"Armour" Piercing with Medieval-style Arrows - Video 14

The modern day debate over whether or not arrows penetrated medieval armour in the 14th and 15th centuries is one that is conducted by those "for" and "against" with almost as much passion as the combatants on the fields of Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt fought during the Hundred Years War.

What cannot be ignored by either side is that there are contemporary records from eye witnesses to these battles and others, that record both arrows penetrating plate armour, and of arrows bouncing off. No reasonable person should claim that arrows either always defeated plate, or always glanced off. To do so would be naïve at best.

Our video aims neither to prove nor dispel these accounts. It is to be viewed with an open mind and for you to take as you please. All we ask is that you keep in mind the following points:

1. The bows we are shooting are at the lower end of the poundage medieval archers would have used during the period that concerns us. The finds from the wreck of the Mary Rose prove that the medieval longbow used by the military archer, typically referred to as the Warbow, would more likely have been around 120lbs draw weight, and possibly more.

2. The heads on the arrows we are shooting have not been sharpened nor hardened, as was often the case in medieval times.

3. The carbon content of the steel we are shooting at is higher than the average medieval armour, and therefore tougher.

4. The armour of a medieval knight would have been thickest on the breastplate and the front of the helmet. To reduce weight the armour would have been thinner elsewhere. In this video we are therefore shooting directly at the areas of a knights armour that were specifically designed to resist the penetrative effects of an arrow. That they bounce off should come as no surprise, but note that every arrow penetrated up to half an inch before doing so.

5. There are only 3 of us shooting here and we are shooting directly from the front. In a medieval battle the front line would have stretched for many hundreds or thousands of yards. The front at Agincourt was 3/4 of a mile long. With thousands of archers shooting at once into the massed ranks of approaching knights and men at arms it is natural to suppose that not every archer would have shot at a target directly to his front. Hits to the sides of the armour would have been common.

6. In order to have the greatest chance of killing, an archer would have shot to hit the weak points of the enemy's armour, namely the visor slits, the legs, the sides and the joints.

7. Many arrows would have glanced off their intended targets and would have gone ricocheting at crazy angles through the ranks to either side, in so doing quite possibly finding these weak points by accident.

8. Not all the combatants on any field of conflict would have been rich enough, or of the social class, to wear the very best state-of-the-art armour that was available at that time. Many would have worn old armour, handed down armour or just the few pieces they could afford or had scavenged from previous battles. Many would have worn maille (chainmail) or just padded jacks and leather armour.

9. The blunt force trauma from each hit could have been enough to injure alone, or at least severely put the knight off his stride.

Category:

Sports

Tags:

• bow
• arrow
• longbow
• archery
• archer
• armour
• penetration
• knight
• medieval
• agincourt
• crecy
• english
• warbow

[schnucklefutz]

question..being somewhat naive and new to this. Wouldnt the maille or gambesons worn under this also provided added protection? Not like I'd let you shoot at me to prove this either way though..lol. Also wouldnt the archers be a little further away, shooting in more of an arc? Again asking to learn not to argue.

[bigbowbrum]

@schnucklefutz Yes you are correct on all counts. This video is just a bit of fun against a plate of metal. The medieval layered system of armour/maille/padded jacks etc was very effective against arrows.

[hud42cdo]

great and intersting experiment,very well presented and superb information.i am currently studying casting iron,and have had several requests for the bodkin type arrowhead,i see that the one i can get a clear look at is of curved triangular design,i also have been supplied with a waisted round bodkin to replicate,are there any other period designs of bodkin you may be aware of?-thanks once again.

[bigbowbrum]

@hud42cdo I will send you a personal message as I would like to include a link. Best wishes.

[W4CKYB4CKY]

are you actually using flat headed points or just the normal arrow heads?

[bigbowbrum]

@W4CKYB4CKY I appreciate that this doesn't look very impressive as far too many arrows are simply bouncing off, but we are using replica medieval arrow heads. I do still think the bows we were using were under powered, but good steel armour probably was very difficult to get through even back then.

[bigbowbrum]

@Panzervagon Thanks for commenting but I hope you don't mind if I correct you on a couple of points. Firstly there is no record for bow draw weights from the medieval period. We have no idea how they gauged a bow's power. We can only guess what draw weights they may have used through experimental archaeology. The Mary Rose bows (which were Tudor) went no higher than 180lbs, and there were only 2 thought to be that weight out of the 140 recovered (I have examined and handled most of them).

[bigbowbrum]

@ajcvikingboy No, not at all. It just looked nice at the time with the colours we had to hand.

[elgostine]

@OmahaLasse nope, read my post for a brief explanation, essentially, the knight' was killed off as a significant potent force of armoured lancers, due to the changes in the way war was conducted, after all, consider that men were wearing breastplates up until the start of ww1

but firearms did decrease the potency of lots of armour

but it was the fact the knight became less useful in a battlefield of much cheaper lightly armoured cavalry, and pikesquares bristling with musketeers

[SooSneeky]

The armour might stop the arrow but not the kinetic force behind it that would probs still...well hurt if not brake something

[UkrainianDragon1993]

0:35, armor or no armor, that is a kill shot to the juggular

[veeganmd]

Awesome demonstration, great archery, nicely documented, ... Great Job!

[TheMoistCamel]

I was gonna make an arrow to the knee joke, but this is just too cool haha :)

[iliketha]

very cool video! Medieval weapons are so cool, one day i want to learn to shoot a bow, ride a horse and fight with swords - except horses are really tall when you get up there :S. the later shots penetrated because the breastplate was dented out of shape by previous arrows - it is the curved shape which gives it strength as well as increases the chances of glancing blows - needless to say, those arrows against a flat sheet of the same steel would have punctured right through straight away.

[octaviocurti922]

I want this video on my GB130 unit.

[Nez162]

What song

[HunterHornet]

armor works

[guygallagher410]

This video went viral on Ecuador