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Post by Deleted on May 20, 2010 4:00:18 GMT
There is a period source recounting arrows penetrating armour at the battle of Homildon Hill in 1402. It reads something like "The Earl of Douglas was pierced with five wounds, notwithstanding his elaborate armour". I'll try and find out who wrote it.
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Post by Deleted on May 20, 2010 5:11:06 GMT
what about bodkin points? Specifically designed for piercing maille and plate and fairly widely used up until the introduction of the gun. I think the problem is that they are firing straight on at the target whereas most arrows were fired in high arcing volleys which would give them more speed and hitting power, not to mention that the bows had a heavier draw. It's an interesting idea for sure but I don't know of many/any tests that have been done under proper conditions (arcing fire, bodkin points etc) also I have to wonder whether an arrow fired at a target moving towards it wouldn't also give the arrow more penetrating power.
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Post by Deleted on May 20, 2010 13:27:57 GMT
Actually, Luca, I'm pretty sure that these were backspikes. The holes are square and about half an inch a side. Seems to me that the the hopolite swords were much thinner in cross-section. Maybe flattened diamond, but not square square. I mean, these were BIG square holes. Hold on, let me see if I can find the pictures. bmonday.com/images/35/r_DSC00115.jpgBottom row, second in from left I was replying on the first part of the post about holes in breastplates, not about greeks helmets and backspikes...
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Post by Deleted on May 20, 2010 13:41:11 GMT
As "armor piercing" swords (actually made to pierce mail, not plate) would have more or less the same section in the tip as the spike of a polearms or warhammer so we can't know with wich of them the holes in armor are made with... Well, go on and try to pierce a breast plate with a sword. Doesn't work, I tell you. A powerful blow with a war spike surpasses the power of a sword thrust BY FAR and does break through solid steel if you hit it right. Also, The point of a war spike is a lot thicker and more massive than every sword I've seen. I'm sure there are some exceptions but normally the short and massive spike differs greatly from the tip of a XVIII or so. I agree with, I just say you can't really know what weapon did the hole in the armor. I don't believe it's probable with a sword butit may be possible with an estoc during a horse charge. And estoc really has very similar profile to pole arm spikes, I've seen both few days ago in a museum. Estoc was even thicker than some halberd top spikes.
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Post by Deleted on May 20, 2010 13:45:51 GMT
what about bodkin points? Specifically designed for piercing maille and plate and fairly widely used up until the introduction of the gun. I think the problem is that they are firing straight on at the target whereas most arrows were fired in high arcing volleys which would give them more speed and hitting power, not to mention that the bows had a heavier draw. It's an interesting idea for sure but I don't know of many/any tests that have been done under proper conditions (arcing fire, bodkin points etc) also I have to wonder whether an arrow fired at a target moving towards it wouldn't also give the arrow more penetrating power. There was a discussion on myarmoury about this and it seems that bodkin arrow heads don't have enough mass to penetrate breastplate and they were more used as flight arrows that could fly far and kill horses and injure man without armor. They could sometimes get through rings of the mail but both through it and padding not really.
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Post by Deleted on May 20, 2010 14:57:29 GMT
Ah, Luka, gotcha. This is a fun discussion! Anybody here have some bodkin points and a breastplate they wouldn't mind messing up for us? I'd like to see...
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Post by Deleted on May 20, 2010 16:02:14 GMT
I'm pretty sure there are more than enough tests of that, I think I read about at least two of them at myarmoury. About that vid, well, I'm sure they got the power right, they did some testing and measuring of the power a real longbow creates and applied this knowledge to the test. Also, I doubt an arrow has more power when coming down from a long flight than it has at a distance of 20m.
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Post by Deleted on May 23, 2010 2:46:09 GMT
the Deadliest Warrior has false outcomes ....its all on looks and the strangth of the demonstrator's arm and the choice of the judges ......its not facts
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Post by Deleted on May 23, 2010 19:59:18 GMT
About the Agincourt deal... a bit off topic, though it's logical that the arrows directly killed more many more horses than knights. Most of the fallen Knights were likely killed/crippled by the other horses and finished off afterwards by the English.
As for the Darksword test, something is off there, either the armor or the sword, maybe both. If plate armor behaved like that in combat it wouldn't have been used. I think a lot of these demonstrations use 18 gauge mild steel breastplates, while historical breastplates were thicker on some areas. Higher quality armor, at least from the later middle ages, was also likely hardened.
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Post by Deleted on May 24, 2010 3:53:27 GMT
Ah, Luka, gotcha. This is a fun discussion! Anybody here have some bodkin points and a breastplate they wouldn't mind messing up for us? I'd like to see... Well I have a 110 pound warbow we could use ;D Some of the bows at Agincourt may have been 50 pounds heavier than that though.
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Post by Deleted on May 30, 2010 4:07:59 GMT
There is a period source recounting arrows penetrating armour at the battle of Homildon Hill in 1402. It reads something like "The Earl of Douglas was pierced with five wounds, notwithstanding his elaborate armour". I'll try and find out who wrote it. I think this one stands as testimony to the efficacy of the Earl's armour. He charged headlong into a barrage of arrows at close range and survived! Sure, he lost an eye and a testicle, and was wounded in three other places, but his armour did a fine job of keeping him alive. This one's a win for the armour. Also, lest the longbow-worship go too far: I wrote an essay on the topic of longbows vs. plate armour that I keep prepared for whenever I happen to encounter the tired old pop-culture myth that longbows were the bane of plate armour. One always hears about how it sent arrows through the armour of the French knights at Agincourt like paper. It simply isn't true, and the historical sources do not support such a position. I offer this now: Even the recent book by Strickland and Hardy The Great Warbow--surely the authoritative work on the subject, in its obligatory armour vs. arrows chapter pretty much admits that good-quality plate would keep a man from being killed by arrows, and lists a few more accounts that reinforce that position that I have not noted above.
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Post by Deleted on May 31, 2010 5:07:55 GMT
Hi armoredsaint. I think the arrow vs plate debate has been done to death here, there and everywhere throughout academia and even as a Warbow archer I'll stand by the fact that the bow wasn't the "knife through hot butter" some may claim it to be. In fact, I would pose this theory is almost extinct except for those with the like-mindedness of the katana-can-cut-through-tank school of thought. As you said, the poor earl lived albeit minus one eye and testicle (testicle, really? I knew about the eye... ). edit for spelling
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Post by Deleted on May 31, 2010 14:11:55 GMT
Sure of what? The longbow thing? Yes, I am. There's a good show on youtube called weapons that made britain. There they test the bow against a historically accurate breast plate out of hardened steel and against one with normal steel. The difference is certainly there. I'd recommend the show, it's really good. Of note in that test was the fact that they only used 200 fps, approximating a 100Lb bow with no horn on the tips. In fact, I see a Lot of these tests at 100 Lbs. And usually very lightweight arrows ("because that's what you need for range"). The problem is that the archeological evidence says heavier arrows and heavier bows. You don't get the kind of skeletal abnormalities all the archers who've been dug up had at a mere 100 Lbs. At 150 is where that starts. And the arrowheads that have been dug out of castle doors weigh too much to have good balance on anything short of 1,000 grains. I would like to see these tests repeated with and without horn tips, at 150+ Lbs with 1,000+ grain arrows at 100 yards. I'm betting we see significant improvement on the part of the bow. Eidt: That would be vs 14th C armour, not the later stuff that made so many changes on the medieval battlefield.
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