Longbow VS plate.

[philippewillaume]

cheers mate

There is some proponent that this was in fact a bow that was destined to be trimmed down by the final user (based on the fact that the stave was very thick at the top of the arms and has no knocks) but as far as I can tell it is a theory.

I think we need to make a difference between the common archer and the archer de maison.

I think it is reasonable to think that you had ammunition bow and arrows and more customized bow and arrows

I have recollection that a lord bough a bow for almost 3 pound for one of his retainer.
that is the price of a good ammunition armour and lots of money at the time
as well, all the arrow head found were in iron i would not be surprised if the archer de maison had steel arrow head.
after all an archer de maison (ie a retainer) is almost the same as a men at arms in pay and status.
philippe

ps take care, i have seen safer place than irack those days

[philippewillaume]

hello
The ridge is at crecy.

the research i have done so far tends to go in the direction of Joe's remarks.

I think the sucess of the english has more to do with the tactical accument of their leaders and the actual archer (as a soldier) than the longbow as a weapon.

[TimSheetz]

That makes sense. Agincourt looked flat to me.

Thanks,

Tim

[Bob Savage]

All,

Tonight History Channel International aired an episode from the "Weapons that Made Britain" series. As part of the program (on the English longbow) they tested the effect of bodkin tip arrows against a steel breast plate.

Conditions of the test:

Target: Breastplate was "munition" quality steel, not especially hardened steel.

Firing device for armor piercing arrows: air cannon

Results:
80 meters -- arrowhead made dent but no penetration
30 meters -- arrowhead barely punctured plate but no damage into padding or clay block behind plate
20 meters -- arrowhead penetrated plate, padding, and into the clay block

Of course, these tests were performed under lab conditions with an air cannon rather than a longbow. Still, interesting results.

Bob Savage

[James Weakley]

I found this and thought it was interesting...


Although it is impossible for any bow to be perfectly efficient, crossbows are particularly inefficient when compared to longbows. The reason for this is that the draw length and the lath (also called a prod) of crossbows are much shorter than those of longbows. So even though a crossbow may have more stored energy when spanned, the tips of the lathe do not have enough time to reach the maximum velocity that the amount of stored energy would otherwise allow. It is the lathe tip velocity that determines the speed of the bolt that is loosed. (Crossbows are not "fired", which is a term related to gunpowder.)
W.F. Paterson (1990) published data from Stephen V. Grancsay about an experiment comparing a longbow and a crossbow that was spanned with a cranequin.




Longbow(draw weight)68 lbs.(bolt weight)2.5 oz(fps) 133.7
Crossbow(draw weight)740 lbs(bolt weight)1.25 oz(fps) 138.7

This problem could have been alleviated with a longer draw length or a longer lath, but that would increase the weight and bulkiness of the crossbow, which are already two distinct disadvantages of crossbows. In the above example, it should be stated that the bolt loosed by the crossbow could have been heavier without experiencing much of a decrease in exit velocity. A heavier arrow loosed by the longbow would have had a significantly reduced exit velocity.

[Jason_Daub]

Just to add my two cents;take a look at Robert Hardy's Longbow and Jim Bradbury's The Medieval Archer. They both discuss the physical changes in the bodies of the archers recovered from the Mary Rose.The third edition of Longbow has a quite detailed Appendices that discuss the design and materials of bows, spine in arrows and their design and taper. A technical discussion of the target including information on the properties of armour and its thickness is also present. All in all an excellent book. [color="black"] [/color]

[Shane Smith]

I have read and own Hardy's book myself being somewhat of a longbow enthusiast.I agree,it is a worthy book for anyone interested in the subject,indeed,it practically a must in my opinion.

[JeanryChandler]

Longbow(draw weight)68 lbs.(bolt weight)2.5 oz(fps) 133.7 Crossbow(draw weight)740 lbs(bolt weight)1.25 oz(fps) 138.7

This experiment was contraversial, I understand there was some question as to the quality of the crossbow, whether it was strung right or functioning properly or some such.

It would be very interesting and helpful if somene like the Royal Armories at Leeds coud do this experiment over in controlled conditions, with a real historical crossbow of 1,000 lbs draw or more.

Jeanry

[George Turner]

I read Hardy and Bradbury when I was studying the longbow. One thing I'd like to point out, which I think they missed, is that the word "stave" seems to be an Americanism from the 1700's.

In prior years we could only say "staff" and "staves", just like "knife" and "knives". They mention Royal Armory inventories which list "bowstaves, ready for war". To a modern archer a bowstave is the piece of wood you make into a bow, but this doesn't make much sense, kind of like having a battle-ready rifle-stock blank. The modern translation of the term would be "bowstaffs".

Toxophilus also mentions that once a longbow seems to shoot ok it was taken back to the bowyer to get straightened, a process Ascham called "piking". And one of the English kings is mentioned as traveling around the kingdom with a surrounding "hedgehog of archers" as his bodyguard.

It does raise the question as to whether a 120 lb bow that's carefully straightened, very long, has no leather grip, arrow shelf, or handle, has horn points (natures own dagger material) and is deployed in a hedgehog might also serve as a staff weapon in an emergency.

The Romans and Vikings both used a bowspear, a bow with a metal spear tip, so it wouldn't be a very unusual idea.

[Tim Merritt]

"...might also serve as a staff weapon in an emergency."

Funny, I have a horn-tipped longbow, and after some reletively close encounters with some mountain lions while target shooting, the thought crossed my mind.

Has there been found any work with bows, as staff or missile weapons, in any of the manuals alongside swords?

[philippewillaume]

If that can help
"archers" were use as bodyguard by Charles VII and loius XI in France that is from 1420 ish to 1490 ish

Those royal bodyguards were archers de maison. Basically, a man at arm that can fire a bow.
In the vast majority of picture I have seen they have a polearm. I cannot remember seeing one with a bow.
(and you can easily recognise them they were Scottish)

[Andrzej Rosa]

I found this thread and mostly want to bring it to the top for others
interested to read, yet I have a couple of comments.

in the serie weaponsd that made britain, they showed that the longbow
(120 m/s) could only penetrate and 14 cent plate (without mail under it) at
very close range about 20 meters.
any further away was a not good.

I made some rough calculations based on this number. I was quite generous
with my assumptions yet I found that the weight of an arrow was around
40grams, which would be some 600 grains.

Either a number is off or they did not test much. I'll check the
reported number when my computer comes back from service (I got this part of
this show somewhere on my hard drive).

Anyway - the arrow should be some 2 times heavier and slower of course.

I'm not aware of good tests of speed for arrows shot from heavy longbows, but
for anyone interested in getting the feel for numbers there is this link.

http://www.atarn.org/islamic/akarpowicz/turkish_bow_tests.htm

Longbows quite probably would be a bit slower bows.

I remember reading about some "tests" made by guys in Czech with lighter
bows. They could repeatedly pierce through around 1.5 mm breastplate.
Around, because they welded and straightened this armor so many times it was
a hard guess how thick it is . Anyway, some guy with war-bow proper shot
through this cuirass, through a bag of beans which was wearing it and split
a wooden post on which all of this was supported.

I mean, we can still underestimate penetrating power of a longbow. If they
could not shoot through any plate why they used short bodkin arrowheads? It
makes no sense to use an arrowhead like this for anything else I'm aware of.

Regards.

[philippewillaume]

hello
I can not disagree with you, as I said few mail after the one you quote what I thing of TV program finding and proof.
At the end they will show what goes in the way of what they want to say and nicely forget about what does not fit. (A little bit like historian in the 60-70 really)

The test you mention just proves that it was [censored] Armour.
I have put massive dents in amours jousting.
Hitting with a ferral (the bit you socket the balsa on) the diameter of which is 1 inch and a half (just to say that it is blunt it is), the hits have created so much deformation that the Armour was not wearable
Because I love my wrist I never hold the lance tightly when I am not using a lance rest. It was a good hit but nothing remotely resembling a motivated twat.
My armour do not have scratch and I got hit with a feral a few time in similar conditions.

I am noit sure we need test we have enough eveidence in primary sources to indicated that armour coulb be made longbow proof from poiter onwards.

As well there is enough sourced from the crusade crusader and Muslim indicating the bow used by the abbaside/fatamid/seldjuk/ayyubid was just not good enough against a knight. (And that even under the good old Yussuf (salah ad din))

[Andrzej Rosa]

I thought, that they rather wanted to prove longbow "formidable", just did
not really knew how to do that.

My assumption (based mostly on single number, which could be off) would be,
that they checked what kind of arrow could fly assumed 250 yards of longbow
range. But for longbow this is in the flight-shooting range.

Efficiency of a bow, regarded as simple machine, goes up as a weight of a
projectile goes up, which means that light arrows are not efficient.
Also, an ability to penetrate (especially in soft tissues) depends more on
momentum of an arrow and much less on it's kinetic energy. Even momentum
does not predict an ability to penetrate very well, because resistance of
tissues increases with the square of velocity, but momentum increases
linearly with velocity.

What I mean is that slow heavy arrow penetrates much better than fast light
arrow.

So if they could pierce anything with flight-shooting projectile it is quite
astonishing. Maybe they lied in this show? - could be.

Guys in Czech obviously shot at [censored] breastplate, but they could do
some harm to it with some 60-pounders - laughably small bows as war-bows go.

Next question.
How good armor in the times of longbow really was?
I read some stuff from Osprey, and the author very often regarded armors
pictured in iconography and on sculptures as outdated. It was suspicious to
me. So much outdated armor?

Maybe armor then was not so perfect, after all?

Your experiences may show something, but I'm not sure what exactly. Sharp
lance could pierce a munition breastplate of a pikeman, as far as I know.
Even if it could do not much harm to an armor you have it still proves rather
little, because a horse travels some 5 times slower than even moderately
fast arrow. It would be hard to draw conclusions from such an extremely
distant situations.

Last thing, and I'm done.
I often find, that people tend to think that if they could pierce plate then
an attack of cavalry against archers must be a failure. Maybe, but I do not
think so. Bows are faster than muskets, but after all it comes to some
two/three arrows as opposed to just one salvo of musketry, when it comes to
charging infantry. I see no reason why cavalry charge must break after
couple of arrows shot per one guy. Most arrows will hit horses, and horses
will still run and will still try to stay together, so they will effectively
charge, until they are very dead.

Regards.

[SzabolcsWaldmann]

I still have the opinion that we are testing wrong armour.
Just imagine. We are talking about 14th century in case of the hundred years war and 12th-13th in case of turks and other islamic armies.
I guess mail was still the averasge. Even in the 15th century, a normal heavy infantryman only had a breastplate in addiction to his mail shirt.
And, still my opinion, mail does not protect from arrows - maybe at all. That was, what MY test shootings showed. And I don't know if our testshootings on gothic plate should say anything at all about Crécy or Agincourt.


Szabolcs