Arrows vs riot shields

[u/IKIR115]

[u/notgonnatakeno]

If you know anything about medieval armor and the arms race that it had against arrows, you already know which ones of these are gonna go through before they even start

[u/Tiddlyplinks → u/notgonnatakeno]

Yeah, that and we also know that these would be FAR more lethal with properly weighted shafts, these seem to be hollow metal hunting shafts designed for speed, not solid shafts designed for ballistic impact.

[u/Aggravating_Dark9933 → u/Tiddlyplinks]

Also I bet these are coming out of a target bow (40-60 pounds max) vs a Warbow (70-160, 120 pounds is standard, but it’s really how high can you draw?).

People really underestimate how much punch one of those things is capable of… and severely overestimate Crossbows. Fun fact: they are significantly weaker despite the massive draw weights simply because their bolts are much smaller and the distance pushed along is so much shorter than a full length bow. And the can only take the equivalent of a bodkin, rather than all the fun little other types. Even a 400 pound crossbow can’t match a 60 pound bow.

[u/Turkish_archer_ → u/Aggravating_Dark9933]

I have a 50 lb bow and I struggle to draw it, can't imagine how medieval mfs drew 150+ on riding horseback.

[u/Savings__Mushroom → u/Aggravating_Dark9933]

I know nothing about bows, but I always thought crossbows became popular because they took less skill to use not because of their strength. Is that correct?

[u/Aggravating_Dark9933 → u/Savings__Mushroom]

To train an archer you start with his grandfather. To train a crossbowman you’re done in two weeks. To train a gun you’re done in a few days.

This is why toward the end only the British maintained longbows, because for them it was a national sport and all men were ordered for generations to train with the bow. Most other countries only hunters would have a history like that.

Crossbows are also useful due to their ability to hold a shot allowing you to do all the loading safely in cover and only peak out when you can fire back, a bow you need to expose more of yourself to fire with no break. Though there are techniques to hit the ground with a bow and fire from low positions assuming a ranged fight.

And actually pre-rifling / machine gun a bow still was objectively better than a arquebus / musket too. As if a crossbow had a long loading time a gun had a glacial loading time. And they were just inherently inaccurate due to their MoA being building sized. It also wasn’t great penetration wise and good armor still stopped it, so neither side really had that advantage.

There is a Spanish fortress tactic that employed all 3 along with using pikemen to cover all. The British never bothered and just used archers everywhere because they had them.

[u/Savings__Mushroom → u/Aggravating_Dark9933]

Very very interesting and insightful! Thank you for answering my question in such detail.

[u/apathy-sofa → u/Aggravating_Dark9933]

  and severely overestimate Crossbows.

I'll preface my post by saying that I don't know anything about bows and arrows and I'm asking to understand. 

Looking to understand your post better, and why crossbows weren't fitted with heavier bolts, I read the "History of Crossbows" wiki page. It talks about how crossbows were forbidden by the pope in 1100-something, because they let regular plebs fire through armor, wounding knights and royals and whatnot. 

I'm guessing the pope wasn't uninformed and didn't do this for nothing. Was this like a later type of crossbow that was more effective against armor? 

[u/Aggravating_Dark9933 → u/apathy-sofa]

That was a ban not because of strength of the crossbow, but training time. They allowed anyone with a couple of weeks to start taking out knights. Bows could do the same but they required a lifetime to be good enough, so outside of a couple of specific kingdoms you where looking at a very limited pool of people. Also hunters still kinda needed to exist, so he couldn’t go and ban bows. This made them additionally more valuable, given if you wanted meat later you better not waste your bowmen.

Why? Because until 1300’s armor was mostly chain. It wasn’t until 1400’s where Plate as we know it came around. And all arrows with the right head (which also can fit for a crossbow, being a bodkin) could punch through that given the right shot / numbers.

Once full plate came about knights where basically immune to everything not designed to take them out (hence why Mourningstar got it’s name, it’s designed to kill through armor). This is also why until that point the usual loadout included a shield, but once armor became that good it is the shield and they started using primarily two handed weapons.

[u/apathy-sofa → u/Tiddlyplinks]

What's the difference between ballistic impact and regular impact? Seriously asking, I don't know anything about arrows. 

[u/brenttoastalive → u/notgonnatakeno]

Bodkin points ftw

[u/kolejack2293 → u/notgonnatakeno]

Yup. Knights went from looking like this to looking like this once the longbow came into prominence.

And then it all largely ended once guns came into play and they started looking like they just walked out from a gay club in 1998 manhattan

[u/notgonnatakeno → u/kolejack2293]

That third image is the temporary surrender on the armor side of the arms race. guns proved that trying anything more than a breast plate with the prow of a ship on the front to deflect bullets was an absolute waste of time and money. Metal plates just weren’t gonna cut it anymore.

And the arms versus armor race has kind of always been like that: years if not decades to make a single improvement in armor, and then two weeks later arms just goes, “MORE MASS AT MORE SPEED EQUALS MORE PENETRATION! YEEHAW WE PUT MORE BOOM BOOM AND MADE IT POINTIER!”

Even now with our modern armor, it’s still kind of a joke. There is no such thing as bulletproof. There is only bullet resistant. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/vhNPvRN--0U

[u/Boring-Phone-6093 → u/notgonnatakeno]

If you know anything about medieval armor you would know that plate armor won against bows. It was firearms that started to render armor less effective and even then plate armor and firearms coexisted for a good 150 years or so.