Bows vs. Armor

From various YouTube vids, it seems pretty clear that both longbows and crossbows were ineffective against even minimal armor, even against a padded gambeson (at close range) which would means longbows and crossbows were primarily used against horses, unarmored support troops and peasants.

150lb longbow vs plate armor:
youtube.com/watch?v=Ej3qjUzUzQg

140lb longbow vs cloth padded gambeson:
youtube.com/watch?v=CULmGfvYlso

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=0-2KLuAH4GY
youtube.com/watch?v=MCgu33DawxE
youtu.be/CULmGfvYlso?t=30s
youtu.be/0-2KLuAH4GY?t=7s
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

and?

I agree, user.

Disagree.

war archery was

>used in mass to bombard the enemy
>used at extremely close range to where you can hit something like a head or gap.
>Used as a prelude to hand to hand fighting

Armor was costly in the most common forms of it.

Why would so many different cultures over so long a time period invest in armor if it did not work? To say that it did not work against almost all pre-gunpowder weapons to a meaningful level of effectiveness provided the armor was of the same region and period is just wrong headed.

>and?

Well, we're told that English long bowmen slaughtered armored French knights during the Hundred Years War and Mongol horse archers slaughtered everybody but the reality is bows just weren't effective against any kinda armor.

> used in mass to bombard the enemy

At long range, bows would be even more useless.

> used at extremely close range to where you can hit something like a head or gap.

The odds of purposely hitting someone in the head with an arrow in the midst of a swirling battle were 1000:1

> Used as a prelude to hand to hand fighting

Still won’t do shit vs a guy in armor.

That's why you tried to avoid the thickest parts the enemy's armor: the parts facing you. Getting above them or better yet behind them would give you a better chance to mortally wound them

...

wow well done, you have proven that bows were useless all along. Lets go back in time and tell every fucking civilization ever that they shouldnt even bother

imagine a thousand dudes shooting at you from your flanks for hours while your heavy troops at the front are stalemated, leaving you a sitting target

Also imagine a literal horde of crazy chinks drive by shooting you from all sides

>muh testudo
How valiant

>Getting above them or better yet behind them would give you a better chance to mortally wound them

This would do nothing to a guy wearing a helmet.

Look at the video above, they're shooting straight on from 20 years away and it does nothing at all.

>imagine

If you've got armor on, those arrows won't do shit unless it's a one-in-a-thousand lucky hit to the face.

>Modern steel is better than shitty iron in the 1300s
>SEE BOWS ARE SHIT
Fuck off

>one-in-a-thousand lucky hit to the face.
>what is aiming

This piece of art makes me giggle.

>Archer on the right is making a pose
>Dude in Green in the middle of the fight

Not all fighting was done in heavy armor

Not all fighting was done is super dense formations

Most types of armor had gaps, arrows often did not kill but they could wound which would hamper the ability to fight.

Even if your a heavily armored guy if you just walked through a wall of missiles that injured or killed our support that armor won't help you much when ten guys start clubbing you with whatever weapons they have on hand.

> stop moving around, I'm trying to shoot you in the face!
> ok, sorry

> Not all fighting was done in heavy armor

As I posted up-thread, even padded cloth armor will stop an arrow.

> Not all fighting was done is super dense formations

Being in formation doesn't change the fact that armor stops arrows.

> Most types of armor had gaps, arrows often did not kill but they could wound which would hamper the ability to fight.

The odds of hitting a tiny gap in a guy's armor at XXX yards away while the guy is charging at you, (or even standing still) are insanely small.

> if you just walked through a wall of missiles that injured or killed our support

Like I said; bows are only effective against unarmored horses and support troops.

Imagine being this fucking retarded, they use a modern steel component NOBODY WOULD HAVE HAD ACCESS TO ARMOR THIS STRONG.

The average armor VPH back in the day was 180-210 which would need around 120-130 joules to penetrate if they had used heavy arrows which they weren't at point blank range they could have easily gotten 150-160 joules which would easily cut through that fucking shitty slag metal

archeology and battle records will show that arrow wounds were hardly uncommon. No one is claiming every arrow hit or every arrow is fatal.

indeed a formation with proper gear would whether a alot of arrows with minimal casualties

But battle is rarely so perfect, and in some venues did not even resemble that.

We know people got arrow wounds all the time because archeology and battle records tell us people got arrow wounds all the time, armor not withstanding.

Not him, but
>bows won't do shits against heavily armoured opoonents
>b-but everyone used bows, it means they were good!
Yeah, because in every fucking civilization there were guys in plate armour.
What's your point?

All armor had weakspots. With massed archers some arrows would always get through gaps and weakspots. Besides not everyone would be fully armored to begin with

>150lb
WTF??
What kind of colossus can use such a bow? I'm 100% certain the guys in the videos can't pull more than 80lb and I highly doubt anyone in the world can make a reasonable use of a 150lb bow. Not to mention the arrows have to be made from some super strong wood.
Where is the trick?

People who train. Mediaval war bows actually went up to 180 lb

>The power of these medieval War bows was breathtaking. Detailed analysis of the War bows recovered from the Tudor warship Mary Rose, which sank in battle in 1545 with an almost complete inventory including hundreds of bows and thousands of arrows, show the draw weights ranging from 80lbs to 180lbs with the most prolific being in the 140lb range. The draw weight is defined as the amount of force, expressed as a weight, which needs to be applied to the string in order to bend the strung bow to its full extent. When speaking of war bows the full draw length is usually taken to be 32”, which does not mean that the archer will draw it to that length; it may vary by a few inches.

People don't realise that draw weight is not everything.

The grain of the arrows, arrow weight, arrow length, diameter, fleshing length, composition of the Bow, flexibility of the bow all matters.

Some bows are made for flight shooting, others for cavarly and there were even strength test bows.

180lb
Sorry but it sounds impossible. A 100lb bow requires a massive strength to be operate and you could kill a rhinoceros with it. And they're really uncommon, most hunters use a 70lb bow.
180lb is simply impossible.

>180lb is simply impossible
lol
youtube.com/watch?v=0-2KLuAH4GY

Absolute joke.

At Agincourt the longbows purpose wasn't to kill the knights but to immobilize them and stop mid-charge by killing their horses or wounding them. After that men at arms and the archers would gon and kill or capture the knights. Agincourt is a good example because the knights found themselves in a killzone when the yeomen went in their daggers and killed them because they could not get up fast enough after dropping from their horse due to their heavy armor.

Not just the armor, they got stuck in the mud. Don't fall for the 'le plate armor made you slow' meme

Do you have arthritis? Are you a squat manlet?

Seriously, it ain't that hard. Pretty much every data I've seen on Atern on esteemed archer cultures such as Korea, Turkey, Manchus, etc all used 120-140lb bows on average.

You have to anchor your foot, push with your front arm and use the muscles on your shoulders and back to pull the string back. It'd be impossible to do a full draw with just the arms alone. If you still don't believe me, go to your local Archery range and ask them about it.

Modern steel is astronomically better than medieval steel.

It's not just about hardness as another user posted, but also other alloying materials, control of carbon distribution, and removal of oxides.

The difference between modern steel and medieval "steel" is as big as the difference between that steel and wrought iron.

pretty sure the chestplate in the video was made with the technology available during that time. The smith is even in the video

tell that to the knights at crecy who got devastated by longbowmen

Indeed, these are reenactors who are all about duplicating oldy timey methods but even if the arrow had a titanium nitride coated carbide arrow head, it still ain’t penetrating that armor.

Try to find a 100+lb bow in your local archery shop... If by chance you manage to find one, then try to use it, you'll see the problem.

The idea that bows and crossbows were the most deadly to or sort of a "counter" to the armoured knight is probably a Victorian myth that came up with the rise of the bourgeoisie who projected their inferiority complex they had towards the aristocracy upon the medieval yeomen. The idea that the "common" man with this "dishonourable" weapon shot the haughty aristocrat off his high horse appealed their mindset. Historically, missile weapons were most deadly to infantry and the golden age of the longbow were the English wars against the Scottish who heavily relied on infantry. By the time of the hundred years war the golden age of the longbow was already over.
That being said: missile weapons most certainly had their purpose on the battlefield, but they could not bring a cavalry charge to halt. They were not a medieval super weapon and the archer was not the equivalent of the modern day sniper.

> Try to find a 100+lb bow in your local archery shop...

The heavy draw weights needed for warbows are the reason it took so long to train skilled archers and why they were required to practice every week, because learning to shoot a bow can easily be done in a weekend but being able to shoot a 100+ lb warbow took continual practice.

This is why the crossbow replaced the European longbow in armies of the time.

that's a big crossbow

No it doesn't take training, it takes muscular force at a level that only few people can reach. 150-180 lb FFS, it's like doing pull ups with 3 fingers, and you tell me they trained entire batallions to do that?

>Mongol horse archers slaughtered everybody
got btfo by hungarian and polish army when they adapted after their losses and started using heavy armoured cavalry and knights

Getting hit with arrows would most like be like a hard punch. So if they killed you in armor it was from blunt force trauma.

>a reproduction gambeson is somehow modern steel

If you have normal weight and you can do pull ups you can do pull ups with three fingers with minimal training.

Show me ONE person doing pull ups with only 3 fingers...
I can do at least 10 pull ups and I'm somehow fit, but zero with one hand, let alone with 3 fingers.
These figures of 150-180lb are obviously inaccurate.

>he can't do one one-handed pull-up
Are all Veeky Forumstorians fat fucks?

Are you seriously questioning the ability of people to use 180 lb bows based on the fact that (you) can't do one handed pull ups?

This is what a real 100lb bow looks like. youtube.com/watch?v=MCgu33DawxE
100lb is a fucking huge strenght in archery.
The guy isn't a manlet and as you can see he can't pull the string fully and even has some issues sometimes. I let you imagine what 180lb means, given that the amount of effort is exponential, there's a big gap between a 70lb and a 80lb and these are already big bows. 180lb is impossible, even the arrows wouldn't like it.

actually both countries had heavy cavalry even before Mongols came it just became even heavier after their attacks

also Mongols in Europe and Russia in general are fucking overrated
Russia wasn't united

Poland wasn't united either and they still sacked only one province

don't know about Hungary but it wouldn't surprise me if they were occupied with something else at the time as well

youtu.be/CULmGfvYlso?t=30s
youtu.be/0-2KLuAH4GY?t=7s
>inb4 they measured it wrongly

>No it doesn't take training, it takes muscular force at a level that only few people can reach.

Simply giving some big guy a warbow doesn’t suddenly make him an effective archer, those muscles have to be put thru their paces regularly for the _skill_ to be developed, otherwise he’s just wildly launching arrows all over the place.

Learning to shoot a bow is easy, even little kids can be taught to accurately shoot in a couple of days but accurately shooting a 100+ warbow requires muscles and practice.

Bows were only used for hunting the ebic archers no scoping knights were medieval equivalent of Rambo movies
>muh horse archers
they didn't exist, retards saw a bunch of people on horses who carried their hunting bows with them and used spears and swords in actual combat and that's how the meme started just like once someone saw dinosaur bones and started the dragon myth

also bows had a huge disadvantage - they required ammo

a spear doesn't

so why use a bow?

Because you're a fucking cuck?

It doesn't make any sense.

>t. never shoot a bow
Of course these guys don't shoot at 150+lb, it takes them pulleys or 2 guys to test the bows, and then they half pull the string, look at the speed of the arrows.
100lb is a rarity and they're used to kill big 5 game. You'll hardly find one for sale, I wonder why...

Do you also think a guns RPM is a lie because the magazine can't hold that many rounds?

What kind of argument is that?
Where are the 100+lb bows on the market? Where are the big guys doing pull ups with 3 fingers? You have no idea of what shooting a bow is and your only sources are some larpers on yt easily debunkable... Go find an actual archer and cry.

You know humans can do progressive strength training to become stronger, right?
Or are you so unfamiliar with the gym you call it James?

>horse archers didn't exist
U wot

>100lb is a rarity and they're used to kill big 5 game. You'll hardly find one for sale, I wonder why...

Because few nowadays want to put in the time and effort to become skillful with a 100lb bow, when there are more efficient and practical options available, which is why the crossbow replaced the longbow in Europe and itself was replaced by firearms.

>Arrows are useless.
>Someone forgot to tell the Mongols.

I'm familiar with archery. Pulling 180lb is a laughable myth. Hell I know dozens of archers and no one pulls more than 90lb, and it's just for the show.

>Because few nowadays want to put in the time and effort to become skillful with a 100lb bow
Or more likely there's a physical limit... You bet factories would sell big ass bows to anyone who wants to pass as the motherfucker of the hood, but they don't exist because almost no one can use (and therefore wants to buy) a 100+lb bow.

All your friends including you are fuckin faggots.

...Munchy?

> > Because few nowadays want to put in the time and effort to become skillful with a 100lb bow
> Or more likely there's a physical limit...

They are historically attested and there are several vids in this thread showing people (regular guys, not muscle bound steroid monsters) shooting 100+lb bows.

Do you know how much it would hurt being hit repeatedly with arrows?

That and it forced them to pull their visors dowb, so dismounted dudes trudging through the mud were fingered by the time they reached the English

>people nowadays don't do x
>that means it's impossible to do x
You are this retarded

>there are several vids in this thread showing people (regular guys, not muscle bound steroid monsters) shooting 100+lb bows.
No. You are fooled. They pull the string 5 inches less than they should to reach the full strength.

>Do you know how much it would hurt being hit repeatedly with arrows?

Not at all, as you'd be wearing armor?

...