Pistol sword
sword with a pistol or revolver attached
A pistol sword is a sword with a pistol or revolver attached, usually parallel to the blade. It differs from a rifle with a bayonet attached, in that the weapon is designed primarily for use as a sword, and the firearm component is typically considered a secondary weapon designed to be an addition to the blade, rather than the sword being a secondary addition to the pistol. In addition, the two components of these weapons typically cannot be separated, unlike most bayonets mounted on rifles.
History
Historically, some flintlock pistols of the 17th and 18th centuries were constructed as gun-swords, with the barrel of the pistol attached to the side of the blade of a shortsword or dagger. A shell guard protected the firing mechanism when it was used as a sword. These were used by French and German hunters to kill wounded wild boar. Examples of these weapons can be found in the armoury of Wawel Castle (Kraków, Poland). Similar weapons were made in India, including the katar (कटार), a thrusting dagger, modern variants of which may feature a single-shot pistol built into one side.
Military use
In 1838, the United States Navy developed the .54 caliber, single-shot smoothbore Elgin pistol, which was equipped with an 11.5-inch Bowie knife blade and was intended for use by boarding parties. It was the first percussion cap gun in naval service, but only 150 were made.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Pistol sword” as sword with a pistol or revolver attached. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7198489. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1838.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pistol sword” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.