| William E. Fairbairn | |
| Birth Name: | William Ewart Fairbairn |
| Birth Date: | 28 February 1885 |
| Birth Place: | Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, England |
| Death Place: | Worthing, Sussex, England |
| Occupation: | Royal Marines, Shanghai Municipal Police, Combatives Instructor |
Lieutenant Colonel William Ewart Fairbairn (; 28 February 1885 – 20 June 1960) was a British soldier and police officer. He developed hand-to-hand combat methods for the Shanghai Police during the interwar period, as well as for the Allied special forces during World War II. He created his own fighting system known as Defendu. Notably, this included innovative pistol shooting techniques and the development of the Fairbairn–Sykes fighting knife.
Fairbairn served with the Royal Marine Light Infantry starting in 1901, and joined the Shanghai Municipal Police (SMP) in 1907. He served in one of the red light districts. During his service with the International Police in Shanghai, Fairbairn reportedly engaged in hundreds of street fights in the course of his duties during a twenty-year career. Much of his body, arms, legs, torso, even the palms of his hands, were covered with scars from knife wounds from those fights.[1] Fairbairn later created, organised, trained and commanded a special anti-riot squad for the Shanghai police force. He also developed numerous firearms training courses and items of police equipment, including a special metal-lined bulletproof vest designed to stop high-velocity bullets from the 7.63x25mm Mauser pistol.[1]
During World War II, he was recruited by the British Special Operations Executive as an Army officer; he was given the nickname "Dangerous Dan". Together with fellow close-combat instructor Eric Sykes, Fairbairn was commissioned with the General List in 1941. Fairbairn and Sykes were both commissioned as second lieutenants on 15 July 1940. He trained British, American and Canadian Commandos and No. 2 Dutch Troop 10th Inter-Allied Commando forces, US Rangers candidates, and personnel of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), mainly for close-combat, pistol-shooting and knife-fighting techniques. Fairbairn emphasised the necessity of forgetting any idea of gentlemanly conduct or fighting fair: "Get tough, get down in the gutter, win at all costs... I teach what is called 'Gutter Fighting.' There's no fair play, no rules except one: kill or be killed," he declared.[1] One of his pupils was Raymond Westerling, who fought behind enemy lines in Burma and Indonesia.
In 1941, he appeared in a training movie titled "Unarmed Combat", demonstrating many of the strikes, holds and throws of Defendu, for use by the Home Guard, Commandos, and military services. This training movie was narrated by actor David Niven, who had joined the Commandos early in the war, and was trained by Fairbairn himself. In 1942, Fairbairn appeared, again uncredited, in an OSS training movie titled "OSS Training Center", directed by John Ford. Fairbairn again demonstrated unarmed combat, and also his version of "Point Shooting", later adopted and refined by Rex Applegate for use by the U.S. Army.
For his achievements in training OSS personnel, Fairbairn was promoted eventually to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel by the end of the war, and received the U.S. Legion of Merit (Officer grade) at the specific request of OSS-founder "Wild Bill" Donovan.
After joining the SMP, he studied boxing, wrestling, savate, tenshinshinyo ry jiu jitsu from Okada-sensei, Kodokan judo in which he gained a 2nd dan black belt, and then Chinese martial arts.[2] He developed his own fighting system—Defendu—and taught it to members of that police force in order to reduce officer fatalities. He described this system as based primarily on his personal experience, which according to police records included some 600 non-training fights, by his retirement at age 55 from the job of Assistant Commissioner in 1940.
In 1951, he went to Cyprus to train police and in 1952 (and 1956) Fairbairn provided training to the Singapore Police Force's Riot Squad unit, which is now Police Tactical Unit.[3]
Together with Eric A. Sykes, Fairbairn developed innovative pistol shooting techniques and handgun specifications for the SMP which were later disseminated by their book Shooting to Live With the One-Hand Gun (1942), along with various other police innovations such as riot batons, armoured vests, and other equipment.
He is perhaps known best for designing the famous Fairbairn–Sykes fighting knife, or 'Commando' knife, a stiletto-style fighting dagger used by British Special Forces in the Second World War, and featured in his textbook Scientific Self-Defence.[1] Fairbairn also designed the lesser known Smatchet, and collaborated on the design of several other combat knife designs.