The Bodkin Arrow vs. Plate

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Robert Murphy
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The Bodkin Arrow vs. Plate

Postby Robert Murphy » Fri Oct 28, 2005 2:20 am

Ok, Mr. Amateur has another question or two...

I recently did a little 'research' on the penetrating power of the longbow (with Bodkin-headed arrows) against plate armor. According to a couple of sources, to pierce good-quality plate armor, a longbowmen would need to be within 50 yards (perhaps even closer) of his target.

If this is the case, how is it that English archers were such an effective (some even say decisive) factor in several Medieval battles of great significance? The best example I can recall is Agincourt. Yet (if my memory serves me well) at Agincourt 'indirect' fire (i.e., arrows fired nearly vertically into the air so as to rain down on the assaulting French knights) took a murderous toll.

How could an arrow, landing on a heavily armored foe at too low a velocity (uhm, just how fast do they come down?) to pierce plate have been so effective? Was it the toll they must have taken, not on the French knights themselves but on their mounts? (Barding must have had its limitations...)

Any feedback greatly appreciated.

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Pierre Planas
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Re: The Bodkin Arrow vs. Plate

Postby Pierre Planas » Fri Oct 28, 2005 4:07 am

The primary function of normands and later english longbowmen units was suppressive indirect fire. volleys after volleys of arrows would be fired in the sky and then fly down on the opposing army at very long range. while this was not the most precise or powerful way of firing arrows, the sheer volume of fire ensured that enemy units would be plagued with unending waves of arrows. Warriors dressed in full plates were mostly unaffected, but their horses, attendants, and other units that weren't as fully armored were vulnerable, and would either killed or kept at bay. If the opposing army was willing to approach the english army despite the rain of arrow, they were usually routed before they could reach the lines of pikemen protecting the archers.

There was one occurence during the hundred year war, i think, of a french king who ordered his knights to dismount and attack on foot. the knights got muddled in a swamp, and then slaughtered by the shortrange armor capability of the longbows.

The hundred year war is the best example of the efficiency of indirect fire tactics, but it was mostly due to the french commander incompetence. Such strategy had been defeated by a proper use of calvary prior to the hundred year war (i think such a thing happened in Courtrai sometime around 1300 or 1400. I'm not so sure about the name of the battle.).

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Robert Rolph
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Re: The Bodkin Arrow vs. Plate

Postby Robert Rolph » Fri Oct 28, 2005 4:51 am

I don't think arrows could penetrate the plate armors. Probably really good pikes with some extra weight added at the end could. The Roman and the Thai would put probably a tennis size iron ball near the base where the spear head was attached to the wooden staff. This would give it the extra weight to punch through armors and shields. I saw some Thai ones that had multiple balls, but they were more like pumpkin shapes, though.
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Re: The Bodkin Arrow vs. Plate

Postby Shane Smith » Fri Oct 28, 2005 5:11 am

You needn't penetrate the armour of a mounted knight if you can penetrate the hide of the horse he's charging on <img src="/forum/images/icons/wink.gif" alt="" />
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Re: The Bodkin Arrow vs. Plate

Postby Pierre Planas » Fri Oct 28, 2005 7:05 am

"I don't think arrows could penetrate the plate armors."

I' haven't got any info about actual plate armor resilience to this type of impact. On the other hand, i've seen some pretty nasty impact from a puny 20lbs bow made on wood. English longbow were supposed to be around 80-100 lbs, so i'd be curious what can kind of damage it could cause to a plate armor.

"Probably really good pikes with some extra weight added at the end could."

Do you mean javelins? Anyway, whether it's a pike or a javelin, given their velocity (thrown and pushed), i doubt it could go through plate armor.

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JeffGentry
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Re: The Bodkin Arrow vs. Plate

Postby JeffGentry » Fri Oct 28, 2005 10:00 am

Hey Chris

We had this type of discussion one other time, and they did a show on the history channel about Agincourt, and they determined that the steel of the bodkin was inferior to the steel of the plate armour and woudn't pnetrate it.


Like was stated earlier the damage to a horse and then the damage he would do when in pain would make a diffrenc.


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Re: The Bodkin Arrow vs. Plate

Postby Stacy Clifford » Fri Oct 28, 2005 11:37 am

I've seen a picture of a piece of straw driven into a telephone pole by a tornado, so I don't buy the inferior steel doesn't penetrate argument. With enough force behind it, a sharp stick will penetrate steel plate. Anything relatively close in hardness should have a chance at penetrating if it hits hard at the right angle. It might deform the head a bit, but that doesn't mean it won't go through at least some of the time. Also, if it's raining thousands of arrows, there's a significantly higher chance that one will come down in a spot where there's not enough armor to stop it.
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Ernest Brant
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Re: The Bodkin Arrow vs. Plate

Postby Ernest Brant » Fri Oct 28, 2005 11:51 am

Amen. The English yeoman archers shot for the horse, not the rider. Put the armoured knight on foot and he is much more manageable. Break the knee to knee formation of a well executed medieval cavalry charge, and it becomes more manageable.

Could the English war bow (longbow is a later creation and was not used in medieval times) penetrate plate armour? Under ideal circumstances, yes. That means close range, probably less than 50 yards, and a very perpendicular hit on the plate. Most arrows bounced off the contours of the plate. That said, English yeoman archers began learning the bow at about age 10, it was a near national pasttime for the yeoman class, and by the time they were 20 they were very deadly indeed.

Crecy, Poitier and Argincourt have one thing in common. The French were extremely overconfident of their abililty to win and thus made serious tactical errors which lead to their defeat. At Argincourt, it had been raining for days before and Henry V positioned his force well on the top of a hill with trees to either side. The French knights/aristocracy, confident of victory, decided to charge Henry's line rather than send in the archers and infantry first. Their horses were slowed by the mud and decimated by the arrows, causing many a French knight to find himself on foot. The mounted French finally retreated, leaving behind a true quagemire of churned up mud and dead and dying horses, many with their riders pinned under them.

Most, but not all, of the knights dismounted and accompanied the attacks of the infantry. The first French Battle walked up the hill, got bogged down in mud, had trouble moving, and had to endure a wither of arrows. When they reached the English line of men-at-arms and knights, they were much weaked and defeated. More or less the same happened to the second Battle.

The third French Battle decided they wanted nothing to do with the mess before them and marched off the field, giving Henry V his unexpected victory. Ironically, most historians agree that had that their Battle attacked the English line, they probably would have defeated the English, who by that time were exhausted and out of arrows.

Many historians also believe that almost as many French knights drowned/sufficated in the mud as were killed by the English. The French lost a very large number of nobles at Argincourt, over 100 if I remember correctly.

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Re: The Bodkin Arrow vs. Plate

Postby Robert Murphy » Fri Oct 28, 2005 6:28 pm

Yikes! Sorry if I sound the suck-up, but I am picking more key bits of info on this board than the score or two of books I've read on the subject matter ever provided. So very glad to have stumbled upon this site...

Robert
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Re: The Bodkin Arrow vs. Plate

Postby Kevin Peterson » Fri Oct 28, 2005 10:04 pm

After reading this post I remembered a show that I watched recently about this topic. So after rummaging through the ARMA Appleton Medieval DVD library, I found my copy of "Weapons That Made Britain" that discussed the longbow. They had a champion longbowman come and shoot his bow and using a doppler radar to find the speed of the arrow. The man's bow required 150 pounds of force to draw, which they said would have been around the extreme top range for longbows around the time of Crecy. The radar showed that at he bow the arrows speed was 52 meters per second or roughly 116 mph. After 800 milliseconds (.8 seconds) the speed had fallen off to 42 meters per second or 93.9 mph. Using this data they then used an air cannon to fire arrows with bodkin points at a munitions grade breast plate to guage damage. They used the air cannon because they could vary the amount of velocity the arrow was fired at and therefore replicating strikes on the breastplate at different ranges. At a distance of 80 meters (87.4 Yards) the arrow with bodkin dented the breastplate and bounced off. At 30 meters (32.8 yards) the arrow punctured the breastplate but would have caused only a bruise to the wearer. At 20 meters (21.8 yards) the arrow punctured the breastplate nearly the entire length of the bodkin point and went through the undergarment and into the body of the wearer causing a serious injury.
I would have to agree that the horses were definitely the target for archers given how close the knight would have to be to puncture their armor. But at Crecy where the French knights charged the English archers on horseback, I can see how how the French quickly became pincusions, especially the closer the came the more accurate the archers would be. Hope this helps out.

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Joachim Nilsson
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Re: The Bodkin Arrow vs. Plate

Postby Joachim Nilsson » Sat Oct 29, 2005 4:43 am

Horses being the targets of archers and the like is consistent with what Olaus Magnus says in his "History of the Nordic Peoples" in 1555. He also mentions open visors as being a weak spot when under a hail of arrows:

In combats at foot, round helmets are used, in cavalry-combat helmets, which can be opened and are pointy. The protection these grant, are however slight due to the need to spit; because of this one has to strike open the front-piece and expose the face, which then easily is hit by the enemies’ iron-shod arrows, which fall tight as a shower of rain. Due to this cause fell, after what I have been acquainted, several noble men in the army of the Danish king Kristiern II during the campaign in Sweden in the year 1520. -9th book, 30th chapter, pages 417-418. [Translated from Swedish into English by me.]


Further on he also makes a mention on how the Swedish peasant armies dealt with cavalry (on open ground):

These arrows are not fired straight ahead, such as it is usually done against oncoming cavalry, but skywards, so that they on account of their own weight fall down again like a close rain of hail and annihilate the enemy. The arrow can thus work in three different ways: either it strikes down on the rider, pierces his helmet or cuirass and kills him there on the spot, or puts him out of battle-ready condition; or it his the horse in the head or back, so that he rears up, snorting of rage, and throws of the rider; or it burrows down into the ground and pierces, when the haft is trampled, like a stud underneath in the horse’s hoof and sticks there, so that the animal becomes lame. -7th book, 14th chapter, pages 307-308. [Translated from Swedish into English by me.]


Interestingly enough here he remarks that the arrows are usually fired straight ahead at oncoming cavalry. Bear in mind though that in this last paragraph he is discussing crossbows -not longbows or the like. Which makes much more sense when taken into account. The last paragraph is also acompanied by a neat woodcut showing Swedish peasants doing just what he described.
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Ernest Brant
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Re: The Bodkin Arrow vs. Plate

Postby Ernest Brant » Sat Oct 29, 2005 8:07 am

The distances you quote for penetration of armour correspond with what I have read in other sources as well. Even at 20 or 30 meters, however, if the arrow did not strike the armour plate near perpendicular, it would bounce off. At those ranges the archers would aim for the slits in the helmets and the gaps in the armour, and yes, the very good archers could hit those spots at those ranges.

The average pull of a war bow was about 100 lbs, but as you note, that varied depending on the skill and strength of the user. The average length of the war bow was about 6 feet unstrung and the arrows were about 3 feet long generally with white goose feather quills. English yeoman archers were strong men.

Arrow making was a cottage industry in England and for that reason, the quality of the arrows did vary in terms of both workmanship and materials They were packed in bundles of 20 and sent in various wrappings to the troops. A good archer would check every one of his arrows before putting them in his quiver.

The English war bow had slightly less range than a crossbow of the period, say Crecy onward (Crecy was 1346 if I remember correctly). What made the English war bow so effective, however, was the speed with which it could be fired vs. the crossbow, which took time to wind back the bow string. That is why the crossbowmen used the large Pavis type shield which was free standing and allowed the crossbowman to stand behind it while he wound back the string of his bow.

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Risto Rautiainen
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Re: The Bodkin Arrow vs. Plate

Postby Risto Rautiainen » Sat Oct 29, 2005 1:57 pm

To these discussions I have found the following thread to be quite eye-opening. It describes how does it feel to be shot at with a 50 lbs bow using rubber blunts. The person who describes it is wearing transitional harness. The thread is here: http://forums.armourarchive.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=31091

So if an arrow hits you in a joint or otherwise so that your body must take the whole kinetic energy the arrow has, even if the arrow won't penetrate, it'll give you quite a blow.

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George Turner
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Re: The Bodkin Arrow vs. Plate

Postby George Turner » Sat Oct 29, 2005 4:35 pm

As you've been discussing, many historians say the English arrows wouldn't have been all that effective against plate armor at Agincourt. Studies seem to confirm that longbows of that draw weight, though damaging, wouldn't have slaughtered the French knights. History confirms this, noting that the French knights rode all the way into the lines of English archers, which is why the English archers yanked the charging knights off their horses after the horses ran into the forest of English anti-cavalry stakes. The few period accounts also say that once the French infantry was in contact with the English infantry, the archers swung the tide of battle by wading in with hatchets, stakes, swords, and clubs.

It's simple to note that if the arrows were having tremendous effect, the French infantry wouldn't have been able to slog through the mud all the way to the English line, arriving in such numbers that they badly outnumbered the English (as the theories about the crowd dynamics and funnel effect indicate), nor would the archers have necessarily stopped shooting and opted for hand-to-hand if their arrows were swinging the tide, except maybe to avoid hitting the English infantry in the side of the head.

Here's a link to the crowd dynamics theory of Agincourt.
crowd dynamics link

It's based on studies of crowd disasters at rock concerts, and I have profound doubts about it. Infantry that mashes together into a clump or wad on an open field before meeting the enemy is just too dumb to function as infantry. A high-school marching band wouldn't even do that, much less trained and disciplined soldiers following the orders of trained and experienced commanders, and by all accounts the French commanders had proved both able and experienced in previous battles. My other problem with the crowd theory is the fact that any lopsided kill ratio due to an overabundance of front line soldiers should be eliminated when that overabundance gets thinned out.

My pet working theory is that the English dug their archers in as tactical necessity - combined with brilliant deception. Continental archers always fled when stripped of infantry protection, and when the massively outnumbered English line broke, the French would expect the rest of the English formation to collapse, the archers running for the hills. The French waded up to the English line of 500 men at arms, not realizing the two wings of 6000 archers also doubled as a pair of Scottish schiltrons (essentially pike phalanxes), and were enveloped from both flanks by soldiers who had a tremendous reach advantage with overlapping pole arms. If that's what happened, it doesn't require the French to be idiots, nor the English to be idiots for fighting against such overwhelming numbers, even goading the French into precipitious battle. In fact, it predicts that the English would want to goad the French into battle before the French commander started pondering the massive wings of English archers standing in a forest of really long pointy things. The muddier the field, the longer it would take a sword equiped infantryman to traverse the length of a spear or pike, and the more lopsided the kill ratio would become.

In sum, I think it's more likely that Henry used brilliant deception to lure the French into battle on poor terrain offering limited maneuverability, just like William Wallace at Stirling or Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn. Then he goaded them into attacking without pondering, just like William Wallace at Stirling or Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn, before they became worried about the vast number of archers as forming some sort of infantry. Then he enveloped the French lines from both flanks with his pole arm formations, holding the middle and pushing in from both sides to form a kill box, using schiltrons like William Wallace at Falkirk or Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn. To Henry V these tactics should've been as natural as breathing, the stuff of legends round the campfire, and he accomplished a maneuver that his tacticians surely dreamed of. In this view both commanders and their armies are highly competent, but the English had a depth of experience, an innovation adopted from Scotland, and a brilliant tactical deception up their sleave, thus carrying the day. I prefer it to the idiot Olympics that the crowd density theory implies
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Jeremy Martin
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Re: The Bodkin Arrow vs. Plate

Postby Jeremy Martin » Sat Oct 29, 2005 7:38 pm

I like your theory.

I do want to put forth this question though.

What if the French couldn't immedately see the 'funnel', or ignored it, or have missed it's importance? Could they have charged, and carried on by battle lust and the rear ranks, have had no choice but to group together too tightly? Even if later they were thinned out, could it have been a factor for at least a while?

Maybe it's some of all that.
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