Air Force Survival Knife #499

I've got another knife story to tell.

Christmas 1973 my uncle Dennis gave me one of my most prized possessions - a genuine Vietnam-era Air Force Survival Knife! It had a rough leather handle and a leather sheath with a built-in sharpening stone. The smell of new leather is something of an aphrodisiac to me...oops! TMI! Anyway, I was twelve at the time and Dennis showed me how to use the small stone to sharpen the knife and told me to use some sand paper to smooth the handle a little. It was made by Ontario Knife Company and was stamped 1973 on the pommel. It was and still is my one of my most prized knives. I used it for many years when I would go hunting...squirrel hunting, rabbit hunting, all kinds of hunting.

The following is Ontario's description of the knife:

"Used extensively by the U.S. Army and the U.S. Air Force, the Air Force #499 Survival Knife is the standard against which other survival knives are measured. The #499 Air Force Survival Knife is made of carbon steel with a dull, rust resistant "Parkerized" finish. A leather handle with deep grooves on the Air Force Survival Knife provides a good grip surface even when your hand is slippery.
The butt end of the Air Force Survival Knife is made of steel so that it can be used for hammering and the cross guard has two holes in it, which enable you to construct a spear for protection and food gathering. The overall length of the Air Force Survival Knife is 9-1/2" with a blade length of 5". The sheath is leather with a belt loop and numerous holes which allow you to tie it down to just about anything and in just about any position.
The Ontario Knife Company Air Force Survival Knife also has a metal reinforcing plate at the tip end and a pouch equipped with a sharpening stone. This is definitely a piece of survival grade gear!"

Well, sometime around 1983 the leather handle started to dry out and the leather rings of the handle got loose. This caused the hand guard and the pommel to get loose too. It drove me crazy. Well, being the Type-A, got-to-make-it-right, freak-a-zoid that I am, I soaked it in a jar of motor oil for about a month to try and swell the leather rings to make everything tight again. This failed miserably... Next I clamped it in one of grandpa's vises in the blacksmith shop and heated the swaged end of the pommel and tried to drive the pommel down the tang to tighten the leather handle rings. Well, as I said, the handle had been soaking in motor oil for a month and all this did was catch the handle on fire! I really fixed it. By the time I got the fire out two leather rings had burnt up and now my knife was a half-inch shorter! I called it quits.

I used my bobbed knife for a few more years until 1986. That's when we moved from C Street to the country. Right away I found that my knife no longer sported a sheath. I repeated asked you-know-who where it was. Always got the same answer, "I don't know, wherever you put it!"
This really ticked me off. Every time I saw my knife lying lonely in my drawer it made me sick. Where in the hell was that sheath? I know it was in the dresser drawer before we moved out of the trailer. She had to have done something with it!

May 2008

I was out in the garage looking for something when I noticed an old tackle box of mine sitting high up on the pile of boxes that came from Illinois to Massachusetts to California that we have never opened. I climbed up and took it down for a look. When I opened it up I immediately slammed it shut and started to cry! I mean it. I started to cry. There in the bottom of the tackle box was my long-lost knife sheath. It had been there for twenty-two years! I instantly remembered that the tackle box had been out in a little shed that Gary and I had built on the end of the trailer and I was using it for a workshop. The tackle box also had several pairs of safety glasses in it from the coal mines. When we moved someone picked up this stuff off the workbench and put it in the tackle box! My sheath was found!

Nowadays my survival knife sits in a special drawer with many other knives including an Air Force Survival Knife that saw action in Vietnam on a Marine CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter and a 2001 version of the same knife. The knife gods made me wait twenty-two years but I got my sheath back! Woo-hoo!