Longbow VS plate.

[Andrzej Rosa]

I'll tend to agree with you on this, but IMHO they could also do some harm to plate.

For shooting at mail you would use something like this:



For shooting horses and unarmored troops things like this make more sense:
]


Yet they used also arrowheads like this


The last one makes no sense at all, until you hope to shoot through some kind of plate.

Regards.

[Risto Rautiainen]

Well I would presume that the last head would be better at finding the little gaps in armour and would not shatter as easy as number one.

[Stacy Clifford]

I would like to see some arrow tests against that ultradense piece of maile we had at the International Gathering in 2003. I think that would have been very difficult to penetrate. It's all going to depend on the weave and the density and thickness of the wire.

[Andrzej Rosa]

Well I would presume that the last head would be better at finding the little gaps in armour and would not shatter as easy as number one.

I read somewhere that archers used to put a bit of wax on these arrowheads, to make them stick better. Natural wax is a little sticky and it has some honey in it too.

If finding gaps is the goal, I'll put something slippery on the arrowhead instead.

I mean, no matter if this wax actually helped, they wanted their arrows to stick to what they hit.

Regarding "supermaile".
Do not test it on yourself. Whatever the weave and gauge.

Best regards.

[Filip Pobran]

it is hard to find a gap in the armour of a charging horseman about 150 m from you, while shooting in an arch. <img src="/forum/images/icons/wink.gif" alt="" />
NHF

[Randall Pleasant]

To a limited degree volume of fire makes up for poor aim! <img src="/forum/images/icons/cool.gif" alt="" />

[philippewillaume]

hello
The only proper that I know of study of arrow and crossbow head across Europe (she studied arrow/bolt head across Europe was done in France. It is a very good book (published academic research) but in French
Basically as Andrezj posted long bodkin were used against mail (crossbow or bow), to be fair there is a lot of similar shape (so it is not exactly that across Europe but global idea remainded

And short bodkin was used against plate (crossbow and bow). Some arrows/bolt did not have the neck.




We could see as well that in the 1400 divers degree of steel starts to appear but before that arrow head were mainly iron (face hardened though).

I do agree with a slower heavier arrow penetrating better than a fasts light arrow.

The test they did for that TV series (weapon that made Britain one instalment of the 6 being the longbow and the other one mentioned being the armour)

What the did was to have a longbowman shooting a heavy longbow (I do not know how heavy nut I thing it was well over 120 lbs) they then Measured the speed
Use an air cannon to fired at the armour.
In the longbow series, they used your typical early 1300 transitional armour and the arrow went through though only at short range 20 meters or so.
In the armour one, it was a slack quenched face-hardened Milanese cuirass and it only punctured the cuirass (i.e. no damage to the man in it).

I am not sure what heat treatment the transitional armour had not to mention the mail nor what the arrow head was made of.


What I was trying to say with my example is that cheap modern armour is not a good representative of what armour really is.
I mean the feral os a 1.5 inch diameter surface, that is big area and you have lots of wastage of energy when you strike holding a heavy lance without a lance rest.
I have seen plywood resist better than some modern armour. I have pierced a modern cheap breast plate with a sword on foot. (and cut several carpenters nail with my sword (by accident, you know small cabbage ,big nail, the horse movement and all that) and I just presented the sword. That does not mean my Angus trim will cut other sword.
I understand where you are coming from, but I do not think we can extrapolate that much from the naff armour small poundage bow.
Basically it is about half of the longbow average poundage for about a fifth to a tenth of a pepper armour.



You said that a sharp lance can go through a munitions grad cuirass and I would agree with a that but the forces are much much greater than the a longbow can ever dream to generate.
War arrow 60 g about 100 m/s (at close range)
War lance on horse 700-1000 kg about 15 m-s.


If we take period text
I think that it indicates that normal transitional Armour was vulnerable to longbow (at Poitier the charge against the archers were made by well armored man and horses)
And at verneuil the horse are mention to be as well armored than their rider
In 1470 we have a French and English text that state the 31 layer jack can stopp a sword cut and an arrow.


So I would say that transitional rmor was probably vulnearbe to some extend but plate was not (or only in marginal cases).

as far as 12th cent is concerned well european account and th eone musllim i have clearly show that mail and even aketon wer good enough to stop anything the turck/arabs had to shoot at them.
phil

[Erik D. Schmid]

Let me again say that all of the tests done in the "Weapons that Made Britain" series should be taken with a grain of salt. Cost cutting and time constraints prevented the tests from being any better than others done previously.

With regards to the power generated by a lance being used by a horse and rider, the horse cannot be figured into the equation other than the speed it generates. This is due to the fact that the lance and rider are not physically connected to the horse. The only time this changes is thorugh the use of specialized equipment such as an arret and then only slightly.

[Andrzej Rosa]

I think that we generally agree on this matter. But I'll write some more,
not because I think you are wrong; just because people tend to remember one
simple message even if topic is very complicated.

If one single message must remain from our discussion, I'd like it to be that
typical armor as worn in the longbow era did not protect against arrows
perfectly.

So bear with me, just for a moment more.

In the armour one, it was a slack quenched face-hardened Milanese
cuirass and it only punctured the cuirass (i.e. no damage to the man in
it).

Right. But as I understand the physics of penetration, once a plate is
punctured a weight of an arrow becomes a deciding factor. Light arrows will
not be able to penetrate deeply. They used light arrow, as far as we
understand it; ergo, they did not test how much damage a man in that armor
could sustain. Plate was punctured, though.

I am not sure what heat treatment the transitional armour had not to
mention the mail nor what the arrow head was made of.

I'm not sure if heat treatment is so crucial, after all. It seems that
arrows "prefer" brittle hard steel over soft pliable one. Deforming steel
sucks up energy of an arrow and often proves to be more difficult to puncture.

What I was trying to say with my example is that cheap modern armour
is not a good representative of what armour really is.

It does not matter what armor is, it matters what it was.
I remember one estimation made by some Polish historian which estimated the
cost of full kit of a horseman to be roughly equal to providing enough
calories to sustain 400 people for 100 days. It is a lot of money! Many
guys probably cut some corners when they had to.

OK. Some images showing what heavy war-bow can do to supposedly very strong
target. Those guys who posted those pictures try to show, that even
extremely strong longbow will not go through it. Whatever. See for yourself
and judge accordingly.


Regards.
Here is the story behind pictures.
http://www.clickersarchery.co.uk/online/pages/danage.php

[Filip Pobran]

well... isn't jousting armour a bit diferent of that on the field?

isn't the point of jousting to stay as long as you can in a saddle, to crush the biggest number of lances, show your precision, strenght, agility, NOT TO KILL AN OPONENT?

[philippewillaume]

the armour thing is just to draw a parallels with modern armour (i have a field harness not a jousting one, like the one in the battle of san romano or in the santa maria del grazie. (well as far as we can tell those are field harness anyway)
that being said you are right, I think by the 15th cent the idea more to break lance than even unhorse the opponent.

phil

[philippewillaume]

yeap.
An armour costed about 8-10 pound and a war horse got fetch 40 pounds.
that being said we have a french document for the armours stored in town (munition grade armour) that some had been proofed against bows and hand crossbow and some havd been tested against windlass.


Now as Erick has mentioned, it is a TV program they did it so that i proved their point.