"Henry V's archers vs Wellington's redcoats: Who would win?" Topic

LordLoveaDoug ,
But how many have shot an arrow or bullet for that matter into an armour that actualy matches the performance of medieval armour? Including the use of the proper padded garmets worn either underneath or ontop of the metal armour?

Agent Brown,
So the English did not lose the HYW on the battlefield?! Formigny and Castilion tells a rather diffrent story.

As for ignored contemporary sources it goes both ways. Quite often English set backs and defeats in the HYW period are left out of when certain authors write about the period. A good example of this is the battle of Brouwershaven 1425 were Duke Philip of Burgundy destroyed an English army sent by the Duke of Gloucester. The sources describe how the English were successfull and pushed backed the Dordrechters with their archery. However when Duke and his men-at-arms entered the fray the English archery made no impression on them beyond denting and damaging their armour.

I don´t know what longbow fanatics find so facinating about a medieval society in which 6 year old kids were supposedly already trained for for heavy duty longbow service.

The idea is bit sick and sounds a like a modern child abusers fantasy.

Hitler and Stalin were much more liberal and human in dealing with the young folk in comparision, perhaps saint Joan did indeed save the world.

The whole nonsense has its origins naturally in the wild ideas of modern writers like Strickland about herculian draw weights for the original longbow, if even modern bodybuilders and model athlets cannot draw them, then olde engeland must indeed have been a gigantic breeding ground for veritable herculesses, all with gigantic oversized right arms.
the whole idea is actually quite funny.

I don´t know what longbow fanatics find so facinating about a medieval society in which 6 year old kids were supposedly already trained for for heavy duty longbow service.

Why do you keep resorting to extreme examples? I, nor Rocky, nor anyone else on this thread, who believe in the effectiveness of the longbow, make such extravagent claims for the English system of raising up a levy of archers.

The whole nonsense has its origins naturally in the wild ideas of modern writers like Strickland about herculian draw weights for the original longbow,…

Which, if you have been paying attention, many of us do not believe or agree with. The "warbow" was an average draw weight of c. 70 to 80 lbs.

….if even modern bodybuilders and model athlets cannot draw them, then olde engeland must indeed have been a gigantic breeding ground for veritable herculesses, all with gigantic oversized right arms.
the whole idea is actually quite funny.

Exactly. My whole point about average and above average, and the enormous amount of work it is just to double a man's strength and maintain that: Medieval yeomen had to work just to get enough to eat; they didn't have the leisure or the resources to be athletes. And weekend practice with the bow could not provide that either. Over years of practice, a strong man could pull a stronger bow than when he was younger. But the law of averages applies to any population: as Rocky says, the engaging ranges of the battles of the HYW indicate 70 lb draw weights, not 100+ lbs.

There is so much emotion invested in this subject by some people! I am very pragmatic about it all, because I don't care. To me, the cowardly archer is the pariah of chivalry: I have always loved the clash of men on horses in armor, and bows and arrows ruin that. But I also can't believe that such weapons would be used for centuries if they could not effect armored men. And at Agincourt, there were plenty of both archers and armored men: the armored men lost and thousands of them died. To dismiss their mortality rate as nothing but suffocation and murder is the worst kind of dismissal (denial) of the causes. If the arrow was so feeble that it always "bounced off", or failed to penetrate the padded under garments (Gars), then the English would not have increased the numbers of their archers from 3 to 5 for each man-at-arms. You will note that the battles where the French get to hand strokes in pretty good shape are when the English bowmen are either in less than sufficient numbers to create a proper "arrow storm", or the French get to melee contact too quickly for the English archers to have enough time to shoot enough missiles to have a telling effect. The longbow really only worked well in massive numbers, and given enough time to deluged the target. Because arrows bouncing off, and failing to penetrate enough to wound severely, were by far and away the most common kinds of "hits" on a fully equipped man-at-arms; but the unprotected spots, the thinner areas of plate on flanks and rear, though relatively small compared to the main armor, were nevertheless going to be effected if enough time and enough missiles were employed.

At Agincourt, the perfect battlefield conditions for the longbow were realized: massive numbers of archers, a fortified position to keep cavalry off, and a field so muddy that the French movement was seriously retarded. I will add, that, in my opinion, if even one of those conditions had been lacking, the English would have lost that battle.

The longbow was no super weapon, and the archers were only the best drilled and deployed archers in Europe of that time: but to do their job, they had to ensure that condtions were in their favor. That's whey they lost so many of the later HYW battles: the French finally understood how to call the longbow's bluff: and a bluff is what it was: to work, the French had to cooperate in their own defeat, i.e. behave "chivalrously" and always attack no matter what. When they started acting like soldiers instead of vain-glorious warriors, the English (who had been fighting like that for generations) lost their battles as often as they won them. If the HYW war had started out that way, there would have been no HYW at all. The English would have lost it early. The first army of theirs which had been destroyed by the French would have ended their pretensions.

The statement about arrow wounds being less painful than gun wounds is not from me, its from those hunting people.
The shaft sticking out might impress our armchair imagination, on the field , just break it off and keep going.

Having had numerous slivers in my lifetime, I think such a claim is about the silliest thing I have ever heard! It is all about nerves being outraged by a foreign object. If that bodkin point is up against sensitive nerves any movement at all is going to scream at the wounded man. Now, if he's all pumped on adrenalin (most likely for most), then the nerves are going to be masked by it, like those of a wounded, frightened animal that bolts after being shot, or turns to fight its last stand. Now we are into blood loss. And I believe that was my original point: an arrow in a moving man is going to get increasingly damaging, and blood loss is going to increase accordingly. You can break the arrow off and "keep going." But blood loss is your enemy and will put you down in a few minutes. The percentage of wounded French at Agincourt must have been significant, and the casualty rate increased as the battle lengthened to an hour or more; add in those who were frightened off by their wounds (of which there are always a significant number, because armies are composed of mere mortals and not supermen), and the casualty rate from the total effect of the arrows decisively contributed to the collapse of French morale.

It has nothing to do with armour penetration, armour penetration requires KE and the broadhead gets no bonuspoints, the cutting formula only works with soft materials, not wood or iron.

And a pointed tip gets no substantial bonuspoints either, what counts for penetration energy is the diamater of the whole projectile if you want to push it through.

"Pointed" is meaningless. All arrows intended to penetrate something are pointed. The ones designed to cut through something are also EDGED weapons that are thrusting. The bodkin is provided with two or more edges, that begin with the extreme tip and, on a very shallow angle of attack, slice into the steel and peel it back and inside like a can opener does. At that moment, the armor having been peeled back to the width of the arrow, it continues on into the body until its force is spent. It does not "push through".

Your entire rehash of joules and kinetic energy and falling missiles is missing the entire fact of the difference, still: you think the width of the following shaft is somehow a factor, and it isn't: because if the cutting of the bodkin doesn't create a hole as wide as the shaft, the shot is relatively ineffective. The thing that needs to be emphasized is, that, some of the hits did create holes as wide as the shaft of an arrow, and were therefore effective at causing wounds. You and Gars can keep your "bouncing" arrows and the ones that don't reach past the padded under garments: and I will dismiss them entirely as the 90% to 95% of ineffective hits; the remaining c. 5% (with enfildaing from the flanks, the percentage would be even higher than 5%) are wounds with enough of them serious to have a decisive effect upon the morale of the targetted unit. This is supposing, of course, that we are talking about the weight of the arrow storm at Agincourt. If you take merely the last c. 30K arrows the English shot, as the French were well within 100 yards, and realize that virtually all of them would have struck into their targets, a mere 5% as effective hits is 25% of the total number of French in the vanguard, more than enough to cause a morale problem: combined with the rest of the arrow storm that they had to endure before even getting that close, it is obvious that sheer volume of missiles alone is the key to effective longbow shooting in battle. All talk of K and J and falling rates are completely pointless, because we are not talking about anything but the odds of not being frightened, wounded, or killed: and the genius of the English employment of the bow had discovered how to maximize the chances of creating all three among the enemy: counting on the chance hits to the parts of a man-at-arm's harness which the bodkin point could penetrate, and let the numbers of those chance hits increase to a decisive total by employing overwhelming numbers of missiles.

Captain Gars, I never claimed we didn't lose the odd battle, just that the war was lost for other reasons than battlefield performance.
I'll say it again, if the bow was so useless with no stoping power why did many societies over the millenia use it? Surely someone would have noticed they were wasting their time? Are you trying to say that the Huns, Mongols, Achaemenid Persians, Indians, Sassanids, English etc,etc, all significant military powers, were wrong to use the bow?
I've never claimed, nor has anyone else, that the longbow (or any bow) is a super weapon and that England was a Spartan society. That seems to be a fantasy all of your own CPTN IGLO. But England did have an effective recruitment procedure that gathered together an army of professional bowmen and that army, when used correctly, could be devastating. All the historical records back this up. Sometimes the English used the archers incorrectly. This doesn't mean the longbow or the archers were useless, just that the general was. It's a bit like saying the 88mm must have been a useless gun because Germany lost WWII.

Hi

The short version is that math, history, physics won't sway Gars and Iglo from their "experiences".

And neither will experiences.

What you cannot seem to fathom is that the whole diameter IS important, but only to guns. Partly because the bullet is LEAD.

Do this test at home. It isn't perfect but will illustrate the problem with your common lack of understanding or experience.

Take bit of food, or even just your kitchen cutting board. Take your round ball and drop it on the board, food, your prefered test subject. THEN take a small paring knife of the same mass and drop it on the target. The knife will stick. If meet or fruit it will penetrate, even with the same KE!

The concept with a bullet is referred to as "Wadcutter" and "gas check", where bullet shape only applies to the drag characteristics of the bullet in flight. At short range, you cannot tell the difference between a "conical" shape and a round ball. Throw a steel rod at a target, versus hitting on a point….and the knife, axe whatever CUTS into the target.

Above you ask about proper armor. Well, you keep deciding that we must be lieing when we say, up, we made the armor. Doug as recently as 2 years ago was selling shields to finance his trip. And I own and shoot, bow, crossbow, and a variety of the weapons we discuss here. I admit I don't own anything shooting a 9mm. Hate the characteristics of the round.

So, in short, yes, we have the EXPERIENCE, as well as the math and the physics.

Now "stopping power" is a controversial story in gun circles. Most cops who care, in the US, won't carry 9mm if they have the option. Too many instances of multiple hits with no effect. Unlike in the movies, people or game don't leap backwards or anything unless you hit a nerve center. And the nerve center doesn't care what the missile is when that happens.

I have been a bow shooter since I was 8. And, frankly it takes more practice time than I have to stay "current". Which is the real problem with bow. Big strong guys have to stay in shape. But my tiny wife shot tight deadly groups with pistola and rifle. It really is that simple as to why the bow faded as a military weapon. Throw in the advantages of shooting prone, from cover and so on, and it gets even more obvious, once we have flint or cap ignition.

I will state it here, AGAIN. Strickland and Hardy's stuff are more than "Fanboy" they are "bow porn". And have just as much attachment to reality.

But I have done the long range bow and penetration tests repeating the tests of Saxton Pope and P.E Klopstag.

R

Agent Brown,
its indeed a widespread illusion that the longbow was a superweapon, I didn´t bring this up.
all these frequent funny claims about longbow superiority over muskets show what many do indeed believe , the idea alone is an insult for logic thinking.

When looking at the key ballistic parameters , the gun, even the earliest handgonne, was indeed a revolutionary weapon, which even in its earliest form did provide at least 5 times the velocity and 10 times the destructive power of a bow.

This is the real reason why all did take over the gun, even the English after some delay.

It has nothing to do with cost, there is no cheaper weapon than the bow.

And it has nothing to do with skills, throughout the ages all kinds of armies did have an archery component, archery is not rocket science, its actually quite simple and has nothing to do with target shooting, archers were usually not the elites of ancient and medieval armies.

The longbow was not even the most sophisticated or powerful of the period bows.

So what remains is three victories in a lost war, all of them were won in melee by a better organized, better disciplined army in a strong defensive position.
There were similar successes by other armies, for example at Courtrai and Bannockburn.
The general pattern might indeed be that medieval armies did all lack a solid assault infantry, so on unsuitable terrain the cavalry had to fail or the dismounted men at arms on foot had to do the attack job themselves.

Its like Napoleon sending in his cuirassiers for a foot charge at waterloo, in this case the defenders would have needed neither superior numbers nor firepower.
Give a longbow archer,behind stakes and armed with just a dagger, a solid melee advantage against an exhausted walking tin can on slippery ground and you have your historic results.

Later advocats of the longbow might have been just military incompetents in an economizing mood.
bows are indeed damned cheap and building a militia army of archers was indeed a cheap alternative to introducing fireweapons or hiring swiss or landsknecht pike formations.

Henry VIII was still a fierce promotor of the longbow and he was more than willing to invade France in the footsteps of Henry V, his two failed invasion attempts into France are not more than historical footnotes.

Unlike Henry VIII, Cromwell was competent, he didn´t waste a single thought on the longbow.

Well Rocky it's obvious this is sore point with you. Why?

I've never said that you lied. Nor do I think that you did.
But when modern and well documented tests by professionals and acknowledge experts show diffrent results than undocumented tests quoted by unknown individuals on a internet messageboard I tend rely on the former, not the later.

That is why I asked about the details about the armour tested. Without them I'm unable to compare them to other tests nor can I evaluate them based on my own knowledge. Thickness, style of armour, hardness rating of the steel, all of it matters. Get it wrong and the outcome of the test is more or less flawed.

Of course there are other important factors as well. The strenght of the bow, the range, angle of impact, the arrow head used and the weight of the arrow used are

Other researchers in this field are quite happy to share these kind of detials so why are you so reluctant.

Making a reenactment shield is not the same as making 15th Century plate harness of the same quality as those produced by the smiths of Milan or Augsburg.

But were the test carried out by Klopsteg and Pope valid? The simple fact is that neither had acesses to archeological evidence used by Strickland and others. Nor was the properties of medieval armour as well documented or understood then as it is today.

IGLO, enjoy your certain historical world view. It sure is easy to explain, when all it depends on is separating people into savvy or incompetent.

Tell us, how does being an incompetent, in "an economizing mood" (I hope you make money on your word spinning skills), have the slightest effect on the longbow as a weapon?

Hal VIII is about a century before Cromwell; the world had moved on just a mite in that time, so your facile comparison of the two over their approach to the longbow is falacious.

At Agincourt the field was neutral; there was no strong defensive position for the English to give their men-at-arms an advantage in melee combat.

You like to argue for the sake of it. Here's our latest proof:

Give a longbow archer,behind stakes and armed with just a dagger, a solid melee advantage against an exhausted walking tin can on slippery ground and you have your historic results.

Point of disagreement with history: the archers came OUT from behind their stake line to ATTACK the French, and daggers are practically the only weapon not mentioned that they employed. Previous to this, ALL the contemporary accounts mention the heavy arrow storm. Quite "incompetent" of them, I reckon, to focus on such a thoroughly inconsequential ingredient of this victory: sure, the English were better fighters, had God on their side, the French were "unmanly", many ran away, many surrendered up to "ten times", and it was anti-French mud and frightened horses too. The arrows and their effects, however, played no effective part at all.

IGLO, from over half a millennia removed, you can tell us all who was competent, who was savvy, and exactly the ONLY reason why guns trumped the bow and arrow. Amazing, boyo. Why don't you write a book on it?

Agent Brown,
So having every army sent into France during the final years of the war wiped out is "losing the odd battle" And of course said disastrous defeats had nothing to do with losing the war….

But when modern and well documented tests by professionals and acknowledge experts show diffrent results than undocumented tests quoted by unknown individuals on a internet messageboard I tend rely on the former, not the later.

Here's your free caveat: "in the mouth of two or three witnesses shall [the truth] be established." If Rocky, Falkon, myself, et al. have SHOT the weapons and tell you where we see the testing methods are faulty in their process and conclusions, then you might remain open to the possibility that lab tests can get "it" wrong on several points.

That is why I asked about the details about the armour tested.

You, as I recall, have this notion that in 1415, the typical French harness was heat treated Milanese plate. When in fact the contemporary accounts indicate mail with plate over it. This allows anywhere from 5% to 15% of the man's body NOT covered by plate at all. I noticed above, and elsewhere that this topic has been discussed, that Rocky described the steel as 1/16 inch: and today's metalurgy is superior to the commonly forged stuff of the 15th century. Beside the point, really: because as I said above, you can have your "bouncing" arrows and unpenetrated under garments, and the vulnerable percentage of the man-at-arm's body still results in sufficient blood loss to make him a casualty; the total of chance hits where arrows penetrated, because of the volume of missiles delivered, causes significant casualties and reduction in morale.

Of course there are other important factors as well. The strenght of the bow, the range, angle of impact, the arrow head used and the weight of the arrow used are

Rocky has said that he created "bodkin" points with various shapes and edges. I pointed out, that "Knight and the Blast Furnace" used the wrong impact angle, for starters: 30 degrees represents a range well outside of 100 yards. It also implied 2mm of plate, which is ONLY the thicker parts of the breastplate and helmet; much of the armor was much thinner than 2mm.

But were the test carried out by Klopsteg and Pope valid? The simple fact is that neither had acesses to archeological evidence used by Strickland and others. Nor was the properties of medieval armour as well documented or understood then as it is today.

Now you are asking questions: why not read them yourself? I have not, Rocky has. He went into our rules-developing project with the focus on testing what they said. He is satisfied that they were right. I have limited experience which does not run counter to our conclusions as provided in our missile fire rules.

So being taken in the rear or failing in an assult on prepared positions and out numbered are hardly prove that they where outdated armies.

looks like our expert captains haven't heard of the
Battles of Verneuil, Mauron, Morlaix, Herrings etc

Even Patay strengthens the arguements supporting the longbow.
Auberoche- was more an ambush- so might not give the longbow- so much credit.
Think the English were believing the idea it was all down to the MAA when they agreed to the combat of 30!

'there is no cheaper weapon than the bow.' lol

Fair point Gars, but the battles weren't lost because the longbow was useless, they were lost because the French had learned their lessons.

LordLoveaDoug,
I'm always open to that possibility. However it'll take detailed facts rather appeals to authority to change my mind.

Do note that I do consider the warbow to have been an effective weapon of war. If it hadn't been the English would not have been so successfull and the French, Scots and Burgundians would not have expended much time and resources to introduce it into their own armies.

That I disagree with you and Rocky about the draw-weight of the bows used to achive the above results is a diffrent issue altogether.

IMO some of the harnesses at Azincourt were improved Milanses style armour. Many of the full plate harnesses would have been unhardend steel of various qualities. The poorer men-at-arms would have worn a mixture of mail, coat of plates/brigandines and various forms of padded armour together with helmet, gauntlets, arm harness and leg harness of either wrought iron or unhardend steel.

Modern steels have diffrent hardness ratings depending on the type. Much of it is not as hard as the plates found in medieval armour. Modern mild steel only has a hardness of 100 VPH, wrought iron found in medieval armour has a VPH of 100-110. Medieval medium carbon steel has VHN of 100 to 200 dependign on the treatment. Modern unhardend tool steel has VPH of 250, the hardend Milanese armour tested by Williams averaged 300-400 VPH. Modern hardened tool steel has a VPH of 500-600, the hardend German armour tested by williams averaged 400 to 500 VPH.

So just because a steel is 'modern' it isn't automaticly superior to medieval steel.

Are you "The Knight and Blast Furnace" as a reference? Or are you refering to the information posted at PDF link
Which only contains a very limited part of the data found in the book.

Well this really has gone down hill.

From comments of "the bow is an easy weapon to master"
The longbows range effectively being around 5m in direct fire and others I can see that there is some fanciful thinking.

I don't know about other people on here but I can throw a rock pretty accurately up to about 10-15m depending on size obviously. So why didn't the English use rocks as they are obviously much easier cheaper and more accurate? This is in among gems such as the much slower longbow projectile.
Now this is a bit odd. Yes physically they are slower but I think it would be a very poor archer unable to loose 3 arrows in a minute. These are trained men not rabble.

The idea that the French somehow destroyed the English utterly and threw them out of France. This seems as far fetched as the English not losing battles. One of the main factors in the English favour was their strategy. The French could not bring them to battle except when the English wanted it. The English having secured their booty returned home. Any Scholar of the hundred years war will not consider it as a single long war but as a series of smaller conflicts. In this, yes the French did win the last group but, the idea that they won the whole war seems odd when it was simply a matter of the English not returning in strength to renew the conflict. (Yes the English would probably not have won that but that isn't the point).

One of my favourite bits is about arrows not hurting. Absolutely laughable. Such harmless devices why don't we use them to nudge others nearby (obviously inside 10m so we can hit them). Yes in combat the arrow may have less of a traumatic effect in the same way that people ignore bullet wounds but a lump of metal inside you working its way around your muscle will hurt and will stop you moving. Do not simply shift the blame onto others if you quoted it then you obviously thought it worthwhile. Next time check your sources before using them.

What we have is people who have taken longbows of various descriptions and sizes outside with some metal plates of various descriptions and have managed penetration of the metal. This evidence shows that it can be done. It is simple and has been repeated so often by various people that it is either true or a mass delusion.

Something else I would like to pick up on is the effectiveness of the musket. Yes, very effective and good as a skirmishing weapon (assuming a rate of fire about 2 rounds per minute for decent aimed shooting). Now IS it me or does this seem beside the point. Wellingtons men did'nt fight like the SAS or even like the average WW2 GI. If the weapon was more effective when used in a skirmishing mode then that is fine but they weren't skirmishing they were in lines to fire.

What I think we need is some empirical data.
1. how long would it take the redcoats to get into position?
2. how long would they be in range of the bows?
3. how many arrows would be fired?
4. how effective would the return volley be?
5. how many arrows could be fired compared to muske balls?
6. how thick was the plate armour of the redcoats, oh sorry wrong part of the discussion…

From these facts we can then work out simply who would be dead first. That is unless this discussion has turned into bickering over who has the biggest bow/gun?

A

lutonjames,
I'm quite aware of Vernuil, Mauron, Morlaiz and the others.
Indeed I'm also familiary with the successfull use of massed archery by the Burgundians at Othee, Boulegnville, Rupelmonde, Gavere and Brusthem. Not to mentioned the French use of archery at Castilion were the guns get far to much credit. Even the much maligned Francs Archers were intialy successfull at Guinegate were they defeated the English & Ordonannce archers, crossbowmen and hangunners and captured Maximilians artillery.

But I've also heard of nogent-sur-Seine, Brouwershaven, La Gravelle, Gerberoi and Blanquefort were the English lost. Granted none of them were a victory on the scale of Poitiers or Verneuil but it's interesting how so many English defeats are left out unless they are so significant that they cannot be conveniently forgotten.

Auberoche was surprise attack on poorly protected camp and not much of battle. The longbow was quite effective against the mostly unarmed and unarmored French though.

It would be interesting to know how Patay actually favours the longbow. If anything it like Vernuil shows that archers without protective obstacles were unable to halt a charge by cavalry clad in improved steel armour.

Lets look at things from a different perspecive for a moment.
Lets just assume that the Longbow could kill armoured knights plus their horses.
lets assume that the longbow was far more accurate than the musket.
Lets assume that the longbow archer could shoot 10 arrows a minute.
overall lets assume that the longbow was a far better weapon than the musket.

So why not just use marlburian/frederickian linear tactics.
move forward in line of battle (as english naturally in 2 ranks) and shoot everything to pieces, the men at arms on the flanks or as strike force in the rear.

why bunch together such a force in huge blocks or wedges in static positions behind protective stakes?
why use them at long range for clout archery, which is obviously a quite uneffective way to shoot?

I mean acting offensively and bringing all available weapons to bear at deadly effective distance is the obvious way to use a superior weapons system with good hitting power,good accuracy and excellent rate of fire.

And how about those on the receiving end?
If the longbow missile was indeed an effective armour penetrator, why didn´t armourers react accordingly?
Throughout the golden era of the longbow there was still a general trend in armouring for full body protection including plate for arms,legs,hands, up to the little fingers, thats indeed luxury when facing a deadly threat .

why not concentrate armour on the really important parts, thats essentially the breast plate,its an armourrers logic choice to deal with effective penetrators.
The trend to such an all or nothing armouring concept did indeed start when the harcebuse did make its presence felt at the end of the 15th century.
Why not 100 years earlier to deal with the deadly longbow?

as the icing of the cake there is naturally the english military monarchy, able to recruit the ablest men and train them from the early childhood days onward. If the english military constitution did allow this in an effective and well organized way, then England was indeed 500 years ahead of all the others and the English kings should never have had problems to muster numerical adequate forces.

Overall actually nothing really fits.
the problem I have with those longbow myths is that the whole idea violates my whole understanding of physics, history, tactics, politics and all other things.

So just because a steel is 'modern' it isn't automaticly superior to medieval steel.

Of course that's right. But it also isn't automatically inferior either. The point of this is, that, armor, as you say, varied a lot among the ranks and according to the period of development: that's the most important thing to consider about Agincourt: don't confuse the "average" harness with that worn two generations later.

Are you "The Knight and Blast Furnace" as a reference? Or are you refering to the information posted at PDF link
Which only contains a very limited part of the data found in the book.

I have not read the book. I have that chart (probably gratis youself, from over a year ago :)). And it specifically calls the impact angle as tested "30 degrees", and it claims 2mm as the impacted surface steel thickness. The data as stated on the chart is very specific, and I take it as a distillation of the approach of the book as a whole; it certainly won't refute what's on the chart. Note that the "Penetration of mild steel plate" chart showing reduced steel thickness results in far greater implied penetration; e.g. it shows c. 40 J as required to penetrate c. 1mm: and this is at an assumed 30 degree impact angle! Imagine the increased effectiveness within either side of 100 yards, with nothing close to a 30 degree impact angle. Plate armor was made up of a lot of 1mm thickness, and even thinner at the edges of the armor for the limbs. Enfilading fire would be very dangerous, with no impact angle to speak of and virtually 100% hits on the target.

whoops- ment Bauge 1421(when the duke of Clarence rushed off with out his archers) not Patay!

…lets assume that the longbow was far more accurate than the musket…

No, let's not. The ARCHER could make his weapon operate far more acurately than a musketeer could his: simply because consistency with properly matched bow and arrows is an art of accuracy, whereas the vagueries of a musket are impossible to overcome with any amount of training. I once owned a replica Hawken muzzleloader. No matter how I practiced, I could not anticipate any better accuracy with it at c. 250 yards than a pattern c. six feet to the right of where I aimed. That was with a patched roundball and rifling! Musketeers did not use patched roundball and had no rifling.

So why not just use marlburian/frederickian linear tactics.
move forward in line of battle (as english naturally in 2 ranks) and shoot everything to pieces, the men at arms on the flanks or as strike force in the rear.

why bunch together such a force in huge blocks or wedges in static positions behind protective stakes?
why use them at long range for clout archery, which is obviously a quite uneffective way to shoot?

In fact, they DID both. Clout, volley shooting, en masse, for "artillery" saturation of the target AREA, and, the "marksmen" -- those really good individuals in the front ranks -- into the targets as fast as they could draw and loose, getting hits every single time (up to 12 per minute) at pointblank range.

And how about those on the receiving end?
If the longbow missile was indeed an effective armour penetrator, why didn´t armourers react accordingly?
Throughout the golden era of the longbow there was still a general trend in armouring for full body protection including plate for arms,legs,hands, up to the little fingers, thats indeed luxury when facing a deadly threat .

I don't understand your point at all: you claim in the same breath that armoers didn't develop their product to meet the effective missiles, yet the "full body" plate armor was a "luxury" when facing arrow storms?

why not concentrate armour on the really important parts, thats essentially the breast plate,its an armourrers logic choice to deal with effective penetrators.
The trend to such an all or nothing armouring concept did indeed start when the harcebuse did make its presence felt at the end of the 15th century.
Why not 100 years earlier to deal with the deadly longbow?

I think you are revealing ignorance here: plate armor development, by Agincourt, had already reached the point of densifying the breastplate and forward parts of the helmet, and making the armor plate thnner on the back edges. (Thus my point about the English routinely setting up an enfilading fire from forward-angled blocks of archers, to take advantage of not having to shoot directly into the front of the men-at-arms' harness.) Later, in the "age of the gunne", armor steadily reduced to cuirass alone, which by itself weighed most of what an entire suit of medieval plate armor did.

as the icing of the cake there is naturally the english military monarchy, able to recruit the ablest men and train them from the early childhood days onward. If the english military constitution did allow this in an effective and well organized way, then England was indeed 500 years ahead of all the others and the English kings should never have had problems to muster numerical adequate forces.

England's population was on the order of four times smaller than France's, and six times larger than Scotland's. I think England did rather, amazingly well, getting large enough armies together to even contend with, much less beat in battle, the armies of the French nobility.

Overall actually nothing really fits.
the problem I have with those longbow myths is that the whole idea violates my whole understanding of physics, history, tactics, politics and all other things.

I sympathize with the myths aspect. The challenge is to weed out the mythic bits and have the real picture remaining. I dislike myth intensely, that's why I try to get at the truth, both by getting what people said back then to harmonize, and by hands-on experience where feasible.

We have the myth of the yeoman super shooter who never missed like Robin Hood; and we have fanboys who believe that all of Hal V's archers were cast in that mold. Then we have realists, who know that the only way the longbow could possibly be an effective weapon on the battlefield against the latest armor of the day, was in masses of swiftly shooting thousands, protected by defenses which allowed them sufficient time to attain overwhelming saturation of the target, thus producing enough chance hits on the vulnerable parts of the harnesses of the enemy to cause morale failure. It worked especially well against the unarmored Scots, because the saturation required was of much shorter duration than that required against the fully armored French men-at-arms. There is nothing mythic about any of this. It is simply well designed and applied probability and outcome. Where the English could not set that up, e.g. Verneuil, they had to get out of the way fast or be flattened by the cavalry….

LordLoveaDoug,
Of course modern steel isn't necissarily inferior. The point I was making is that diffrent steels have very diffrent hardness ratings which in turns plays a huge part in how well they resist an arrow.

I've seen or read far to many test were the archer will shot at piece of mild steel using hardend bodkins (at close range) and then proudly proclaim that the longbow could pentreate any and all armour.

'Secrets of the English War Bow' test shot a battered reenachtment breastplate of 1.6mm mild steel with a 144 pound bow to prove that plate armour offered no protection against English archery…

That is why I'm such a pain about the quality of the steel used.

To bad, I was hoping someone had finaly gotten hold of that rather expensive work. I'm tired of waiting in line for the intra-library loan copy to become available. Misplacing the photcopies I made doesn't help either.
In fact Williams' earlier tests showed that a 1.9mm mild steel plate will be penetrade by a bodkin at a 20J impact but this only makes a 1.9 mm hole. At 75 it will punch a 6mm hole straight through the plate. However if you add a padded garment of 16 layers of linen the force need to achive such a 'lethal' penetration rises to 125J

100% hits on the target? Even modern hand held firearms don't produce that kind of hit rates in combat regardless of what the arms manufacutres like to say. I know this from hard earned personal experience as a former military professional.

Had the longbow been capable of such accuracy Charles the Bold would have won the battle of Murten 1476 as the 1200 or so English archers would have slaughtered the Swiss Vorhut and Gewalthut in two minutes as they got into range. With such accuracy 28800 arrows should have been more than enough to wipe out 17.000 Swiss (who were poorly armoured compared to French men-at-arms). Add the 800 handgunners and the artillery in the Grünhag and the Burgundian victory should have been a done deal.
Actual Swiss losses were 410 killed.

Lordloveadoug,
I actually do not even have so much of a problem with lots of low energy projectiles, if they can be adequatly placed the on target effect is defintly worth a consideration.
The problem is how.
The starting formation is huge, 5000 men standing 16 ranks deep should give a block 600yds wide and 30yds deep.
for long range archery the target zone say 200 yds away would have the same shape.
because the arrows will come down from above, the "beaten zone"(in which the target is in danger to get hit) will have about the same size.
A galloping cavalry force will need less time to cross the danger zone then an arrow needs to reach it.
even if by brilliant intuition the arrows are sent in advance and hit right in time, the effect will be minimal, there is no time to saturate the target zone with low energy projectiles, if the cavalry moves in a single line only 10% of the target zone will be filled with targets anyway, so ideally 500 missiles will hit 300 cavalry, in the worst case not a single one.
if the knight gets hit, most missiles will bounce off already because of the non ideal angle of impact, same with most of the hits on the horses, some might indeed penetrate into the body without any direct effect, producing just a fleshwound, the horse under full adrenalin like the rider will not even take notice.
I bet the cavalry would charge through the danger zone with a loss rate of perhaps 1%.
some seconds later they would reach the direct firing zone in which say 600 archers are ready to engage the 300 horsemen with direct shooting.
Because of the fast approaching target, the very low velocity and the resulting ballistic trajectory there is not much chance to hit anything beyond 30 yds distance.
At this distance we have 1 shot per man before impact.
thats 2 hits on horse and rider.
again most hits would deflect,the rider is mostly covered by his horse and the missiles who hit the horse and penetrate will have no impact on it, its the worst angle to hit an animal with a bow, all muscles and bones, the result will be again, in the best case just a fleshwound of which the horse under full adrenalin will not even take notice.

Then the chargers will reach the stakes and must halt, in this moment the charge has failed and the archers can place follow up shots which now indeed might be able to create more severe wounds on the horses which have to turn around and show their flanks.The well protected knights might still be invulnerable.

The problem with this scenario naturally is the winning formula, its not archery, which cannot achieve much, but the stakes.

Even Polish hussars who were lightly equipped compared to western men-at-arms were not able to reach speeds faster than 10m/s in a charge if they wanted to preserv their formation. Most of the charge would conducted at lower speed slowly building momententum. Full gallop would only be used the last 30 meters.
Testing done by the Royal Military College of Science show arrows reaching intial velocities of 50-70 m/s and havign impact velocites of 40-50m/s. (At ranges from 240 to 300 meters)

Even at the gallop (which was not used) it will take 20 seconds to cover the danger zone. An arrow wil get to the farthest part in 4-5 seconds

captain Gars,
the danger zone in archery is the beaten zone in which the missiles would land.
If they are shot by a 30m deep formation the arrows will be launched at 45 degrees and come down for example in a 30m zone say 200-230m away from the formation in a nearly vertical 60 degree angle.

heavy longbow war missiles are usually measured with 45m/sec, with a very powerful bow 60m/sec.

Murten according to Heath

2000 archers and handgunners and 1200 horse guarding Grunhag.

'The Vorhut(5000)was met with heavy bow, handgun and light artillery fire which momentarily brought its advance to a halt, but its Schwyer contingent managed to bypass the earthworks and fall on the Burgundian flank, while a pike charge by the main Vorhut swiftly overran the Grunhag.'

Then its just a mess for Burgundians.

'However, the duke of Milans envoy, who was present in the Burgundian camp, reports that the swiss lost 3000 men, which seems more proberable.'

so your point was……..

Ian Heath's isn't a academic work but a wargamers guide, albeit good one for it's time. However he has a rather anglo-centric focus and use only a limited number of non-english sources. As far the Burgundian wars are concerned he has not used_one_of major works published published 1976-1979:

Grandson – 1476 : essai d'approche pluridisciplinaire d'une action militaire du XVe siècle

Die Murtenschlacht : ein Schweizer Ereignis in Europas Geschichte zwischen Mittelalter und Neuzeit 1476-1976

Cinq-centième anniversaire de la bataille de Nancy (1477)

So Heath's value as source for the Burgudian war is rather limited.
The Duke of Milans envoy was in no position to judge losses accurately and Swiss records show a loss of 421 men killed. Muster rolls and similar documents always have a high value as soruces than supposed witness in the enemy camp.

My point was that if the longbow was able to achive "100% hits on the target" the Swiss would have lost far more than even the 3000 men claimed by the Milanese envoy.

It was a handy book that I had to hand (and I got caught out the other day- when using the internet- its safer to use books!)- my Lance and Longbow society book on the subject (think it covers the battle)is in storage at my mums house.

The point I was getting at, is that troops in the age of muskets could have had such a position stormed, if their commander made the same sort of mistakes than Charles did.

I think it demostrates why most commanders in either era would bring their army out to face the relieving force or lift the siege.

I think a comparision with Orléans shows the English army to have been more professional than the Burgundian (atleast under Charles the Bold).

I think both show that the Longbow was not a super weapon- but who has claimed it was? Future armies couldn't do far better in simular situations until the expanding bullet and machine guns if the enemy was a competent, brave, disciplined army and lead ok.

Hi

:"I've seen or read far to many test were the archer will shot at piece of mild steel using hardend bodkins (at close range) and then proudly proclaim that the longbow could pentreate any and all armour. "

Entirely right. The thing is that NO ONE has said anything like this. You are beating on a point no one here has made.

Let me repeat "HARDY AND STRICKLAND ARE BOW PORN". They are wrong on so many points and are indeed "fanboys".

Now, it is curious that, above, I am criticized for not addressing the specifics of the armor I made, yet the same posters clearly haven't made a bow, shot an arrow and have zero information on either.

I am one of those published professionals and have been paid to lecture at Gen con on this.

Not the issue. You are contesting points not made, and following it with displays of ignorance.

Lets look at "musket". Musket has a very flat trajectory cmpared to bow(oh, and i have owned, made and shot both). In the musket era, two or three ranks are all that can shoot at once time, and 3 rpm is optimum. The entire drill is predicated on advancing in order and then deploying as many guns on target. With bow, the conditions are very different, and the formations shooting it reflect it.

Saxton Popes" A study of Bow and Arrow" of the beginning of the previous century involved the idea that he had access to museum equipment and describes being allowd to test it. Something that isn't possible today.

PE Klopstag's "The Physics of Bow and Arrow" involves a phyics PHD professor at the U of Denver describing the actual physics of bow construction and performance. Thus the above "my understanding of the physics", merely illustrates that your understanding is flawed.

I have tried to explain the difference here, and the simple one is that KE doesn't apply The arrow is a cutting weapon.

Again, you know this. Drop an entire 9mm on that piece of stake, and it will bounce, dropp a small paring knife point down and it cuts into it. The KE isn't the opperative measuere

Now, no one said bow was the "fan boy" model you keep suggesting. YOu havent seen me repeat the "deformed sholder" myth, or the 150# draw weight myth, or the bow as MG myth or any of the others.

R

Rocky,
again, your bread and butter cutting formula cannot be applied to hard surfaces, you cannot cut through steel, you cannot even cut through wood.
as said before 9mm parabellum is officially measured to go through 30 cm of spruce wood.
I have seen a vid on youtube in which a longbow broadhead could barely make one inch of plywood.

Here´s again the link to a site which shows how testing is done and documented ideally, its better than any "done this, read this" statement.

link

The guys do provide instructive vids plus the key testing data.
the site owner naturally wants to promote his replica breastplates(produced with period methods) but the other one who did provide the crossbow and the bolts was Jens Sensfelder,perhaps the most profiled maker of renaissance crossbows in Europe.
It was not a unified effort to sell a myth, like its all to often the case in longbow testing.

and even the guys in the vid above do cheat in a key point, like all others who undertake such tests.
Its all tested at an perpendicular 0 degree impact angle.
this has nothing to do with practical field conditions.

even if there had been a penetration, it would have been completely irrelevant.

Its like anti tank rifles at the eve of WWII. All could penetrate 25mm of armour at 100m and 0 degree angle.
this would have been enough to kill 80% of the worlds tanks in 1939.
In practice it was all completely useless.
Behind armour effects,which is actually all what really counts in a penetration test, were nil, at 30 degrees penetration was reduced to just 12mm, beyond 30 degrees there was deflection.

There is actually no need at all to discuss potential penetrations under irreal laboratory conditions, notably not with a weapon, which even against unprotected targets had no stopping power at all and did need chirurgical shot placement at minimal distance to fell the target.

The bow, any bow, is a low energy weapon.
It is absolutly necessary to get this, just to understand the tactical deployment and potential of missile weapons.

Beyond the potentially demoralizing effect of immedeatly quite harmless flesh wounds, no further military calculation can be based upon this weapon.
killing protected men or stopping a charging warhorse is out of reach, except by chance.

I'm thinking that most of the arrows will land with a quite large angle to the surface/ground which means that each arrow will cover quite a small zone in which a target will get hit. I think that the amount of space between the targets shouldn't be underestimated and it will grow for each target killed. I think the percentage of arrows hitting anything except ground wouldn't be very high. Note that I above talk about massed bowfire and not "direct" fire.

The thicker the arrow rain the higher a percentage will miss or hit the same target. This probably means you have to expend a large amount of arrows for each kill. A mathematical stocastic simulation would be very useful here.

Perhaps the musket has an a advantage with the horizontal fire in that if you get the altitude about right but miss your inteded target there is a good chance you will hit somone else further behind. The "hit-zone" covered for each shot is pretty large. Firing in the general direction of the enemy should work pretty well here. An arrow on the other hand will lose altitude fast so I imagin shooting too short or too far with a bow is more of an issue here then for the musketeer to shoot with the right hight.

I'm only using my logic here so I have no proof or sources.

100% hits on the target? Even modern hand held firearms don't produce that kind of hit rates in combat regardless of what the arms manufacutres like to say. I know this from hard earned personal experience as a former military professional.

Yes. I stand by it. Here's why: the front ranks were the best shooters, the most experienced veterans and so forth. Inside 100 yards (pointblank range), the aiming is direct, not lobbed. It is in fact "target shooting" range, not clout shooting range. The archers would be shooting "at will", i.e. as quickly as they could knock, draw and loose. And their target was a mass of men many ranks deep. The possibility of missing all of that would be laid down to a fluke, e.g. getting bumped or having an arrow failure of some kind; very rare occurrances, when drill went to great pains to prevent the former, and a professional production industry went to equal pains to prevent the latter. That is why I say that archers shooting at pointblank range score almost 100% hits. Heck, even I can do that inside pointblank range with my bow: a man-sized target is rarely missed altogether, and if you allow a larger target formed by close order ranks to either side of the "man" you are aiming at directly, you are not going to miss the unit as a target. The musket, by comparison, spurts round balls out in random directions, and the circle of possible hits gets bigger the further out you get.

However, I never said that inside 100 yards, that the percentage of hits against a deep target, e.g. medievals stacked up to assault, would be significantly different between the longbow and a musket. In fact, I hazard to claim that if a "firefight" between longbow and musket was inside 100 yards, with the muskets lined up 3 ranks deep (as was typical for them) and the longbow still stacked inevitably 8 to 16 ranks deep, that the longbowmen would get pulverized: in our rules, this shooting of guns into deep targets gets a "rank bonus" for shooting! (I believe that Rocky's little gaming test last weekend TMP link demonstrated this to some extent: with the 18th century musketeers getting close enough by running in column behind a screen of skirmishers, then deploying into line, and the exchange at close range produced carnage to both sides.)

Had the longbow been capable of such accuracy Charles the Bold would have won the battle of Murten 1476 as the 1200 or so English archers would have slaughtered the Swiss Vorhut and Gewalthut in two minutes as they got into range.

I know about this battle, of course. And it has puzzled me in some respects. Here's the thing occurring, I believe: the English and other mercenaries were getting into line, when the Swiss showed up advancing at the double. Before the army of Charles could respond it was too late. I don't even know where the English archers were deployed in relation to the Swiss. But, yes, even 1,200 archers getting to loose that many arrows would cause a problem for the Swiss; so obviously, it didn't happen. I don't recall reading any description that indicates the Swiss advanced through a hail of missiles. Rather, it seems that they caught Charles' army unprepared, and being polyglot in nature, it broke up in panic.

The starting formation is huge, 5000 men standing 16 ranks deep should give a block 600yds wide and 30yds deep.

Notice quite a ways back on this thread, that I argued for three battles of men-at-arms, not ONE, simply for this reason that you bring up here: the blocks of archers require not being too extended, or else their far ends are out of any useful range (even out of range altogether if the field is as wide as many believe it was at Agincourt). Obviously, the more compact and less extended the archer "blocks", the more dense their delivered saturation of missiles, and the more in range all of the archers would be.

…A galloping cavalry force will need less time to cross the danger zone then an arrow needs to reach it….

Gars addressed this misunderstanding of yours about speed of arrows and horses in formation. Your rebuttal is flawed, because only the first "goading" volley at maximum range would be shot at 45 degrees.

…The problem with this scenario naturally is the winning formula, its not archery, which cannot achieve much, but the stakes.

Your number of engaged archers is far too low, but you make your point. However, the harness has vulnerable spots about it, especially after the riders turn to face side-on or present their rear. I agree, and the original sources do as well: the French cavalry attack failed largely because the vulnerable horses were shot down and maddened with wounds and routed back through their own vanguard. There isn't mention at all of the effect of the arrows on the riders; obviously the percentage of effected riders was miniscule compared to the number of arrows sticking out of horse flesh!

For sure, the stakes were necessary to effect the outcome at Agincourt. The fact that stakes were lacking at Verneuil almost produced a lost battle for the English (had the French cavalry remained to mop up the shaken and scattering archers, it would have gone entirely differently -- but instead they went off to attack the baggage and horse park).

An arrow on the other hand will lose altitude fast so I imagin shooting too short or too far with a bow is more of an issue here then for the musketeer to shoot with the right hight.

An arrow must be shot from a higher angle in the first place, than that employed by any gun: that is true. But it doesn't result in the archer being inaccurate, or his missiles being less effective (only long range shooting results in arrows dropping at acute impact angles). Quite the opposite, in fact, compared to any but modern firearms. Individually, a "marksman" archer (front ranker) could hit incredibly small targets compared to a musketeer, and with far more consistency. But the mass of an archer unit would be composed of men no more accurate with their weapons individually than a musketeer would be: their role would be volley shooting en masse, leaving the pointblank shooting to the front ranks of marksmen archers.

The depth of the target formation is key to increased casualties with either weapon: for guns, the deeper the formation the greater the chance for those horizontal missiles to strike; and for volleying archer formations, the deeper their own formation, the greater the area of saturation: but if the enemy formation is a lot thinner than the archer formation is, most of the volley will be wasted on empty ground. At pointblank range, however, the archer marksman will not miss a mass of men; and obviously the deeper the formation here, as well, the greater the percentage of hits. And bear in mind, that the archer at pointblank range is getting off six times as many missiles as the musketeer does.

Oops, I mistook Murten (Morgarten) for Granson. But you get my drift, I think: Charles' maneuvers at Granson, as I said, were frustrated by the swiftly moving Swiss columns. No longbowmen shot up any Swiss in that battle.

Now, at Murten, I don't know where the English archers were placed either; but archers lining a parapet (the grunhag) could not possibly achieve the density of missile saturation that they could in serried ranks on the open field. The description of the battle I have in mind (mainly from Oman's narrative, which I believe still stands) is of Charles' army relying on artillery for the most part, and gunnes, and having their flanks turned while they shot up the Swiss vorhut. English archers are nowhere mentioned as getting their bodkins into the Swiss. So there is no test case here for longbow pointblank accuracy and its effects.

Verneuil, again, is probably the best chance we have to see what "100% hits at pointblank range" could do to a fully armored target mass: little to nothing, if only one volley or at most two is all they can get off, while thinking of getting out of the way of the cavalry charge at the same time!

My speculation is that tactically they should have 2 or 3, perhaps even more sub units, but indeed every gap for men at arms is a dead zone.
My calculation was based on shooting at a single range, long range 45 degrees.
Remains the question how flexible clout archery actually was.
Clout below 100m should be a problem, the chargers do, say 7m/sec, which offers actually a very small time window to open a new target zone, thats all mathematically very tricky against a moving opponent, a bit like chasing tanks with mortars.
Until someone offers me a solid, simple and tactical practicable method I stick with just one target zone.

overall target saturation against a moving opponent should be a grave problem for archery.

…but indeed every gap for men at arms is a dead zone.

To which gaps, we are specifically told by the Gesta, the French vanguard divided into three groups to attack; ignoring the enstaked archer lines altogether (yet another factor in the French defeat, and quite inexplicable without assuming noble disdain for ignoble troops on the battlefield).

Remains the question how flexible clout archery actually was.

Evidently quite flexible. The modern, amature reconstructions of this (e.g. falkonfive's experience) indicate effective saturation at volleying ranges. We do know that enough archers were on known fields like Agincourt, to require some method for volley shooting; we know that English yeomen practiced hitting the clout at long ranges. We have the victories on those fields where the English set up ideal longbow tactics. We must assume that flexibility and efficiency were the results of drill and veteran experience over a long period of time. The evidence supports this conclusion far more than modern assumptions ("myth-breakers" stuff) which claim to know better.

Clout below 100m should be a problem, the chargers do, say 7m/sec, which offers actually a very small time window to open a new target zone, thats all mathematically very tricky against a moving opponent, a bit like chasing tanks with mortars.

Fascinating stuff, isn't it? Crecy presents an even better field than Agincourt for seeing how archers could send off mounted attackers, IF the archers were covered by good defensive ground: the "pots" dug in front of the English lines at Crecy were quite as effective at stopping cavalry as stakes were later. The hedges and drawn up wagons at Poitiers did the same thing. But at Verneuil the archers were overrun by fully armored cavalry charging; at Formigney, the stakes did the archers no good because the French sat at artillery range and shot into the English static formation, galling the archers into an attack; the English lost that field badly. The longbow line was really a one-trick-pony, a bluffer. And it only worked according to that one trick of specific conditions: enough archers and enough time to employ them.

Until someone offers me a solid, simple and tactical practicable method I stick with just one target zone.

Other than perhaps a single volley between the first long range (dropping) vollies to goad the French into their first attack at Agincourt, the "one target zone" versus the cavalry was right in the archers' faces. As the cavalry routed, the only shooting would have been individuals bringing down individuals: I don't see any vollying into a mass of routing French horses. By then, the French dismounted vanguard was moving up. And THAT target got deluged many times during its slow advance to melee contact range.

overall target saturation against a moving opponent should be a grave problem for archery.

I think that is a fair statement. But I also think that the English system perpetuated itself well. And the evidence is that it could saturate a moving target area effectively, if it wasn't moving too quickly. Volley shooting with massed archery isn't unique to the English; they just seem to have done it better than anyone else.

Hitting a target on range in peacetime and hitting one in actual combat conditions are two very diffrent things.
The stress reactions the body produces in combat conditions has serious impact on the ability to shoot accurately no matter what the weapon.

It is one thing to shoot as at Crecy or Azincourt were you have basicly no counter-fire. There you 'only' have to deal with the effects of being under attack by mounted and/or dismounted troops.
Add in incoming counter-fire as at Poitiers, Vernuil or for that matter Murten and the archers effectivness will be reduced even if they are not suffering signifcant losses.

Actullay the (Swiss) sources record that while only 200 men were killed at Grandson 'many men' were wounded by the Burgundian archers. Oman is flawed as he did not had access to a significant part of the sources for the battle and had the habit of cherry picking the facts which suited his pet theories.

A full reading of the sources show that archery played a significant part in halting the initial assault on the Grünhag. Even if archery wasn't mentioned 800 handgunners and artillery would not have been enough to stop an attack an attack by 5000 Swiss.

Lining a parpet did not prevent the French archers at Castilion for doing good service against the attacking English, I don't see why the English should have done
worse. And the Grünhag was no mere parpet, it was a fighting platform desgined to allow for the use of massed archery. Charles had a lot of flaws as a commander but he knew how to employ archers to good effect. (Brusthem)

Actually I think that the English archers and their supports did fairly well in circumstances.
Assuming a fairly standard ratio of 3 wounded for each killed we would get close to 1700 casulties (421 killed and 1263 wounded) . Now most of this would come from the Vorhut. Allowing for some casulites by the other units the Vorhut could have suffered 20-30% casulties in it's violent but short fight at the Grünhag. Pretty impressive in my book but certainly not a loss rate which suggests that the archers were achiving close to 100% hits on target.

The other nonsensical claim naturally is the supposed higher accuracy of bows vs musket.
you can read this everywhere, its gospel, everybody is brainwashed, virtually nobody wastes some time in looking at the key ballistic parameters of both weapons.
its easy to find out what a velocity difference of 45m/sec(longbow) and 400m/sec(musket) means in practice.
a musket ball did need 220 m to drop the height of a man, a longbow missile did drop the same height already after 30 m.

competitive target shooting with modern recurve bows usually ends at 70m, these modern bows do have aiming devices which the longbow didn´t have and they have a velocity of 90m/sec which is twice as much as the longbow.
Still there is a calm shooting range enviroment,lots of time and naturally a known range necessary to score competitively.
There are other disciplines like field or 3-d archery, there the range is not known, and the shooter has only a short time to engage the target.
The ranges for these disciplines vary from 15 to 30 m,
again with modern recurve bows and a velocity twice of the longbow.
50 m is already a very critical distance for longbow archery under field conditions, 100 m requires massed clout shooting.

In contrast the musket, or even the arcebuse has no ballistic problem to hit someting up to 200m, the only drawback is windage of the smoothbare, the military effect of which is usually competely misunderstood.
even with the built in inaccurcy of windage and lack of spin, the weapon will not shoot around the corner.
At 100 m a musket ball properly aimed might hit at an unpredictable point, but within a clearly defined radius of around 150 cm. One of 4 or 5 shots will hit a man sized target, ideally the first one , the on target effect will be excellent.

In comparision to this a longbow missile at 100 m has a beaten zone( in which it drops the height of a standing man) of around 5m.
at 99m it will undershoot, at 105 m it will overshoot.
so before aiming even begins, how far is the target actually away?
And with this found out, at which angle has to be shot under the wind conditions of the moment.
If this is found out, what exactly is aiming at say 15 degrees, the weapon has no aiming devices.
Actually even intuition has its limits.

Hitting a target on range in peacetime and hitting one in actual combat conditions are two very diffrent things.

And going along with that, there is a huge difference betwen reenactment and war. Consider this: the French and Scots, et al, the potential targets of the longbow (including the longbowmen themselves!) could NOT possibly train for the real thing. The best the longbowmen could hope to train/drill for was clout shooting at a moving target with "target" arrows, i.e. non lethal missiles. The best a potential target could possibly drill against was the same, clouds of non lethal missiles: since these would have a distinctly differing weight (being much lighter than bodkins), the acquiring of practical hands-on experience to apply to war could only come from war itself. Beginning with the Scottish wars (Wallace to Bruce), the English army acquired that experience. There was a steady experience gained in Ireland, Scotland, N. England, then to the continent: the battle at Morlaix, then Crecy, Poitiers, and innumerable unmentioned smaller fights throughout the 14th century: England was fighting regularly from Italy and Spain to Scotland, even in the Outremer, throughout this period. Cavalry were one of the regularly encountered targets. It was a veteran pool of marksmen archers who trained the constant influx of recruits from England's enormous pool of longbowmen. The rudiments of clout shooting in companies was practiced and learned on Sundays all over England; but the practical wartime application could only be gained IN wartime.

It is one thing to shoot as at Crecy or Azincourt were you have basicly no counter-fire. There you 'only' have to deal with the effects of being under attack by mounted and/or dismounted troops.
Add in incoming counter-fire as at Poitiers, Vernuil or for that matter Murten and the archers effectivness will be reduced even if they are not suffering signifcant losses.

I think that you have identified one of the key "secret" ingredients to the famous HYW English victories: aside from Poitiers (where there were not enough longbowmen to begin with, and they received some return fire -- Crecy doesn't count, because the Genoese crossbowmen were out-ranged from the getgo, and at Agincourt the French missile was almost entirely unused), the English longbowmen were not on fields where enemy missile fire was exchanged with them, ergo, they were not distracted or upset in their serried ranks as they applied their arrow storm.

…Assuming a fairly standard ratio of 3 wounded for each killed we would get close to 1700 casulties (421 killed and 1263 wounded)….

Yes, that's morale checking time: and the Swiss vorhut did stop to sort itself before continuing. In playing the Art of War, all 1,263 would have been represented as "pulled" figures, with a 25% casualty morale check. The grunhag was a formidable target! The key to the lost battle was the turned flanks, not the Swiss frontal assault, which could be seen as a distraction while the real attack occurred elsewhere.

…Pretty impressive in my book but certainly not a loss rate which suggests that the archers were achiving close to 100% hits on target.

Again, what percentage of the English force was actively engaged shooting up the vorhut? We have positive location of all "5,000" archers at Agincourt: we don't have a limited, simple field at Murten: the English could have been deployed partially in front of the vorhut and elsewhere. They certainly weren't shooting in a dense mass in anything like the numbers that took on the French vanguard at Agincourt (which had similar numerical strength to the Swiss vorhut at Murten: and as has been noted, arrows don't plow through a body and wound men behind like bullets often do! They stick in the outer, exposed ranks, and pincushion those, while the interior ranks are relatively safe from pointblank arrow shooting: the outer ranks have to be literally peeled away before "fresh" casualties can be inflicted. Now, dropping, long-range shooting exposes the entire vorhut to arrow storm; but then you have the considerable defensive obstacles of a "forest" of vertical pike and halberd shafts deflecting many of the incoming arrows. I don't see the vorhut at Murten getting shot up at pointblank range when they stopped and "made their morale check." But even if it was that close, we are back to the longbowmen only getting hits on the outer ranks: if shooting from slightly above, and down into the Swiss, we are back to the forest of pikes and halberds protecting the main mass of the vorhut to a noticable degree, and further, being above, the longbowmen are now reduced to shooting in at most two ranks deep. "100% hits" on the vorhut, like on the harnessed men-at-arms at Agincourt, are nevertheless going to be 90%+ ineffective hits: because most Swiss wore helmets and most of the front rankers wore a cuirass or 3/4 body armor of some kind. Getting lots of hits on a target didn't mean that the men were going to tumble like tenpins: they would start to look like hedgehogs before that happened. Wasn't it at Morlaix, where the first French advance was by town and feudal militia infantry? It was shot up by plunging longbow fire and broke in rout before even getting within 100 yards of the English line. This is surely the difference between a disciplined column, like the Swiss had, and virtually a close order mob with no cohesive weaponry that could form the "forest" of spears to turn many dropping missiles aside. That, and the lack of armor too: I think the Swiss had rather more armor to the front than many believe, especially by 1467.

The other nonsensical claim naturally is the supposed higher accuracy of bows vs musket.
you can read this everywhere, its gospel, everybody is brainwashed, virtually nobody wastes some time in looking at the key ballistic parameters of both weapons.

You're preaching to the "choir", IGLO. Hardy and Strickland are not HERE.

…competitive target shooting with modern recurve bows usually ends at 70m, these modern bows do have aiming devices which the longbow didn´t have and they have a velocity of 90m/sec which is twice as much as the longbow….

Consider the difference in weight: less than an ounce to 4 ounces! A target arrow from a longbow would not weigh anywhere near the 4 oz bodkin either, and would fly much faster than c. 180+ fps. But speed isn't the practical limiter to doing damage; the weight of the missile and the encountered surface area are: and we have gone over this quite enough already. Try out Rocky's steak knife and bullet drop experiment: proving simply that to crush its way through the same surface a bullet must go much faster than a missile with sharp cutting edges.

…At 100 m a musket ball properly aimed might hit at an unpredictable point, but within a clearly defined radius of around 150 cm. One of 4 or 5 shots will hit a man sized target, ideally the first one , the on target effect will be excellent.

In comparision to this a longbow missile at 100 m has a beaten zone( in which it drops the height of a standing man) of around 5m.
at 99m it will undershoot, at 105 m it will overshoot.
so before aiming even begins, how far is the target actually away?…

You are not a bow shooter, so you haven't developed the instantaneous judgment to the target of a marksman. But as I said, the main mass of longbowmen were not marksmen either; they mimicked the marksmen; they were copycat shooters and drilled as such. If the marksmen in the front ranks miscalculated the speed and range to target, the entire mass of longbowmen behind them also missed.

In the day, when I was practicing several times (hours) per week, with bow and crossbow, I could routinely hit a man-sized target with my recurve bow four out of five times at pointblank range: and I never got good enough to call myself a "marksman." Beyond c. 70 yards, my bow fist was raised above the target and shooting became entirely an instinctive matter; my percentage of hits went way down. The very best of the best English archers were the mentors of the rest and stood in the front. That is the key to accuracy. An archer marksman is so familiar with his weapons that he seldom if ever misses his man, out to 100 yards and even further. A musketeer, as you have restated, could not count on better accuracy than 1 chance hit in 5 at 100 yards, and utterly is wasting his shot beyond that range.

…Actually even intuition has its limits.

But EXPERIENCED intuition is the best way to shoot instinctively, which is exactly what the English archer developed if he was a marksman. I have seen two kinds of very accurate bow shooters: the ones with sighting paraphernalia all over their bows, and the "bare bow" shooters (I am one of the latter). The sight shooter draws and holds the shot to his ear while he lines up his sighting pins or whathaveyou. The bare bow shooter keeps his eyes on the target as he brings his bow up, draws swiftly to the ear and releases almost the instant he achieves full draw. The sheer strength required to pull a "warbow" would preclude holding the string back while you then judge the distance and aim and finally release. It wasn't done that way, ever, with a warbow. "Knock! Draw! Loose!" And during the space of time between knock and draw, the marksmen were angling and judging the trajectory; for maybe one second, two at the most, the marksmen held the position at "Draw!", long enough for the rear ranks to copy, then "Loose!" sent the entire flock of arrows more or less at the same time. There was no time and energy wasted on holding a "sight picture" to get the aim; aiming was all part of the continuous process of loading, drawing and loosing.

Hi

A broadhead doesn't penetrate ply deeply because it is a high drag device for CUTTING flesh. The reason the specialized armor piercing round was developed was specifically for the purpose of penetrating armor.

Your tank analogy above is telling, tanks had HE rounds that would not penetrate armor for killing folks, but the HE round going in, caused the tank to be knocked out without causing the damage to people an HE round does.

Your 150cm zone is a little wider than my experieence shooting charleville smootbore muskets. Bess and C that I have shot usually do it within 85cm of aimpoint at 100m. The thing is that at 100m, a man is only about 40% of the target.

now the thing is that I have taught mustket to that accuracy in a day, but bow takes years.

And I am unclear why you cannot see the difference of the issue with point of impact. 300joules spread over some 80 square mm on the face of the armor, versus 20joules focused on .7mm means more energy focused on a single point.

If just KE were the point, no game would have ever been taken. Let alone your observed you tube kills of bear and the like.

Or to use another analogy, since you don't actually know the weapons, your insistance on KE would mean I could "prove" that no one ever bothered with a sword because Baseball bats have the same KE and are a lot cheaper!

R

At 100 m a musket ball properly aimed might hit at an unpredictable point, but within a clearly defined radius of around 150 cm. One of 4 or 5 shots will hit a man sized target, ideally the first one , the on target effect will be excellent.

Cpt Iglo..

At 100 m a musket ball properly aimed might hit at an unpredictable point, but within a clearly defined radius of around 150 cm. One of 4 or 5 shots will hit a man sized target, ideally the first one , the on target effect will be excellent.

you should check out Firepower by B.P. Hughes.. a great book on weapons of the era of blackpowder. He indicates a bit different number of hits at 100 yards or less averaged over a whole battle,, around 5%,, not what you suggest. He suggests under ideal static conditions,with muskets held by a device, on a per shot basis, not sequential firing,, about 50% hits at 100 yards on a man sized target. So here we have muskets in a test situation giving the max,,and an average per battle volley fire situation under "real" conditions.

Sorry these early muskets were just very inaccurate.

Thanks for your discussion on metallurgy, but here too you are what most of us of here are,, Gamers first, amateur historians too,,and prone to abusing statistics from tech sites..inadvertently I am sure.. but never the less..

Perhaps you are either a metallurgist attempting to simplify a complex process for our benefits,,or you fit into the above catagory…

Quality wise there is no comparison between steel made via the crucible process and the more contemporary bessemer process.The problem with your link, is that they were using contemporary mild steel for their tests,, which have no equivalent to steel from the past.

when you test steel for "hardness" you really need to define the tool steel used,what the specific use the tool steel was designed for,,and at what temper range you made your test. The closest contemporary steel we have today to steels of the past would be whats named W-1 tool steel,, but even this has so many chemical\elemental additives to it,,and quality control that it can in no way be tested against steels from the past. For what its worth,, wrought iron has literally no carbon in it (less than 2-3 points carbon where 1 point=1% of 1%iron) mild steel has 37 points carbon,, it falls in the medium carbon steel range,and due to its total composition cannot, generally be heat treated. So, the hardness ratings you have read, in fact are situational,,and actually have nothing to do with the action of an object of any sort striking sheet steel of any type. Especially without knowing all,,or even some,, of the other parameters of the steel used in the test!!

When the opponents of the longbow are using data from contemporary sites,, you again make a mistake in just how you are interpreting their results. I do not know any of you guys experience "in the woods" but lol,, I live there,,and have most of my life,,altho I am not a hunter. I see wild game of all sorts,,from bear,deer,elk,and squirrels on a daily and seasonal basis.. I must say,, without question that, altho I have seen much,, including charging bears!! Never,, again i stress,, never have i seen a squirrel in brestplate,,a deer in mail,,an elk with great helm,, nor bear with shield!! ;) The point is hunting sites are more interested in the proper tools to bring down these unarmored critters,and the physics involved,not in penetrating armor.. so please recognize the possibility that you are taking their data concerning apples and applying it to oranges.

As far as whether bow can penterate armor,, well you can deny the hands on work done by some fine people here,,and loose a great source of data,, or,, I welcome you to contact me via email if you are truly interested and I will put you in touch with some very good Blacksmith sites and sources that will in fact truly support their findings. And I will extend an invitation to you to visit my shop for some hands on as to just what can be done to a piece of wrought iron, old style steel,,or contemporary tool steels. You just might check out your local smiths,, yes we are few and far between, but most likely you can find one of us close by.. visit his shop,, ask questions,, he will most likely be more than happy to actually put you behind a hammer!! You will be surprised as to just what can be done with low velocity tools of all sorts when judiciously applied to a piece of iron or steel!!.

I suggest as well that you check out some local bow ranges and shooting ranges. Take a moment to try the following,, It will show you with out a doubt just why the bow was replaced by the inferior and highly inefficient musket.. shoot 10 arrows at 100 yds,50yds,and 25yds,, then fire even a contemporary rifle with same number of shots at same ranges. I feel you will see an amazing difference in number of hits on target.. this assumes you have no experience with either,,and will show that attrition is the factor here and main reason the bow was replaced.

If you cannot accept that the average English Bowman had a fair amount of training, then nothing I say will change your mind.

If you cannot accept say that bowman can fire minimum with little fatigue even 10 rounds per minute,,nothing I can say will change that

If you cannot accept that a smoothbore musket was only capable of average 2 rounds per minute,, again check for one source Firepower,.

So with equal numbers firing,say 800 men each,starting from 100 yds,, we have we have the musket halted for 1 minute delivering 2 volleys,, 1600 bullets,, average hits = 5%. thats 80 casualties.

now lets look at the longbow,, firing for 1 minute at 800 brits in two ranks for 1 minute at 100 yds.. 10 rounds per minute, 800 men=8000 arrows during the same time against unarmored targets,, hehe see? no more armor problem here..

Which side would you rather be on? not even argueing over the % hits the archers would have on the musketeers?

considering the main topic here is musket vs bow,, I do know which side I would rather be on!!

However,, if you take attrition over time into consideration,, and lets say 30 days to give a total novice confidence with his musket,,and say 10 years to bring a bowman up to the same skill level,,, In the long run,, I would put my money on the musket,,as is the case…

For those who are interested, I found "The Knight and the Blast Furnace" here,,, link

anvil

Rocky, I think I did always make a division between penetrating armour and penetrating soft tissue.
others did bring up knifes and razorblades in the context of armour penetration.
the knife/razorblade like broadhead fails already in wood, it would fail even more on really hard surfaces.
So we have a good tissue cutter, which cannot break armour.

The idea behind breaking armour is not sports, but creating a behind armour effect on tissue.
the best anti tissue round is already out.
So which round can break armour and create some significant anti armour effects within the given KE limits?

I did use the old anti tank rifle as an example just to show that perpendicular penetration under laboratory conditions has nothing to do with reality.

But we are actually not so far yet.
The vid above shows that even hardened bodkin heads of a crossbow under ideal conditions do not even come close to penetration of a breast plate hardened with period methods.

and they did focus all energy on a single point, according to the footnotes on the breastplate test, the pointed tip did even penetrate 2mm deep, the diameter of the penetration was very likely 2mm too,at least at the surface of the plate.
It was obviously not enough to squeeze the 10mm warhead plus the shaft through the hole, the point of penetration is barely visible.
If the projectile is 10 mm thick, you need a 10mm hole. Whats so difficult to understand about this ?
Penetration of armour has nothing to do with blade or magic tip effects, its a pure KE thing.
on a certain level one might even discuss projectile shapes to give another 10% of extra punch, on 80j level its irrelevant.

anvil,
were´s the problem with the hunter numbers?
Bears don´t wear armour, but according to the bow hunters its actually already quite tricky to fell an unarmoured bear.Things will not get better if the bear wears a breastplate.
After all not only hunters are interested in bringing the target down, armour penetration is not for sports, its about killing the subjekt behind the plate.
If all energy is spent on penetration, armour has actually done its job.

There exist actually a lot of trial datas for musketry performance, mostly from the 18th and 19th century, often adjusted for field use ,my favourite are the Scharnhorst trial numbers from 1813.
They all show the same, volleys are good under 1oo m, then accuracy goes rapidly downhill.
Skirmisher shooting can produce satisfying numbers up to 300 m and actually very good results below 100m, all under field conditions, but naturally without taking in account the effect of countershooting.

But how about the longbow at say 100 m ? under field conditions naturally, without knowing the exact range and without ranging shots, which no one can spot, when dozens shoot at the same time.

what is a 85 cm radius around the aiming point(which is the belt buckle in case of the musket), against an aiming point which is perhaps say 18,50 m above the target, but actually completely unknown for the shooter because he cannot make a correct estimate of the distance.
The impact of a very low velocity on ballistics is all to often just ignored.

considering the main topic here is musket vs bow,, I do know which side I would rather be on!!

Me too, the SIDElines :)

what is a 85 cm radius around the aiming point(which is the belt buckle in case of the musket), against an aiming point which is perhaps say 18,50 m above the target, but actually completely unknown for the shooter because he cannot make a correct estimate of the distance.

You mistake: the marksman archer DOES know the distance to the target, But, as we have emphasized, that knowledge only comes as a prodigeous talent, or through long years of practice. It isn't typical of any body of archers, only the best in the unit, who stand at the front.

Your comments regarding KE continue to pound away with the same misconceptions: the bodkin gives up bloodletting efficiency for penetrative power: the shallow angle of attack produced by the long tapering edges lend great cutting strength to the point where all the energy is focused; ALL of that energy is concentrated on the instantaneous contact point and ONLY spreads to the widening edges as the point drives in.

The crossbow bolt vid is very indistinct. But as I said it looks like a bad impact angle, either from a poorly set up shoot, or a badly discharged bolt. Properly done, the bolt should not impact at any angle whatsoever, ergo, no whipping and shattering of the shaft. If the armor defeated the bolt fairly, what we would see is a complete bounce off the steel, with a shattered bolt certainly being possible, but not from whipping sideways. Of course, if the test is on a curved surface, i.e. high impact angle, the bolt will be whipped by the angle and shatter. This is not what we are discussing. There is no contention with the fact that a glancing steel surface will destroy the missile and utterly defeat it. It is those chance, well-placed impacts with no angle of attack, that we are interested in.

The bolt is bouncing backwards. I think to get a hit without getting vibrations in the shaft is probably practically impossible. To me the impact angle looks very small and the percentage of arrows in battle to get a "perfect" angle should be very small. There is a reason why armour had the shape it had.

Here are a few figures for Anvil, and others who may doubt the potential accuracy of musketry, to consider.

There were many tests carried out during the Napoleonic wars to determine the effect of musketry. Here is the result of a Prussian test carried out against a target of the same dimensions as an infantry company:

Out of 200 shots fired from a close order formation, the following amount of hits were scored using British Brown Bess muskets:

80 yards = 94 hits (47%)
160 yards = 116 hits (58%)
240 yards = 75 hits (37.5%)
320 yards = 55 hits (27.5%)

During a test carried out by the British army, a soldier was ordered to fire 36 rounds at a 5 foot circular target at a range of 120 yards as fast as he possibly could, not taking any time to aim, but merely levelling at the object. He struck the target 15 times, the remainder being "very close" and he fired the quota of ammunition in 13 minutes.

Many other such tests could be used to illustrate the fact that volleys of musketry could potentially wipe out an entire opposing battalion of infantry in a minute or two at ranges up to 300 yards. The reality of battle of course was entirely different, and it would seem that around 200 shots had to be expended in order to cause one enemy casualty. The reasons for this discrepency are many and varied, but many must also have applied to archers, therefore to state that 100% accuracy could be achieved by anyone in battle conditions is absolute nonsense.

Captn Snort..

First of all,, your first test match pretty well what is in Hughes book,, around 50% for static tests.

the single gentleman could be that one off unique individual who does exist,,and can do that in a static situation. I mean,, lets get real,, is Davy Crockett man or myth or mix of both?

If you look at casualty results from battles during the age of blackpowder, history just doesn't bear out your last statement.

Hughes book does take those test into account btw,,and his book is out of print but avalable on amazon,, a great read…

At least there is no arguement over rates of fire for a brown bess type musket..so again,, lets keep the accuracy of an english longbowman vs a musketeer the same,,not my belief btw,, but then,, we then can take 5% of 8000 arrows released by 800 bowman at 10 rounds per minute.. is around 400 hits per volley vs 80? Considering some wound,some graze,some hit your accoutrement's etc,,vs arrows having a wrong angle of attack,hitting joints,etc,, that is still a rather large number to contemplate?

considering that a fair number of the armored French did not have the luxury of hardened and tempered plate,but wore wrought mail and plate, considering the poor tech quality of all steel made,,and large pieces were more prone to these problems,

cptn Iglo

I figured,,as a reader, you would bring that up about the bear… their physiology is pretty interesting,,their tolerance to pain, critical parts masked by bone,fat,sinew,etc, makes them amonst the toughest game to hunt. If we human beings had their physiology, we would all be in trouble!! twice the amount of arrows would not have stopped the French!! Alas we are mere mortal human beings,,and a couple inches or more of arrow in most humans,, will stop them,, Break it off and continue at full bore? sheesh but Hollywood has had too much affect on you if you truly believe this..

I too find it hard to believe that you cannot see that the amount of surface area has a direct relationship on penetration,,, the pounds per sq in goes up asymptotically as the surface area of the missile is decreased. I encounter this every day in my business, be it tool design or tool usage… Its an easy test to perform,, Rocky's example explains it,,Its even obvious when i use my center punch to mark a piece of steel,,or my sharp ended cold punch if I want to easily pierce a piece of sheet,,and with the same blow,drive my 1\2" X 12" long tool clean thru a piece of 3\16" mild steel with one medium blow of my 2.5 lb hammer…Don't know what more to say,,, give it a try..see the results, then question your sources,, or your interpretation of their data…

If you factor in the surface area of the projectile, your KE dilemma will be solved,,

anvil

The accuracy issue of both weapons is quite easy to define.

In case of the musket at 100 yds there is a 85 cm radius around the aiming point in which the ball will land.
Aiming point is the belt buckle.
Hold the weapon right, point the weapon on the belt buckle and 1 of 3 shots will hit.
The process is quite simple and can be handled under combat stress without loosing to much.

in case of the longbow the first problem is to get the range.
lordloveadoug claims that a marksman "knows the distance".
This claim has the same mystical qualities like Stricklands 200 ibs claim.
Modern archers at least have a problem with this like with 200ibs draw weights.
but distance is key, the beaten zone at 100 yds is just 5yds deep, otherwise there is undershooting or overshooting.
So the targeting process has to begin with a rough calculation where the target actually is, the calculation may be 10 or 20yds off the target.
then an aiming point has to be found, the aiming point is somewhere 17-20 yds over the target, its pure imagination .Then wind influence has to be calculated, an arrow is very sensible for wind and the missile will be 3 seconds in the air.
There is a stable and calm mood needed to get it right, actually its completely impossible to get everything right, but the calm archer mood is essential to reacch some consistency in shooting.

With all these uncertainties its quite obvious that hitting the target at 100yds is sheer luck.
the zone of uncertainty is at least ten times larger as the target radius of the musket.

Can any body provide numbers about the hit rate of archery at 100 yds or more?

in 3-d archery the archer shoots at animal sized targets which pop up at unknown distances between 15-30 yds , he is allowed to use a very fast recurve and has 2 minutes time for targeting.
Has ever anybody tried to practice something like this with a longbow at around 100yds?

capt iglo,,

"Has ever anybody tried to practice something like this with a longbow at around 100yds?"

forgive me if i am wrong, but haven't you already discredited two people here already that have done just that? and had some pretty incredible real time,, not virtual experiences that most ,including myself, can envy their opportunities. So I am just a bit curious as to why you are searching for others?

And out of curiosity,if you don't mind being asked, do you have any or much actual hands on with any of the types of weapons we are talking of here? Or is your knowledge all theoretical?

anvil