I am moving this topic to here from 'boom-tubes' - much apologies for my part in de-railing that topic...
[u][b]
Direwolf [/b][/u]wrote -
"Early firearms were extremely poor compared to bows.
A decent musket from 16th century could take well over a minute to load(in some cases several minutes even) and accuracy was just terrible, even at normal firing ranges, 20-70m, up to just over 100m if they didnt care about being effective, accuracy wasnt good. Which is why volleyfiring became the norm for almost all armed forces for a looong time.
And about bows, its not so much that RPGs exaggerate them, its that they use the "best case" numbers. On the one hand, excellent archers could routinely hit a person with deadly effect at 200m, or fire high angled and reach above a half km with little accuracy and very random damage, but getting both the really long range and the deadly damage, unlikely to say the least.
And add armour to that "calculation" and the RPGs gets much less realistic. During one of the crusades for example there is mention of how the foot soldiers wearing quilt armour walks around looking like porcupines, with several, sometimes many arrows stuck in the armour.
And crossbows, yeah i expect since they never got as commonly used as they might have been, they never became as popularised. Rather surprising really, as they are much better than early firearms, more accurate, similar or faster rate of fire, no pouch gunpowder combined with the requirement to keep a "match" burning constantly from beginning to end of the fight and much more damaging. The only thing they really had against them(except papal critique at least) was price, several early firearms could easily be made for the cost of a single crossbow, and bolts for the latter cost even more compared to musket bullets."
Firearms:
My intent was actually the ‘under-value of modern firearms’…
But early firearms are often under-valued in RPGs as well. Yep, early firearms (lets call them muskets fer now) early muskets generally fired a .5†ball with enough powder to almost cut a man in half, or at least take off a whole limb. Due to there being no rifling, and shooting a sphere, they were not very accurate. 50-70m was a GREAT shot. Although these shots did NOT have to be accurate due to the immense damage anything more central than a ‘graze’ would do.
Muskets were also more expensive to make than crossbows. ESPECIALLY at the time drilling a straight hole down the middle of a steel cylinder was VERY difficult. Plus gunpowder was pricey!
Even early firearms were MUCH more damaging than crossbows. If’n y’all want I could trot out some ballistics (in the form of ‘foot-pounds’ to illustrate). But, yes, a decent crossbowman could shoot numerous times before a mousketeer could get off a second shot. (mostly because you wanted to be darn sure you had not a single spark left in your barrel when ya go to pour your powder in)
MODERN firearms get even MORE undervalued in RPGs when compared to Bows. A .44mag revolver can even shoot as accurately, and at the same distance, as a modern compound bow. Using iron sights in the pistol. When ya have such a large round with so much power (.44mag) it has at most a tenth the effect from wind, environment, etc. Depending on how you load your rounds, and what bullet you have, the resulting wound would have an entry anywhere from a golfball to a tennisball, and the exit would be anywhere from a grapefruit-size to bowlingball. FAR FAR more damage than an arrow. And that is a PISTOL. Rifles are even more undervalued.
Much apologies – this is ARS MAGICA – and even the most rudimentary cannon is stil far into the future in Europe
"On the one hand, excellent archers could routinely hit a person with deadly effect at 200m, or fire high angled and reach above a half km "
What is your source for the half km?
The farthest I had ever read a medieval longbow arrow going was 250yrds with a hunting arrow (lighter than war arrows)
Sounds quite a clear reason why you would go for muskets instead of crossbows to me. Bear in mind that we are talking 400 years after the Ars period as well.
"And add armour to that "calculation" and the RPGs gets much less realistic. During one of the crusades for example there is mention of how the foot soldiers wearing quilt armour walks around looking like porcupines, with several, sometimes many arrows stuck in the armour"
This is part of my point about RPGs and Bows.
Historically either arrows did far less damage than ARM5 or historically armor was far more effective than ARM5.
Crossbows:
From what I had read… from 1250-1450, in Europe, the crossbow was a common weapon in warfare. I posit that this was due to it being more effective than a bow!
“The use of crossbows in European warfare dates back to Roman times and is again evident from the battle of Hastings until about 1500 AD. They almost completely superseded hand bows in many European armies in the twelfth century for a number of reasons. “
Crossbowmen at the time would fire a quarrel, hook the stock onto their belt, crouch, step on the stirrup on the end of the crossbow, stand up – at that point the crossbow was cocked! Using this method a decent crossbowmen could fire once for every 2-3 times a decent archer fired. Crossbows could not quite get the same range as a Longbow, but from what I have read they were roughly as accurate given the same experience in the shooter.
With the Medieval crossbow, using the belt-hook & stirrup:
“Draw-weights of up to 500 pounds were commonâ€
And…
“The arrow-like projectiles of a crossbow are called bolts. These are much shorter than arrows, but were several times heavierâ€
ROUGHLY speaking a crossbow could be about 3 times as damaging as a Longbow, but could be fired only 1/3 the time.
At this time I caution the gentle reader to wait for my Longbow rant before responding to my Bow/Longbow claims here!
NOTE:
ANY Missile weapon used in warfare before 1900 was an ARTILLERY device.
Bows, slings, crossbows, muskets – ALL of them!
The purpose of missile weapons was to make your missile land, roughly, into the group of 1000 soldiers coming over the plains. At the greatest range possible! As OFTEN as possible.
For bows you wanted to land your shot into a space the size of a basketball court as often as you could.
Let me repeat – There was really no aiming or accuracy!
Once again with bows keep in mind they almost always ran out of arrows long before the enemy reached them.
Also, Pre-musket, anything you fired at a range of greater than 50-90 yards wold be subject to wind, interfering objects, AND most important the unpredictable movement of the target.
No medieval soldier in his right mind would even attempt to shoot an individual at ranges over 100yrds!
"For more than 50 years the accepted world record was held by Howard Hill at a little over 170 pounds. Pip Bickerstaffe, who makes heavy "warbows+," encouraged a lad named Mark Stretton (in the photo pulling back a 150 pounder) to challenge this mark. The story of Mark's training is typical. I can't find any details on Mark's size, but from many photos, I judge him as much larger than my 5' 10", 175 pounds and younger than my 58 years. My guess would be 6 feet, 215 pounds, 35 years old. I will see if I can find out. Update January 6, 2006, according to Pip, Mark is 5' 10" and 18 stone (252 pounds) and about 38 years old.
The recognition of Mark's accomplishment is referenced by Bickerstaffe
It is interesting that strength alone is not all that is needed to draw back a strong bow. I can bench press only about 180 pounds, whereas some of my football player students can bench press 360 pounds and yet not pull as strong a bow as me. What typically happens is that these strong fellows get better and better quickly as they try pulling the bow more. It appears that your body needs to learn how to most effectively pull the bow.
Cheers,
DR. Ron
+Longbows of greater than 80 pounds pull were usually called warbows. The reason being that they were only used in war because they could shoot an arrow hard enough to penetrate armor. If one wanted to hunt a deer or even a bear a 65 pound bow is more than adequate.
The strength of the bows in the English middle ages is hotly debated and many legends abound. I believe the typical warbow was 80-100 pounds. I have shown, with experiments at Dartmouth, that at least 80 pounds is needed for the arrow to penetrate armor. Yet, on the high side, my studies suggest that men were smaller an weaker then, so claims of 140 pound bows, I think are incorrect. The few bows that exist from 1300 to 1500 are less than 100 pounds."
Accuracy:
The longbow was a rather accurate weapon.
I mean that an experienced English Longbowman could hit a stationary person in the torso at 60 yards about half the time with a Medieval Warbow.
“An archer could hit a person at 165 m (180 yards) "part of the time" and could always hit an armyâ€
A Medieval Hunting bow was more accurate, but had less power.
Yep, there are legends & tales of FAR greater accuracy. -shrug- I will not say they are myths, just EXTREMELY extremely rare.
If a man today can land almost all of his arrows into a 6" stationary target at 90m, he would be on an Olympic Team. This is using modern equipment which is more accurate than medieval equipage.
"The Longbow itself is not accurate, only the person shooting it."
Rate of Fire:
From what I have read an experienced Medieval Longbowman could shoot an arrow every 4-8 seconds. about. roughly. They would generally have their arrows standing next to them arranged for very easy access. Yeppirs, if they were in a war, shooting as fast as possible at the army coming, not caring about accuracy, a Welsh Longbowman could shoot a lot of arrows in 2-3 minutes! (I think about 20-30)
For missile weapons Rate Of Fire would often turn the tide of a battle.
Damage:
It seems from my reading that the vast bulk of English Longbows (welsh?) had a draw of 80-90#. This is STILL a HELLUVA lotta poundage. I know nobody personally who could draw this bow (maybe me - still kinda strong) 80-90 is is HUGE! Do not scoff at this as a small amount!
In a large group of Archers in Medieval times there ‘might’… maybe… have been a handful of Longbows with 110# to 130# draws. The myth of the 200# draw stems from a) faulty science, or b) Bows that were meant to be mounted on ships.
With a 90# draw an arrow could NOT also be heavy to be either accurate OR to reach a range of over 200yrds.
Force equals 'mass times speed'. True a 90# bow with a good arrow hitting armor from the perpindicular could punch through some armors at 20-40 yards... {BUT in ARM5 they have such an arrow doing the damage of a POLEARM! }
a) Henry V faced Welsh Longbowmen.
"Prince Hal (later Henry V) was wounded in the face by an arrow at the Battle of Shrewsbury (1403). The royal physician John Bradmore had a tool made, which consisted of a pair of smooth tongs. Once carefully inserted into the rear of the arrowhead wound, the tongs screwed apart till they gripped its walls and allowed the head to be extracted from the wound. Prior to the extraction, the hole made by the arrow shaft had been widened by inserting larger and larger dowels of wood down the entry wound. The dowels were soaked in honey, which has antiseptic properties. The wound was dressed with a poultice of barley and honey mixed in turpentine. After 20 days the wound was free of infection" A Welsh Longbow arrow hit him in the naked face and he lived! Not a massive amount of damage!
b) To pull back the massive weight of 140# (let alone 200#) with one arm is a very rare feat. It takes a Helluva lot of strength. IF someone pulls back the amount of weight Lou Ferigno works out with, they damn well will not be able to hold it while they take time to aim!
c) To pull back the string of a bow, with such poundage to justify polearm damage, that thin string would take the skin right off your fingers! You would have to wear leather gloves/gauntlet that would then be worn through by that string before you shot all your arrows in a battle. Pure physics!
d) An arrow loses velocity (damage) the further it flies. Air Resistance. An arrow punching through a knight's armor at 20' will not punch through that knight's armor at 200'.
e) Not to be gross, but think about a Polearm sliding though a body. Imagine the size of the hole it would leave. Now imagine an arrow sliding through that same body, and imagine the hole IT would leave behind.
I imagine the Polearm leaving a bigger hole. I imagine the polearm Pike leaving at least a 2"hole. More damage - plain and simple.
f) In conclusion here on damage. Common sense, science, history, sources, practice, etc all speak to the higher damage of the longbow not being justifed in ARM5.
The Longbow had good range compared to other medieval missile weapons, and at least as good accuracy at range.
What it lacked in damage it mitigated in Rate Of Fire.
Bullshit. Or you have some very odd definition of artillery.
The purpose of SOME missile weapons.
Crossbows on the battlefield were commonly used for short range low trajectory high power well aimed shots, despite having far greater range potential than bows.
While in their preferred uses, in sieges(on either side) and on boats, they were often used to get a range advantage.
Situationally dependent.
And yet another generalisation which isnt correct.
In an average fight, its correct.
Suggest you testfire muskets and crossbows beyond that range.
Come back once you notice crossbows having less or similar winddrift than the musket. Thanks to using a heavier, longer projectile.
Now thats an outright stupid claim.
Archers can put arrows within a fairly limited area at up to 200m. One arrow probably wont hit, but 1/5 is plenty good enough.
And then of course, do you know how long it takes for a horseman to charge over a 100m distance? Unless your archers are really short on arrows, they certainly wont be out of arrows in that time.
Many actually used larger shots than that. IIRC, the standard musket in the american civil war was 0.58", and that was a compromise selection. Muskets came up to .80" at least.
And yet despite that sized shots, people sometimes survived as much as a halfdozen hits, continuing to fight with one or two wounds wasnt uncommon.
So correction, "enough power to POTENTIALLY almost cut a man in half, or at least take off a whole limb"...
Once again you overgeneralise grossly.
A highend crossbow took a minute or more to wind up, so not a huge difference to a musket. Your description is more correct for midrange crossbows around 200-400 pound draw weight.
A Springfield .58" musket(ie not an early era firearm) has a 33g bullet fired at 950 feet/s and a 1000 footpounds power...
A heavy crossbow would have a draw weight somewhere between 500 and 800 commonly, with some going as high as 1200 pounds(higher draw weight crossbows existed but was rare, the highest i have heard of was a little over 1800 but it can be argued to be a lowend siege weapon rather than a regular crossbow). A quarrel from something around 80g up to 350g(here also bigger existed on a rare case basis). I dont recall exact formula for turning it into foot pounds, but IIRC you can expect 1-1.4 foot pound per draw weight and an effective energy transfer of around 50-85%.
Giving a minimal lowend of 250ish a normal upper range of 950 and a highend of roughly 1400. Making a heavy crossbow more powerful than a musket from several hundred years later.
Please do go ahead and do the maths properly if you want to.
As the member of the local pistol club(and the archery club using the same field) that i am, i would most definetly advice against trying to use any pistol at ranges beyond 50m.
And one of the things that marks a good archer is his ability to adjust for the wind accurately "on the fly".
Pistols are good at up to 25m or so. Beyond that you have to start adjusting notably for wind for them as well.
You start doing so at shorter range with bows, but bullets arent as much less affected by wind as you think.
Heck, thats one of my gripes with 5.5645 ammo, damn thing has such a light bullet the wind can take it really off course if you´re unlucky at any real range. Difference compared to shooting 7.6251 can be outright BIG at anywhere beyond maybe 100m or so.
In short, a modern compound bow will be effective at a much longer distance, with a good archer, than a .44mag.
Close up, the gun will of course be way more damaging and even at range, if it hits it will be more damaging for a long time(possibly even regardless range, i cant say for certain really).
With a heavy arrow, you can get around 250 yards(war arrows have been confirmed to reach out to just over 300 yards with medieval bows tested).
Medium weight arrow can get you around 400 yards.
Light arrow is at its limits at 500+ yards.
Light arrow, you can get 200 yards at fairly low trajectory. Ie with direct shots, angled shots is completely different.
But as i said, at the longest ranges, accuracy is pisspoor(there pretty much ISNT any).
Hmm i cant find the record for bows, but the world record for crossbows is 2047 yards. I think the record for bows is somewhere around 650m but i may recall wrong there.
Well if you want to compare to firearems, you need to remember that late era reinforced armour could and did reliably stop musket bullets as well.
It never could cover the whole body that well however, and the price of good armour compared to the price of a few muskets, in addition to the reduction in mobility makes heavy armour a bad choice, despite it being clearly able to prevent or severely reduce the damage from firearms as well.
Anyway, you´re generalising too much again. Armour was more effective yes, but fighters avoided the armour if they could, hit its weak points if possible, or otherwise relied on gettings as many hits as possible because eventually one will hit a poorly protected part.
Which is why relatively light armours, usually only protecting torso became common, they would often mean that a musket hit was not fatal or even making glancing hits bounce completely and would be decent protection against close quarters combat while at the same time not impeding mobility in a seriously detrimental way.
Crossbows WERE common, but they were commonly used for defending and attacking fortifications, and as shipboard weapons(actually used as such up until at least 17th century)...
They were not common as battlefield weapons. Archers were preferable for that.
Thats a medium(or even light) crossbow. That type of loading mechanism was somewhat limited by the physical strength of the user, and to a small degree the users lenght as well.
Heavier crossbows used windlass mechanism(and in between you find goat´s foot and cranequin mechanisms).
I can draw and effectively use a 60 pound bow, and i dont come close to your stated benchpress values. Its extremely tiring to use such a bow for me, but i CAN use it despite being rather on the lowend when it comes to upperbody strength.
And with light arrows i can, and have reached well beyond 200 meters(not yards here) with that bow. And thats still not really high angle indirect fire. I could probably reach 300m if i merely tried to just reach as far as possible with that combination.
In a LARGE group im sure you might find a few above 130 as well. As i have proven myself, and you also commented on, technique matters alot.
I know several in the archery club that are clearly much stronger than me, but are completely unable to use the same 60 pound bow as i can. One of them in fact has severe problems with even a 40 pounder. Because his technique sucks bigtime.
The 200 draw bow as a norm is quite on the mythical side im sure, but i wouldnt be the slightest surprised if some did exist, as bows were not massproduced, they were not uncommonly tailored to the archer using it, and as such didnt need to conform to a standard.
You start aiming before you draw, otherwise you will tire very quickly with ANY highdraw bow. You start by how you place yourself, lining up your whole body as the initial aim.
That way the time you spend aiming while drawn can be merely a moment.
Dont need to, they normally didnt try. And in case you missed it, bows on a battlefield were commonly used for HIGH angle shots most of the time, not low trajectory direct shots.
The point was to place enough arrows in roughly the right place that at least ONE actually would hit the target.
And the target is a whole person, not a 6" one. Any hit was good, only once the range closed down to well below 100m, or even well below 50m did anyone really expect any serious accuracy.
And against massed troops, of course very little aim was even needed as someone would always be likely to get hit.
Did you see the Mythbusters episode where they tried to split an arrow with another arrow? Their big problem was NOT hitting the end of the 1st arrow... They found it completely impossible to "split it in two" as the "mythical" part went however.
Having tried the same thing at 25m, i could put maybe 1 arrow in 10 on the end point of a previous arrow(not with a high draw bow though).
So, think about how sports commentators and journalists hype todays athletes quite often? Consider the old "myths" the same way i would suggest. Alot more overenthusiastic than anything else.
Heh... Muskets quickly became massproduced, crossbows never really became massproduced. Guess how that affected price?
Does anyone know when re-curve bows, or bows made from laminated layers of wood, or both together were used in Europe??
Growing up there was an older man who lived a few miles from us who made his own bows. He would hunt deer, and bear with them (I don't remember if he ever tried to hunt moose with bow).... Anyhow he made his bows re-curved out of layers of wood, and laminated them. He sold quite a few if I remember correctly.
I remember as a teen he would show me and my brother his bows, how they were made in his shop (my bro made a great dagger from a huge file with his shops stone grinding wheel!), and some about how to shoot. One bow in particular I think was 75#s, and he showed us how to measure the draw with hooks and weights.
I think that bow was only 3.5-4' long...
IF they made bows like that in medieval europe you could use a WARBOW from horseback!
"Bows, slings, crossbows, muskets – ALL of them!
Bullshit. Or you have some very odd definition of artillery." Ummm... please be civil.
When you define artillery, and look at how missile weapons were almost always used in war pre-1900, you would agree. They did not take alot of time for great accuracy.
"The purpose of SOME missile weapons." Ok - we definitely disagree on this one... -shrug-
"Crossbows on the battlefield were commonly used for short range low trajectory high power well aimed shots, despite having far greater range potential than bows.
While in their preferred uses, in sieges(on either side) and on boats, they were often used to get a range advantage." WHICH is it? Commonly used OR preferred uses? You seem to contradict yourself here...
"Let me repeat – There was really no aiming or accuracy!"
Situationally dependent. I usuwally speak to 'generally to almost always'
"Once again with bows keep in mind they almost always ran out of arrows long before the enemy reached them.
And yet another generalisation which isnt correct.
In an average fight, its correct." I am very confused... Are you just arguing for arguing's sake? How can a generalization be incorrect AND an average fight be correct at the same time???
"
Suggest you testfire muskets and crossbows beyond that range.
Come back once you notice crossbows having less or similar winddrift than the musket. Thanks to using a heavier, longer projectile." I disagree due to the far greater velocity of the musket's ball! Once again here I believe we will just disagree
"No medieval soldier in his right mind would even attempt to shoot an individual at ranges over 100yrds!
[/quote]
Now thats an outright stupid claim.
Archers can put arrows within a fairly limited area at up to 200m. One arrow probably wont hit, but 1/5 is plenty good enough." That archer would be taking home gold medals at our world's olympic games! Look up olympic archery sometime... I don't say it is impossible. I say simply to prove it occurred once in all of history. What I have studied shows medieval archers only going for pinpoint shots at far closer than 100yrds... NOT 660'!
"And then of course, do you know how long it takes for a horseman to charge over a 100m distance? Unless your archers are really short on arrows, they certainly wont be out of arrows in that time." In EVERY battle there are friendly folks between the archers and the enemy. It always took quite some time for the enemy to close with archers. In a few medieval battles the archers are given more than 5 dozen arrows... let me repeat """I usuwally speak to 'generally to almost always"""
"So correction, "enough power to POTENTIALLY almost cut a man in half, or at least take off a whole limb"...
Once again you overgeneralise grossly." I was just looking at the ballistics of a .5" ball and an ounce of gun powder hittin' some dude at 50'... and reading articles on the net... heh - I think Walt Whitman would disagree with you!
"A highend crossbow took a minute or more to wind up" I did'nt not think they 'wound up' a crossbow in medieval times...
"As the member of the local pistol club(and the archery club using the same field) that i am, i would most definetly advice against trying to use any pistol at ranges beyond 50m. "
"Pistols are good at up to 25m or so. Beyond that you have to start adjusting notably for wind for them as well." Odd claim here. Talk to folks who HUNT with pistols! As a pistoleer you should note I have been using a .44mag (my trusty ruger superredhawk) as an example. With that much power wind does not effect it (depending on the wind, of course) until about 80-100yrds!
"And one of the things that marks a good archer is his ability to adjust for the wind accurately "on the fly"." At the OVER 2 football fields of range you are talking about an archer would have to be able to see ahead into the future 8-10 seconds to KNOW the capricious gusts, truns, and whorls of wind!
"In short, a modern compound bow will be effective at a much longer distance, with a good archer, than a .44mag.
Close up, the gun will of course be way more damaging and even at range, if it hits it will be more damaging for a long time(possibly even regardless range, i cant say for certain really)." When using the .44mag as an example I was assuming a GREAT pistoleer, compared to an average archer
"What is your source for the half km?" I normally don't ask this... I have a hard time coughing up all MY sources. Ya read all kinds of stuff, and it is very difficult to remember precisely who stated what! To me this just seemed really fantastic, and so i picked just this one to try and find a source for. I was unable to persoanlly.
"But as i said, at the longest ranges, accuracy is pisspoor(there pretty much ISNT any)." Hence my lesson about them being used as ARTLLERY!
"Armour was more effective yes, but fighters avoided the armour if they could" I may be dense here... but I do not understand why an armored knight would try and avoid armor...
"Crossbows WERE... They were not common as battlefield weapons. Archers were preferable for that." We will just have to really disagree on this one! Check out some online articles dealing with the subject.
"Crossbowmen at the time would fire a quarrel, hook the stock onto their belt, crouch, step on the stirrup on the end of the crossbow, stand up – at that point the crossbow was cocked!" They were mediium crossbows... or would be considered as such... they had 4-500# draw.
“And in case you missed it, bows on a battlefield were commonly used for HIGH angle shots most of the time, not low trajectory direct shots... only once the range closed down to well below 100m, or even well below 50m did anyone really expect any serious accuracy †Yeppirs – they seemed to mostly be used for artillery!
Incorrect. An archer might be expected to spend most of his life becoming competent with his weapon. A crossbow is much easier to learn to shoot, so you can put a crossbow in the hands of a serf, and 'let him go'. The result of this is that quality archers are much more expensive to raise than crossbowmen.
You would be correct in submitting that 'men' are larger today than in the time of AM5. Weaker? With all due respect I must laugh at that one ( ). You spend your free time hitting keys on a computer...people of that time had less leisure and more "move that rock over yonder" time. This is of course a generalization, because modern folks have lots of knowledge and technology to help them 'get fit'. Certainly there are folks today who are way stronger than those from days past, but not as a generalization....
I have a 75# pull longbow. I used to shoot it about three hours a day. My over sized friend of the time could not pull it back. Your postulation that technique is responsible for this is incorrect. The simple answer is that yon football player NEVER uses those muscles involved in pulling a bow
Sure the football player spends a lot of time developing his curling muscle, but the essential muscles in the upper shoulder are not developed. Such a person can not pull the bow back to his face...unless the pull weight is really low.
-As for weapon damage,
In your calculations, please remember the following facts:
--An arrow penetrates the target. It cuts its way through, and does little damage to the surrounding tissue. The target dies (typically) from blood loss. ie Arrows will go through a sandbag...The arrow retains the energy.
--A bullet impacts on its target. This means that it pushes through, and the energy is transmitted in a cone shape ahead of it. This cone damages the tissue in a wave in front of it. This is why, when a bullet passes through a target, you get a larger exit wound. In most cases the target dies from shock... ie a bullet does not pass through a sandbag..the energy is transmitted to the sand...
A good representation of this is the fact that the body armor worn by police will stop your typical handgun load, but won't stop a rifle or arrow load...(IIRC).
My quote that is referenced here a couple times is from a Dr. Ron Lasky - an expert in the history & use of the English Longbow. He is talking about the current WORLD RECORD holder for the English Warbow, named Mark Stretton who took the title held for 50 years by Howard Hill.
Dr. Lasky is merely noting the difference between athletes/soldiers of today and those of medieval times.
Regardless there is NO case for the athletes/soldiers of medieval Europe to be stronger than those of today.
.
.
.
"Sure the football player spends a lot of time developing his curling muscle"
Actually they rarely focus on curls - mostly pushes. Football linemen are the one athlete of today (next to wrestlers) who have the BEST over-all body strength! They do a lot of shoulder shrugs, trapezius/deltoid work, Loads of Lat pull downs, tricep pressdowns, rows, and PULLS of all kinds!
What Doctor Lasky was pointing out was NOT considering us Lazy folk! He was talking about a muscle-bound pal not pulling a bow as good as one would expect, BUT mastering the pull of a warbow VERY swiftly due to size/strength.
Three hours, 75#, Urien? I seriuosly believe you and I am suitably impressed impressed. Kudos! (my fingers would be swollen lifeless and painful! - but I do just type a lot )
Does anyone know when re-curve bows, or bows made from laminated layers of wood, or both together were used in Europe??
Growing up there was an older man who lived a few miles from us who made his own bows. He would hunt deer, and bear with them (I don't remember if he ever tried to hunt moose with bow).... Anyhow he made his bows re-curved out of layers of wood, and laminated them. He sold quite a few if I remember correctly.
I remember as a teen he would show me and my brother his bows, how they were made in his shop (my bro made a great dagger from a huge file with his shops stone grinding wheel!), and some about how to shoot.
One bow in particular I think was 75#s, and he showed us how to measure the draw with hooks and weights.
I think that bow was only 3.5-4' long...
IF they made bows like that in medieval europe you could use a WARBOW from horseback!
Accuracy:
The longbow was a rather accurate weapon.
I mean that an experienced English Longbowman could hit a stationary person in the torso at 60 yards about half the time with a Medieval Warbow.
“An archer could hit a person at 165 m (180 yards) "part of the time" and could always hit an armyâ€
A Medieval Hunting bow was more accurate, but had less power.
Yep, there are legends & tales of FAR greater accuracy. -shrug- I will not say they are myths, just EXTREMELY extremely rare.
If a man today can land almost all of his arrows into a 6" stationary target at 90m, he would be on an Olympic Team. This is using modern equipment which is more accurate than medieval equipage.
"The Longbow itself is not accurate, only the person shooting it."
Rate of Fire:
From what I have read an experienced Medieval Longbowman could shoot an arrow every 4-8 seconds. about. roughly. They would generally have their arrows standing next to them arranged for very easy access. Yeppirs, if they were in a war, shooting as fast as possible at the army coming, not caring about accuracy, a Welsh Longbowman could shoot a lot of arrows in 2-3 minutes! (I think about 20-30)
For missile weapons Rate Of Fire would often turn the tide of a battle.
Damage:
It seems from my reading that the vast bulk of English Longbows (welsh?) had a draw of 80-90#. This is STILL a HELLUVA lotta poundage. I know nobody personally who could draw this bow (maybe me - still kinda strong) 80-90 is is HUGE! Do not scoff at this as a small amount!
In a large group of Archers in Medieval times there ‘might’… maybe… have been a handful of Longbows with 110# to 130# draws. The myth of the 200# draw stems from a) faulty science, or b) Bows that were meant to be mounted on ships.
With a 90# draw an arrow could NOT also be heavy to be either accurate OR to reach a range of over 200yrds.
Force equals 'mass times speed'. True a 90# bow with a good arrow hitting armor from the perpindicular could punch through some armors at 20-40 yards... {BUT in ARM5 they have such an arrow doing the damage of a POLEARM! }
a) Henry V faced Welsh Longbowmen.
"Prince Hal (later Henry V) was wounded in the face by an arrow at the Battle of Shrewsbury (1403). The royal physician John Bradmore had a tool made, which consisted of a pair of smooth tongs. Once carefully inserted into the rear of the arrowhead wound, the tongs screwed apart till they gripped its walls and allowed the head to be extracted from the wound. Prior to the extraction, the hole made by the arrow shaft had been widened by inserting larger and larger dowels of wood down the entry wound. The dowels were soaked in honey, which has antiseptic properties. The wound was dressed with a poultice of barley and honey mixed in turpentine. After 20 days the wound was free of infection"
A Welsh Longbow arrow hit him in the naked face and he lived! Not a massive amount of damage!
b) To pull back the massive weight of 140# (let alone 200#) with one arm is a very rare feat. It takes a Helluva lot of strength. IF someone pulls back the amount of weight Lou Ferigno works out with, they damn well will not be able to hold it while they take time to aim!
c) To pull back the string of a bow, with such poundage to justify polearm damage, that thin string would take the skin right off your fingers! You would have to wear leather gloves/gauntlet that would then be worn through by that string before you shot all your arrows in a battle. Pure physics!
d) An arrow loses velocity (damage) the further it flies. Air Resistance. An arrow punching through a knight's armor at 20' will not punch through that knight's armor at 200'.
e) Not to be gross, but think about a Polearm sliding though a body. Imagine the size of the hole it would leave. Now imagine an arrow sliding through that same body, and imagine the hole IT would leave behind.
I imagine the Polearm leaving a bigger hole. I imagine the polearm Pike leaving at least a 2"hole. More damage - plain and simple.
f) In conclusion here on damage. Common sense, science, history, sources, practice, etc all speak to the higher damage of the longbow not being justifed in ARM5.
The Longbow had good range compared to other medieval missile weapons, and at least as good accuracy at range.
What it lacked in damage it mitigated in Rate Of Fire.
"From the arrows of the Hungarians, O Lord, deliver us."
And all the Steppe people from Pechenegs to Mongols. And the Greeks who get them from the steppe, the Bulgars, and the Sicilian Arabs. And possibly others, too.
Not in the slightest. I specifically stated that crossbows ON THE BATTLEFIELD, ie NOT on either side in a siege or similar...
Definetly not. Just as with your artillery claim, its simply wrong.
Because "almost always" is alot more "all-prevailing" than "an average fight" for the simple reason that comparatively few fights actually were "average" in nature despite being the single most common type of engagement. Its not a matter of "average" compared to "not average", its a matter of "average" being the single most common among many kinds of battles.
No, go find yourself a firing range.
Or at least remember the little fact that a crossbowbolt while travelling slower is commonly alot HEAVIER.
Reread what i said, AGAIN please? I said that an archer at 200 yards could with decent skill expect to hit a target with maybe 1 in 5 arrows. At that range we´re still talking heavy arrows so unless its an unlucky hit, its not a wound to ignore.
I already said multiple times that at long range, accuracy is pisspoor.
At medium range you can expect to put an arrow on the target once in a while, if you think hitting an archery target at all(anywhere) at 200 yards is olympics level you need to think again.
Not in every battle no. And secondly, if there are people in between, the enemy isnt closing with the archers, they´re busy with those who were in the way.
"Potentially", meaning yes it can be so, understand?
IF we pick your not quite spoken definition of "always", then please DO explain why at times there were people still fighting after taking several such bullets?
14th century added the windlass mechanism most likely. I have seen some reasonable claims that it first appeared in 13th century though, but thats not verified.
CAN be used. Its like i CAN shoot at up to 250m with an M/45(9*19 SMG). Oh the wind affects it allright, if you dont notice it, fine i guess you havent used it in windy conditions then.
Predicting the wind is a very important part of being a skilled archer yes.
Yeah thats why tried to find the current record holder for bows, and only found the one for crossbows...
You would think something like that would be online...
Problem with the few sites mentioning ranges doesnt specify if its direct or indirect shots.
And places like this: web.mit.edu/21h.416/www/military ... ngbow.html
says draw weight of 80-160, and yet still claims a range of 350 with "smaller arrrowheads" with which i assume they mean light arrows, the kind of range not that horribly much longer than i can get with a 60 pound bow, meaning they almost have to mean low trajectory shots, but we also dont know if they mean that range for an 80 or a 160 pounder bow, making the whole thing a complete mess to figure out.
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