Longbow vs Musket

>The average English musketeer of the 16th century tended to have a lot more formal military training than the average archer.

But we're discussing the American revolution here.

Does Ben Franklin look like someone who knows anything about war and fighting?

Englishmen were not tasked to train weekly with a bow because one needed a lifetime to become skilled, but because without such training most Englishmen who were not hunters and had no reason to learn a bow outside of warfare would soon lose their ability and not pass it on to the next generation.

The English government didn't spend a dime on training longbowmen, while the counties were bristling under the cost of training shot. An experienced captain needed to be hired to train the men, 10% of the best men in the county needed to be taken away from their work and paid a shilling a day for their time, and powder had to be bought for loading, marksmanship and skirmishing practice. That's not even to mention that individuals were required to keep and maintain the arms, armor and equipment that the trained militia needed, which were far more expensive than longbows.

Meanwhile, the government didn't spend a dime on "training" longbowmen. In fact, it made money: anybody who didn't practice would be charged a fine. Not that the practice they were required to do amounted to much- a couple of shots after church, except during winter. Casual practice once a week doesn't create an archer ubermensch.

There are plenty of modern longbow enthusiasts who picked up archery as an adult and didn't take anywhere near a "lifetime" to get to historic draw weights.

The reason why children were taught archer wasn't because you needed to start as a child in order to draw a heavy bow. It was because archery was supposedly a wholesome hobby that would keep children away from degenerate games like cards, dice and bowling. Archery statutes were maintained long after the bow had ceased to be militarily useful because it was a source of revenue and would keep little johnny from turning into a satan worshiper.

You might be able to train children to load a flintlock, make it go "bang", and maybe even march a little bit in a week, but do you think that they'll stand up to a line of advancing redcoats?

The same suggestions for longbows were made during the Napoleonic War and Peninsula wars. Longbows are, in many ways, more lethal and accurate than muskets of the time.

At the time of the American Revolution flintlock muskets were most common with half the steps it took to fire a matchlock. Accuracy was still shit though.

>The same suggestions for longbows were made during the Napoleonic War and Peninsula wars.
Also by people who spent more time imagining battles than actually participating in them. All the military veterans who opined on the bow vs gun issue decidedly favored the gun. And bows were not more lethal or accurate either.

Interestingly, the Russians DID deploy bowman in the Napoleonic War.

And they got wrecked by lances.

>All the military veterans who opined on the bow vs gun issue decidedly favored the gun.
Not quite.

There was John Smythe, who had military experience in France, the Netherlands, and eastern Europe, thought that bows were better for fighting in an open field. Maybe it's relevant to mention that he was cashiered for being a lunatic.

There were others like Fourquevaux, Thomas Digges, Thomas Churchyard, William Neade, and Gervase Markham who thought that the bow could still be useful for some niche tasks but didn't take the position that it was better than guns.

source on this?

bowvsmusket.com/2015/02/27/baron-marbots-encounter-with-mounted-archers-at-dresden-and-liepzig-1813/

Don't have one. Saw a source once, in like an article linked in an article, in a forum discussion like this one.

But basically, the story is the Russians employed some steppe nomads to serve as scouts for their armies. Steppe nomads encounter french cavalry, frenchies charge with lances, and the nomads scatter.

Reading this gave me a laugh. Fucking eastern barbarians, backward fucks.

>Franklin having no military experience

He once famously marched whilst seated on a donkey on the university of pennsylvania, to oust the Royalist party of the governor who had control of the premises. He also repelled the invasion by
Connecticut in the Pennamite Wars, even inspiring Quakers to join the militia to fight the barbaric Yankees.

>And bows were not more lethal or accurate either.

“A soldier’s musket, if not exceedingly ill-bored as many are, will strike the figure of a man at 80 yards…but a soldier must be very unfortunate indeed who shall be wounded by a common musket at 150 yards, provided his antagonist aims at him, and as for firing at 200 yards you might as well fire at the moon.” - Hall, Weapons and Warfare

"As many as one in four discharge attempts were unsuccessful." - Rothenberg, Art of Warfare

"If weapons were discharged at more than 80–100 yards, the chances of a hit were so greatly reduced that the expenditure of lead per casualty inflicted was massively inefficient. The Prussians at Chotusice (1742), for example, loosed off about 650,000 rounds to make 2,500 kills and about the same number of wounded. Some of those fatalities (perhaps as many as half) would have been caused by artillery and some by bayonet. Assuming, therefore, that about 1,200 men were killed by musketry, it took approximately 540 balls or roughly 33 pounds of lead to extinguish one Austrian soldier’s life." - Hall, Weapons and Warfare

"At the battle of Vitoria (1813) during the Peninsular War, contemporaries estimated that the British fired 60 rounds per man (usually the total allocation) for an expenditure of 3.5 million rounds or 450 per French casualty." - Rothenberg, Art of Warfare

“powder is not as terrible as believed. Few men in these affairs are killed from the front while fighting. I have seen whole salvoes fail to kill four men." - Maurice de Saxe, Reveries on the Art of War 1757

Reminds me of "Asiatic" archers trying to fell Christian soldiers during the crusades. Much less effective compared to the longbow;

>“I noted among them men who had from one to ten shafts sticking in their backs, yet trudged on at their ordinary pace and did not fall out of their ranks. The Muslims sent in volleys of arrows from all sides, endeavoring to irritate the knights and to worry them into leaving their ramparts of infantry. But it was all in vain.” - Bahā-al-Din, Saladin’s secretary

Your first quote is not attributable to Hall but to Colonel George Hangar. The quote is from a proposal by Hangar to sell his own brand of muskets to the British government to equip an army of marksmen, who were to skirmish from a distance of not less than 150 yards. What Hangar is criticizing is not musketry in general but the supposedly inferior quality of Tower muskets.

None of the rest of your quotes compares the effects of musketry to archery.

These do.

"Now by this and other before rehearsed, and heereafter to be rehearsed, it dooth and may appeere, that by Harquebuzes great numbers haue come to their deaths, and either fewe or none with arrowes, or archery." Humphrey Barwick, 1594

"They may shoot thicke, but to small performance, except (as I said) vpon naked men or horse. But should there be led but eight hundred perfect hargubuziers, or sixe hundred good musketiers against your thousand bowmen, I thinke your bowmen would be forced to forsake their ground, all premisses considered: and moreouer a vollie of musket or hargubuze goeth with more terrour, fury, and execution, then doth your vollie of arrowes. And againe, against a resolute troupe of horse, either Pistoletiers, Hargulatiers or Lanciers, they will stand lesse time (except they be well fronted with hedge, ditch or trench; or seconded with a strong stand of pikes,) then either Hargubuze or Musket, considering the execution of the one & the other." Robert Barret 1598

"Now whether part hath the aduantage, I thinke may well be deemed, and whether weapon is of greatest force, a man maye easlye perceaue, when the shotte shall be able to preiudice the Archer, who shal not be able to shoote halfe the grounde towardes him agayne. Farther when the Shotte shal take aduantage almost in eueri ground to shrowd himselfe, where the Archer must remaine an open mark vppon the plaine or els to occupy his Bow to smal efect." Barnabe Riche, 1574

These figures are not so bad as they appear either. To put them in context, a few years ago 250,000 rounds were being expended for every insurgent killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Inaccurate weapons is not the problem.

Modern weapons fire more than 5 times a minute.

The Turks weren't firing to maim and wound, but just like Baha al-Din said, to irritate. The battle with the Russians also had little to do with the topic, since fast lancers have always been a hard counter to horse archers since horse archers existed.

That's literally due to modern battle tactics which involve suppression fire. The reasoning is twofold, suppression fire works, and secondly the US military industrial complex can keep up with any usage, and most enemies will fire back to keep up morale at least, thus safely depleting their munitions.

>The Turks weren't firing to maim and wound, but just like Baha al-Din said, to irritate.
I'm sure that they said to themselves "fuck trying to actually kill them. Let's just irritate them."

They were only trying to "irritate" them because the weapons were so ineffective. And they didn't even manage to do that.

>The battle with the Russians also had little to do with the topic
From the very day of their arrival in sight of our troops they launched themselves in swarms against them, but having been everywhere repulsed by gunfire, the Baskirs left a great number of dead on the ground.

The English, the Turks, the Saracens, the Native Americans, and the Japanese all adopted the musket en masse despite their archery traditions.

>Franklin thought everyone could learn to be skilled with a bow in relatively short time periods.
>He was wrong.

You can teach a little kid to accurately shoot a bow in a single weekend.

The reason crossbows were preferred in Europe during the pre-gunpowder period, was that to penetrate armor, one needed a 70-80 lb draw weight bow and that required not only constant practice but an archer who was healthy and physically fit enough to draw it, while anybody could easily use a crossbow.

In the post-gunpowder/post-armor period, a much lower draw weight bow (40-50 lbs) would be sufficient and considering the poor accuracy and slow loading times of muskets, Franklin’s idea would have been very effective had it been enacted.

Based on the poor performance of historical archers against musketeers, Franklin would have gotten a lot of people killed.

"The enemy (unlooked for) with his Bowmen discharged upon us a mighty force of Arrowes, as flakes of snow in a tempest. But while they were yet shooting, intending to mixe heaven and earth together: On the sudden came Captayne Drury the second time with his charge of Harquebusiers, yong men, and of an excellent courage and skill, who payed them home againe with such a terrible volly of shot (as if it had beene a storme of hayle) and put them all to flight as in a moment, trembling." Alexander Neville, relating the events of Kett's Rebellion 1549

>I'm sure that they said to themselves "fuck trying to actually kill them. Let's just irritate them."

Baha al-Din was criticizing Saladin and the army here. There's no point in making things up at that point. The entire plan was to goad Richard's knights to charge in disorder, something which even the Crusader chronicles also point out as Richard tried his hardest to prevent it from happening.

>From the very day of their arrival in sight of our troops they launched themselves in swarms against them, but having been everywhere repulsed by gunfire, the Baskirs left a great number of dead on the ground.

These losses far from calming their frenzy, seemed to excite them still more, for without any order and in all directions, they buzzed around us like a swarm of wasps, flying all over the place and being very hard to catch, but when our cavalry did catch them they effected a fearful massacre, our lances and sabres being immensely superior to their bows and arrows.

The point was this has nothing to do with the OP, which is about footbows and muskets, since mounted archery have their own tactics that don't involve getting into shootouts with infantry which they tend to lose.

Well of course real life ain't a vidya game, sometimes you win sometimes you lose but factoring in the American colonial militia's "Indian style" of combat vs. the British regulars close lines, bows would have been quite effective.

Now I'm not suggesting bows would replace firearms but the inclusion of archer companies would have been a nasty surprise for the British.

American Indians continued to use bows to good effect long after the American Revolution, well into the rifled repeating rifle era.

>None of the rest of your quotes compares the effects of musketry to archery.

They are hard to come by. How many of your quotes are stictly concerned with the longbow and not archery in general?

You're obviously more knowledgable on the subject, and I don't believe the bow to be better than muskets; just that arguments could be made that they have some advantages; rate of fire, range, reliability, and that ease of use alone shouldn't be a the sole factor as longbowmen continued to exsist despite the introduction of the crossbow, even defeating it at Crecy.

I have this attributed to Hall as well, but not the actually study;

>Modern tests under laboratory conditions (that is, the guns were not fired by humans but clamped and electrically ignited) on actual eighteenth-century muskets have shown 60 percent hits on target at 75 yards; at 100 yards it was pretty much a fifty-fifty proposition. With some guns the deviance was so great that the test had to be halted for safety reasons

"In the 1592 invasion, everything was swept away. Within a fortnight or a month the cities and fortresses were lost, and everything in the eight directions had crumbled. Although it was [partly] due to there having been a century of peace and the people not being familiar with warfare that this happened, it was really because the Japanese had the use of muskets that could reach beyond several hundred paces, that always pierced what they struck, that came like the wind and the hail, and with which bows and arrows could not compare." Yu Song-nyong, Korean prime minister

“No other weapon is more effective [than muskets]." Yi Sun-Sin, Korean admiral, killed by a musket shot in his final battle.

"The power of muskets is five times greater than arrows." King Seonjo of Joseon.

Indians used both bows and muskets. They were loathe to rely completely on muskets because they were dependent on white traders for ammunition and repairs, not because they believed that their archery was more effective. Gifts from the Thunder Beings is a great book on this subject.

>Based on the poor performance of historical archers against musketeers, Franklin would have gotten a lot of people killed.

Why are we assuming archers would be anywhere close to 100 yards to muskets?

quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A15466.0001.001/1:4.21?rgn=div2;view=fulltext

Bows can kill, but generally a negligible handful of unlucky saps. Their job was to hurt morale and discipline by breaking up a charge, by funneling troops, by maiming horses and forcing them to move, and tricking the undisciplined who get angry or panic to break ranks.

The British already fought in the French-Indian War and slaughtered actual Indians. Rag tag colonial militia who picked up the bow in a few weeks would hardly fare better. If they're going to ambush anyway, may as well be with a far more deadly weapon.

My post was never about claiming bows were better than muskets, but correcting two different mistakes about the nature of horse archery.

Because beyond 100 yards arrows arc so much that it's extremely difficult to hit anything with them.

>How many of your quotes are stictly concerned with the longbow and not archery in general?
I can give you as many that are strictly related to the longbow as you want. I've been studying this for a long time.

>arguments could be made that they have some advantages; rate of fire, range, reliability, and that ease of use
Agreed on everything except range.

>longbowmen continued to exsist despite the introduction of the crossbow, even defeating it at Crecy.
Crossbows are much more similar to vertical bows than they are to guns. The Crecy crossbowmen were outnumbered by the English archers and exhausted after a forced march.

That said, I don't doubt that the longbow was an extremely effective weapon in the middle ages. It was simply outclassed by artillery and firearms.

>With some guns the deviance was so great that the test had to be halted for safety reasons
You're referring the the Graz tests. It was actually one gun. Considering that the guns had been in storage for hundreds of years it's not surprising that one of them would be unservicable.

Range isn't a battle archery can win at, however. Muskets can kill at 300 yards, while a bow, if it luckily hits, will at best be 120 or 150 yards away if it manages to hit (don't expect a kill or anything serious).

Considering the native auxiliaries on both sides used bows, the argument certainly had been tested in this conflict.

Archery isn't that easy
I literally bought a bow last Saturday and have been shooting it every day now
It's small kids one that has a 15 pound draw weight
Let me tell you it's not easy to pull that shit back repeatedly
You get tired quick
War bows are like what 60 pounds
Good luck with teaching a kid to use one of those in a weekend
I can hit a large target from a couple feet away but I have tried hunting squirrels and birds from very close with no luck
It's not that easy
It's not that hard either but no where near as easy a learning to use a firearm

Wasn't Franklin's idea, it was something both Royalist and Parliamentary forces in the English Civil War discussed until they realized there was no goddamn time for that.

>Indians used both bows and muskets.

Sure, there is no denying the effectiveness of a musket; a hit from a .68 caliber lead ball pretty much guarantees death.

But this doesn’t mean that a bow is now somehow useless and completely ineffective; get hit with an arrow from a 40-50 lb bow and while you may not die instantly, you are going down and will be out of the fight, even with a peripheral hit to the arm or leg.

And there is no denying the greater accuracy (particularly at long range) and much high rate of fire that a bow provides, which would have allowed Colonial archers to put the British under accurate fire long before they were in range to fire their muskets, at which point the Colonial muskets would tear into them.

There also the added advantage that a bow doesn’t blow your ears out and block your field of view with a huge smoke cloud.

And while it probably wouldn’t have been possible due to the amount of training required, imagine Casimir Pulaski commanding "banners" of Colonial horse archers against the British...

>Range isn't a battle archery can win at, however. Muskets can kill at 300 yards

Most sources I see say a longbow range is closer to 400 yards with muskets declining sharply after 100. Even assuming both are equally accurate the longbows would still be firing at 12 arrows per minutes compared to the muskets 5.

A longbow could only maybe manage 300+ yards with very special arrows meant more for sport and record breaking than war.

Meanwhile the lower end range of a musket was 200 yards, while military engineers of the age built killzones with a 300 yard range in mind.

For someone to use a war bow to it's fullest potential requires years of training and skill, particularly to use it in a stressful situation. Muskets on the other hand only require the individual to learn to properly load and aim.

The only reason bowmen were so effective in the English army was due to the archer's culture in England in which most men were experienced to some extent with a bow. In colonial America on the other hand nobody had used bows and nearly everyone had some experience with muskets.

>Because beyond 100 yards arrows arc so much that it's extremely difficult to hit anything with them.

Not at all, especially when you're talking about hitting a solid line of Redcoats.

Checked

The bow isn't useless or completely ineffective, you're right, but it definitely doesn't compare to the effects of musketry.

Muskets and traditional bows probably had about the same accuracy.

fioredeiliberi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=20439

>Archery isn't that easy

Yes it is, I got a 20 lb fiberglass bow from Woolworths when I was in 7th grade, after my buddy's mom found one at a garage sale and we got very accurate with them in the course of just a week of going out daily into the woods behind the house and shooting at stumps.

There was one big up-turned stump in a field that we called the "Hill Giant" (roughly 4'-5' in diameter) and would could hit that at least 50% of the time out to almost 200 yards.

Knowing Franklin he was probably thinking of the stealth bow tactics that the natives used against musket users in earlier wars

> Meanwhile the lower end range of a musket was 200 yards

Absolute nonsense, we’re talking about 18th century smooth bore flintlock muskets firing round balls, you were lucky to get 50% hits beyond 100 yards.

And because of that, (as well as their slow loading) muskets had to be tightly grouped along a very small front, literally shoulder-to-shoulder or you would simply be wasting ammo.

>20lb
Exactly a child's bow
War bows are much much stronger
You have to build up the strength and have a good technique to use one of those
Anybody can stand at a distance with a gun
With enough practice they might get good enough to be able to shoot something 1000 yards away
That doesn't mean if you throw them into a war with that gun they will be suited for war
See what I'm saying
Guns are just easier to train with and get good at

Absolutely not nonsense. You're talking about 18th century firing drills compensating for conscripts and maximizing the bayonet charge.

Thats just a crock of shit.

>Absolute nonsense, we’re talking about 18th century smooth bore flintlock muskets firing round balls, you were lucky to get 50% hits beyond 100 yards.

That's actually pretty good. Better even than archery.

> You're talking about 18th century firing drills

Which was all about correctly loading the musket and firing on command in the heat of battle, accuracy was a secondary concern as it was mostly dependent on the firearm itself.

> Better even than archery.

Ahh, so you’ve never actually shot a bow in your life...

>Exactly a child's bow

And children were accurately shooting in only a week of goofing around.

>War bows are much much stronger

Medieval long bows had to be to punch thru armor, a Colonial era bow would only need a 50 lb or so draw weight effectively kill Redcoats well beyond the range of muskets.

Firing drills were purposefully eschewing accuracy in favor of firing rate, not just resigning accuracy to a secondary concern they had no control over. In calm, optimal settings, a trained musketeer could hit a target at 200 yards without much trouble. Repeating this under battlefield conditions was the problem, and accuracy in firing drills was eschewed not because it couldn't be taught (that's what skirmishers were good at) but because training men to fire and load and fire faster was simpler and more effective in crushing morale.

>Ahh, so you’ve never actually shot a bow in your life...
Sure. I killed that deer last year by jumping out of a tree with an arrow in my fist. I haven't used a traditional longbow, but I've been using modern hunting bows since I was a child. Hitting a target at 100 yards is completely doable, but takes a few weeks of practice, and even then needs some absolutely perfect shooting conditions to make that accurate shot and hit a deer sized target - and that's with modern aiming attachments.

At 100 yards shit like wind will affect the accuracy of both an arrow and a musketball, but the former more than the latter.

>Medieval long bows had to be to punch thru armor

Medieval long bows had to be able to shoot an arrow a certain distance. Poundage was never a question of piercing armor, but how far and how heavy an arrow could be launched.

>effectively kill
>well beyond the range of muskets
What the absolute fuck?

>Sure. I killed that deer last year by jumping out of a tree with an arrow in my fist.

And with that, I'm out...

>Poundage was never a question of piercing armor, but how far and how heavy an arrow could be launched.

When did children stop learning what sarcasm is?

He's right, if that's supposed to be incredulity. Archers moved on to stronger bows in order to shoot further, not harder. It's why almost all competitions and minimum requirements for Medieval longbowmen focused on range, with divisions based not on draw-weights but the weight of the arrow being shot.

>a Colonial era bow would only need a 50 lb or so draw weight effectively kill Redcoats well beyond the range of muskets.

Just no. Volley range for simple self bows in the 50 to 60 pounds draw weight is 70 yards, and 40 yards for single shots at targets out of formation. This is with little to no armor, and is based on a number of different eras. Before you say anything about my hunting or target shooting please keep in mind that modern sports bows ,even the cheap and or non compound ones , are far better pound for pound then non modern bows.

The smooth bore guns of the era were volley effective up to 80 yards and could cause a good deal of flesh wounds up to 110 yards. For single target it looks like 65 yards for smooth bores and for Pennsylvania rifles it was about 200 yards.

To get a 100 yards we can turn to the Japanese for a good example. The foot bows in the 80to 95 pounds draw weight range could fire accurately to 50 for a normal trained user and up to 100 yards "if accuracy does not matter". They did not use volley fired bows but that is a good analogue to volley fire.

Lets just say that the bows they used were not simple self bows to get that amount of effective range.

>Because beyond 100 yards arrows arc so much that it's extremely difficult to hit anything with them.
I was shooting arrows in a uni course and was able to hit a Hula-Hoop 250 yards away without problems after around 4 months of training.

>Just no. Volley range for simple self bows in the 50 to 60 pounds draw weight is 70 yards, and 40 yards for single shots at targets out of formation.

Son, I was doing better than that with a 20 lb fiberglass Woolworths bow when I was 12 years old.

You were killing people with a 20lb bow when you were 12?

>There are plenty of modern longbow enthusiasts who picked up archery as an adult and didn't take anywhere near a "lifetime" to get to historic draw weights.
Yeah but there's a pretty signification difference between doing it as a light hobby and doing it continuously for hours while other arrows rain down on you and horrible plate-armored brutes want to bash your head in with their war hammers and there's nothing you could really do to stop him if he got close.

Did you ever see the movie Glory, where the character thinks he's hot shit because he can reload his rifle faster than everyone else until the officer pulls out his pistol and has him try to do it while a gun is going off in his ear?

The English had a saying about the matter, "if you want to train a longbowman, start with his grandfather"

What sort of wounds/damage were bows capable of inflicting? How much damage would taking an arrow to the face or the chest at 100 metre do? And what would it take to actually kill someone with an arrow? Lucky shot to the eyes or between the ribs?

>And what would it take to actually kill someone with an arrow? Lucky shot to the eyes or between the ribs?

Lucky shots mostly, especially if the targets were wearing even padded armor, let alone maille or plate.

Longbows have the same problems. Composite recurve bows are just as powerful.

>shot
>reusable
Wut

Just. Stop.

Actual archer here:

40-50lb bows are fucking beginners bows for adult males, and would do jack shit in combat unless you're skirmishing in broken ground.

an 80-90lb bow is going to be shit vs armor.

The fucking Iroquois used muskets ot conquer ALL of their neighbors. They only went back to bows when the white man cut off the flow of guns and powder.
And jesus, you FUCKING RETARDS need stop.

Modern, fiberglass bows with fucking fiberglass arrows are INHERENTLY more accurate than handmade weapons made with organic material. They're also more energy efficient.

>you are going down and will be out of the fight, even with a peripheral hit to the arm or leg.
Yeah, no.

It is essentially a knife with LESS than 40-50lbs of force behind it when it hits. It hurts and may disable or kill.
May.

>Longbows
>400 yards
Look up flight arrows.
Now drink bleach.

>20lb bow

>hitting at 200 yards
Bullshit. You wouldn't be able to get the arrow out to that range at all, and if you somehow did, it would end up wildly off course because it'd be slow as shit and even slight breezes would have time to fuck it.

>muh 50lbs
Nigger, I OWN a bow in that weight range. I also used opt shoot 8 hours a week. I did that for TWO YEARS.

a company of redcoats would kick the shit out of a company of archers of my skill level, and I was pretty fucking decent.

No you weren't.

Why do you make up lies, user?

>horrible plate-armored brutes want to bash your head in with their war hammers and there's nothing you could really do to stop him if he got close.
ENglish archers were known for their aptitude for close combat, actually.

Depends on the arrow head.

Imagine a very sharp steel knife on a thin stick being stabbed into you.

If it hits the CNS, you die. Anywhere else and you may die of blood loss or infection. Whatever it hits is probably disabled.

>Son, I was doing better than that with a 20 lb fiberglass Woolworths bow when I was 12 years old.

Because hitting a target with a light target arrow is the same as hitting a adult male to kill him.

For some perspective on the e-bragging in this thread, Olympic archers shoot at a 1.22m wide target 70m away.

I'm surprised people still remembered the longbow then, especially in America

>No you weren't.
Sorry, I fucked up it was 250 feet i.e. around 80m. Granted the thing way laying on the ground but hitting a target that big is fairly easy.

>Look up flight arrows.

What does that have to do with longbow combat ranges?

>"If weapons were discharged at more than 80–100 yards, the chances of a hit were so greatly reduced that the expenditure of lead per casualty inflicted was massively inefficient. The Prussians at Chotusice (1742), for example, loosed off about 650,000 rounds to make 2,500 kills and about the same number of wounded. Some of those fatalities (perhaps as many as half) would have been caused by artillery and some by bayonet. Assuming, therefore, that about 1,200 men were killed by musketry, it took approximately 540 balls or roughly 33 pounds of lead to extinguish one Austrian soldier’s life." - Hall, Weapons and Warfare
>
>"At the battle of Vitoria (1813) during the Peninsular War, contemporaries estimated that the British fired 60 rounds per man (usually the total allocation) for an expenditure of 3.5 million rounds or 450 per French casualty." - Rothenberg, Art of Warfare

youtube.com/watch?v=uX0sRSgJsWc

Question to Veeky Forumstorians:
Hypothetically speaking, for someone who has traned with BOTH a longbow and 18th century musket for like 5 years during the weekends, which would they more likelly preffer to use in a battle?

>have seen whole salvoes fail to kill four men.
I read about the phenomena of a quite large percentage of soldiers shooting in the air to not kill anyone (if not in direct danger) during WW2, I think its quite possible it happened back then too?