Knife was William Ewart Fairbairn's personal Shanghai Fighting Knife. The amazing fact here is that it was designed by two United States Marine Officers and built with Fairbairns supervision in the Shanghai Police Armory.
The two Marines names are Sam Moore and Sam Yeaton. I would like to note that Fairbairn's personal fighting knives had handles that were oval in cross section, that is they were flattened somewhat in the plane of the blade. Fairbairn is quoted as saying that he was not happy with the actual production of the mass produced wartime made F/S knives. About the only difference I can see is the change made to a fully round handle made on a lathe. This caused some problems in combat because it was well documented that the user could not orient the blade at night because the round handle didn't give any reference to where the edge was.
The history of the modern dagger that ended up as the symbol of United States Army Special Forces can trace its roots to 1933, Shanghai China.