Posting for reference/comment: the Collins No. 1253 “Paratroop Machete”/“OSS Machete”. I’m posting photos of my knife, along with pages from Collins Machetes and Bowies: 1845-1965 by Daniel Edward Henry (1995).
Certainly this isn’t knifethnographic in any way, but it’s said to have been inspired by various Philippines and SEA traditional knives. Interested to know what the current thinking is on these - what knives inspired them and if they were used at all in combat?
I found a mention and photo in this thread (
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...=spring+bumper)
I missed an opportunity to purchase the contemporaneous US Spring and Bumper knife a while back, the seller grossly underpriced it before realizing what they had.