The LongBow part 3 of 12

[Meathunter123]

He is also forgetting that the archers would have been using armor piercing broad heads

[Nawyria]

They're forgetting that the knights themselves have a velocity relative to the archers. Supposing a knight moves at 10 m/s towards the archer and the arrow travels at 30 m/s away from the archer at impact, the resulting 40 m/s relative speed results in about 78% more kinetic energy compared to an arrow flying at 30 m/s towards a target. This would go a long way towards penetrating the armour.

[PompeusMagnus]

I know one thing pepole give to much credit for being very good archers i bet your ass they where as good as a japonese archer our a mounted hun our even a american indian...

[CrowdControlFTW]

Why do they care about the armour piercing quality when hitting the knight? Kill his horse, and let him die underneath it.

[kovona]

@drahcirdier Yes, I already know that. What I meant was that the arrow will not slow through its entire flight through the air. Even if it doesn't accelerate to its original speed upon release due to aerodynamic drag, it still adds to its velocity. My question is did the radar measure the acceleration during the gravity assisted downward part if the arrows flight arc? If it didn't, then the arrow velocity used in the lab tests would not been the same as a real flying arrow hitting a target.

[Tareltonlives]

I wonder what would have happened if they had a bodkin head on the arrow

[sturnfield7783]

Well, it will be like a nail, all of the energy at one point, perpendicular, would be a kill. They where using sharpened target heads from the short look at it .

[halfassedfart]

Not much difference, I'd expect. You might make a slightly deeper wound than the regular arrowhead.

[Pourleduc]

They DID use a short bodkin, and moset armours were hardened. There was simply no way to penetrate well forhed armour,still the strength of the hit would maybe have knocked out the rider or for sure penetrated a horse blanket. Imagine the disorder of a cavalry army were every third horse collapses hitting the others throwing off their riders. Thats totally enough to stop an army.

[00nerd4]

lol maybe might get half way into the wall =p

[goldenscales]

@Tareltonlives They did.

[goldenscales]

@Tareltonlives It was a bodkin they used.

[GayPandaProductions]

the way it doesnt penetrate the armour easy means nothing, you have to remember the french knights are either rider towards you, or advancing on you somehow

[EPU01]

more like 65 lbs than 64 kg

[Ieatbabyseals]

Mortar men carry like 130-140lbs of equipment

But the amount soldiers carry depends on where and how they're deployed.

[EPU01]

I meant 65lbs for medieval harness, but ya, lot of more equipment for modern troops.

[Cyrusjle]

Agincourt, and Cresy as well, are unique cases in medieval warfare. Unique because the ground, the mud itself, is a clay-like substance. The soggy clay caused the cavalry, in its plate armor, to become stuck. The French knights literally got stuck in the mud when their horses died

[Ieatbabyseals]

And then they had to either march to the English soldiers or wait to be mowed over with arrows. And even if they made it to the English archers they would be exhausted and easy to kill.

[boromirgondorian]

English are a great archery culture, in fact , in the middle ages, when wood was scarce in England,they imported from Italy and Spain. they built lots of bows :D

[lakotadak]

the longbows are made of a special wood yew or sometihing idegran on swedish that they got from Italy and spain

[000000AEA000000]

oh they imported from germany aswell, very much though.

[stanman1992]

i think it was more the killing of the horce or arm and leg shots that would be more disierd hiting a man in the main ..i think its the femral atery in the leg causes a blead out in a mader of minets

[GuitaristontheFloor]

Simply, a Heavy knight who falls off his horse will not be able to fight unless he takes his armor off. Think about it, you fall off your dead horse, you have to get up and attack or retreat, if you decided to attack, you had to remove something off yourself otherwise you're easy target to the infantry. Then you'd get arrow pierced.

[stanman1992]

watch the same vidio series somone has out there same guy as this one he talks about that

[k0mpassi]

And when a knight in heavy armor falls of a horse lets say from a height of 2 meters while charging the enemy. Hitting the ground would likely break their bones or even kill them. I guess that's pretty much how they defeated cavalry. Killing their mounts and then finishing them off. It seems very unlikely that archers could penetrate plate armour and give a mortal wound even from a close distance.

[mofogie]

on another episode the host dispels that myth. Wearing full plate he tumbles off a horse moving full speed and took no injury, and got up off the ground with ease.

[k0mpassi]

falling off a horse wearing 20 kg of armor + weapons at something like 50 km/h? Doubt that

[pg259]

A destrier never made 50km/h-they were much slower.

Just search youtube-you can find guys in armour doing somersaults and walking on their hands.

Wearing 20kg of bodyarmour isnt the same thing as carrying 20kg around in your hands.

[k0mpassi]

ofc not but it increases mass which increases the force of impact :/

[Ieatbabyseals]

First world soldiers now a days wear around 65kg of equipment and they don't incur injuries because of the armour/weapons/survivalgear.

[k0mpassi]

65 kg is too much.

[Ieatbabyseals]

Yeah I looked it up it's closer to 55kg but they do it and I don't see why people back then couldn't have done it with less weight.

[k0mpassi]

yea. they pack alot of stuff with them now a days. ofc when the fighting starts you dump the heavy stuff but i mean 50 kg is enough equipment for 20 people ^^

[DannyJamesRead]

Agincourt said otherwise LOL

[k0mpassi]

Well... guess we'll never know :/

[THordasson]

When you do archery today, you never think of the fact that you are handling one extremely deadly killing tool.

Even the modern compound bow can kill a person with ease.

[TYKKETYKKE]

True. Few people think 'weapon' when they think of bows. Even though an arrow with the right head, can oppose a bigger threat to your health than a bullet.

[shootershit2]

and you can buy them at places like walmart, and you don't need a license like you do for a gun, but bows are just as deadly

[GuitaristontheFloor]

Just as deadly?

m-16 vs. Bow? I'll take the M-16 anytime. Only certain people can use bows properly. Any idiot can shoot a gun.

[boromirgondorian]

I prefer the Spanish bow. It was like the Englsh bow but a bit more shorter

[Tareltonlives]

Spanish bows were regular self bows made of excellent wood. The Spanish never were much of an archery culture, preferring slings in ancient times and borrowing crossbows and composite bows in the middle ages

[boromirgondorian]

Bueno si puede ser cierto, el uso de arcos lo usabamos sobretodo en asedios y en caza y en asedios y batallas pero no mucho, los españoles eramos mas de espadas y lanzas, de hecho el centro mundial de la espaderia se encuentra en Toledo, España

[Tareltonlives]

Es la verdad. Los Espanoles especializaron en los artes de los caballos de guerra, y des de tiempos Romanos tenians los mejores espadas en Europa (el famoso Gladius fue espanol).

[oldgattonian2]

These people can summise what they like but the fact remains that English & Welsh Longbow Archers were feared across Europe. Also just How do they explain the victories at Crecy and Agincourt by very much outnumbered English Armies. Maybe the English had long tickling feathers and tickled the French to death?

[drahcirdier]

The one thing i hate about these shows, is that they do "tests" and discover that a longbow arrow would not piece armour. Ok, thats fine. by the 14C that was true.

But they fail to consider the psychological impact of being rained on by 90 000 arrows. also, the knights were safe, but what about the HORSES? they dont mention the chaos that would occure when several thousand horses were injured, and freaked out, throwing their rider etc.

A horse with 10 arrows in it is not going to behave!!

[Maverick5588]

lmao very good point m8

[ameiko76]

Wouldn't it suck being given a leather jerkin and a spear and told to charge......

[kovona]

@drahcirdier

I want to add, that since the arrows travel in an arc towards its target, did the radar readthe speed of the arrow of the arrow as it passes the peak of its flight and is accelerated downwards by gravity; which would had technically sped it up some.

[drahcirdier]

@kovona, The arrow will accelerate downards under gravity sure enough, but you've forgotten about the energy the arrow lost while fighting gravity on its way up. The laws of physics dont allow the arrow to come down any faster than it went up. Infact in a frictionless world it would land at EXACTLY the same speed as it left the bow... but of course air resistance slows it down in the real world, so merely measureing the velocity straight out of the bow is enough.

[bboishowoff]

@drahcirdier i think men of war didn't care about the horses they killed?

[yourredcomrade717]

@drahcirdier not to mention chainmaile was the most common armor. plate armor was expensive. and very rare.  making this test sort of a moot point.

[Haccoude]

@yourredcomrade717

Depends on what period you're talking about, as well as what type of soldier. You wouldn't have found a Man-at-Arms without plate by the 15th century.

[lifes40123]

@drahcirdier horses had armor on them too u fuck

[drahcirdier]

@lifes40123 Wow... that was intelligent...

Horses were unarmoured during this period.

[lifes40123]

@drahcirdier what period... some horses didnt and some horses did u douchbag

[drahcirdier]

@lifes40123 During this period in history. At the battle of Crecy, in 1346 (the one in the video), horses would have been UNARMOURED.

At the battle Bosworth, in 1485 horses WOULD have been armoured. (slightly)

[Yupyuk]

@drahcirdier Hot damn nice comeback against that idiot :D

[traktorlaila]

Even if the arrow didn't penetrate armour at a distance, it would still kill a horse. Without a horse, the knight fighting capability is severly reduced.

[relentlesssinner90]

Note the reason Warhorses wore armour.

[drahcirdier]

Armour for horses was, however, very rare during the 14th century and early 15th. Horse armour only started to appear in mid - late 15th century, and by then the longbow was being replaced by cannons.

[relentlesssinner90]

some advances in technology do come too late.

[VeikoTG]

The documentary is wrong it does not kill only on 20 metres, it kills at long range also, the power of the arrow increases, when it is coming down from the air, extra power gives the spinning, like modern bullets. And it pieces the armor at long range! Big Mistake!!!

[matt2house]

hmmm it depends how thick ur armour might be. cos at agincourt the longbowmen had to shoot at the horses cos the french knights worn some really thick armour plating. this demonstration of the arrows at different ranges proves it.

[drahcirdier]

I'm assuming you've never done any physics, because if you had you'd know that the arrow would come down with EXACTLY the same velocity as it left the bow. and that is assuming no air resistance.

Therefore, when air resistance is considered, the arrow comes down slower than it went up.

Dont get me wrong though, a longbow would easily kill at long range, just not someone in plate.

[VeikoTG]

would you like to try? but you wear the plate

[Felix0nubi]

Excellent comments from airnt. I miss here important variables like weight of the bow, the arrows the influence of the speed of the attacking knights (Note that the knights might travel with more than 10 m/s - thus increasing the relative velocity of the arrow by the same amount.

[airnt]

how many knights would have worn a hauberk at this point, underneath the breastplate that is. let's say 80% would have worn one (very conservative estimate)

some 90% or so of arrows loosed on the battlefield were broadheads, he's using a (hardened?) bodkin.

he took the stongest bow he could get away with, and the weakest breastplate...

so the top 10% of the longbows?

against the bottom 30% of breastplates?

*to be continued*

[airnt]

*continued*

with that air cannon the arrow will hit with less flex, so there is a greater chance of purchase in the steel, no sideways forces

he hit the steel at the ideal angle, straight onto the metal. was the breastplate dished or raised? if it was dished the metal would be thinnest here, if raised, thickest like the originals.

this would have been a 5% hit chance on a static target for a good archer at 20 yards if you assume this sweet spot to be 2 inches across?

[airnt]

*continued*

this might therefore be representative of [20%*10%*10%*30%*5%=] 0.003% or so of the arrows loosed in battle at 20 yards???

At 20 yards, that allows for one arrow per archer at the very best.

so out of maybe 7000 archers on average, i would predict, no more than 0,21 shots would be represented by this test....

that makes it insignificant.

[airnt]

*continued*

bear in mind that even if you assume that only the last arrow to be loosed by an archer is this effective, you start to understand why crossbows were in such favour: only one shot counts, so rate of fire is irrelevant

therefore, the main advantage is that the bow is a area interdiction weapon.

[BLAZEX09]

The Armour would be made of low quality Iron and they failed to take into acount the speed of the advancing Knight.

[rogueshdw]

thats because people still make modern day replicas of English Longbows (but they are expensive!)

[EthanJM]

I can't believe how well those things are preserved, that is amazing. Look at those bows, they look like you could string them and shoot them today.

[makettaja]

i hate these test where they say it cant penetrate the armor when there can be so many things that chance. and why it have to penetrate the armor when arrow coming from 100 meters or more it comes allmoust straight from the sky.

[EPU01]

This is in 1346, 14th century, so bassinets and plate armour would have been common.

[Roman55Legions]

Ummm cool test and all; but the they used was not hardened! All or 99% or steel armors made are going to be hardened! So this test is a bit off...

Also were the Knights and Troops useing Plate at the time or this war? What year was this war?

[nielsdejong]

i agree with the hardened, that would have made a big difference. i heard knight full plates were not only only 20 kilo's (45 pounds) which by the way is lighter then the combat gear of a nowadays infantry soldier and better divided, but were made to be arrow proof. the longbow defeated the knights solely because they fired it up in the air and the special armor penetrating arrow would go down thanks to gravity

[loginloginlog]

COOOOOOOOOLL! Kick asss awsome! Muskets suk! Bows rule!

[anpe1001]

i LOVE the longbow <3<3<3<3<3<3<3

[foxtrot45]

Composite bows finally get some credit!