RollingWave
Ashigaru
posted 01-13-13 08:03 AM
EDT (US)
7 / 14
On a general level, ancient bow's penetration power was limited, and even very powerful later bow would rarely penetrate good shields, while you could try to skrimish and keep running firing, that wasn't a very effective strategy especially when opponents could simply ignore you and run to your camp which usually isn't too far away.
Later on, bows got better, either with composite material or simply making them bigger, and skrimish tactic of such while fairly ineffective on foot, was a different story if on horse back (especially since being on horse means your at an angel and have more leisure to actually aim .)
And also, on ancient war in the west, it was rare for archers to have a lot of ammo, because most archers were hunters that brought their own bows, and when you only hunt you need what? 5-10 arrows at best. that sort of limitation made it very unlikely to do the volley shooting that later archer were more commonly doing, it wasn't until well organized archer groups with supplied ammos appeared that bows became a more legitimate threat. the ammo factor was a major part of why slings were actually more common in the Med than blows for a long time.
Of course, these development were uneven, and war was always a tug and war between arms and armor. for example, in REALLY ancient warfare (Hittie / Old Kingdom Egypt / Assyrian etc) because back then there were very little armor, and the terrain was very open, bows were very fashionable and effective when used with chariots.
Meanwhile, bows remained very widely used in China, because after Chariot era began to die out it was already interceded by era with very organized state armies and also the invention of the crossbows. One of the earlier famous battle of the Warring State period already explicitedly stated that it was won by the winner ambushing a lot of crossbowmen and firing on the enemy army at night, which killed the enemy general outright.
I think it would be more interesting to wonder why the Macedonian Phalanx weren't more threatened by archer though, given that they had largely done away with shield, and the armor coverage of the day weren't exactly huge. though I guess that's more of a combined arm thing.. aka they had archer / cavalry of their own to cover the pikemen.
ShieldWall
Ashigaru
posted 01-14-13 03:43 AM
EDT (US)
9 / 14
Speaking as someone who spends half their life playing around with bows and arrows, I'd agree that the bow was not noted as a devastating weapon at the time and would probably fall into the category of skirmishing - to cause a few casualties and start to break up formations a little.
Yet I am sure that they were powerful and had the potential to be devastating. The double-recurve composite bows of the east had been in existence for a long time and the design makes for throwing an arrow with great speed and therefore great power. The problem comes in what sort of point you have on it - a medieval bodkin is designed to concentrate all the weight and momentum of the arrow into a single small point, making it great for penetrating armour. So far as I can tell most ancient arrows were broadheads, which are not designed to go deep into anything, they slow rapidly as soon as they make contact with an object and are designed for hitting horses, weak spots in armour, exposed flesh, etc. So considering that Greek Hoplites carried huge shields, they would probably be very well protected behind them.
Also there's the trajectory of the shot to consider. Arrows are much more powerful when shot directly at something at close range. If you shoot them up into the air to rain them down on formations, what happens is that the arrows goes up until it runs out of momentum and stalls, then it simply comes down picking up what force it can as its weight accelerates it. There's a degree of force behind it, but nowhere near as much as you'd get if you shot it flat at something. The question is, can you get weakly-armed archers close enough to the enemy to shoot flat at them? I guess this is how the Persians managed to penetrate Roman armour at Carrhae because the horse archers can ride right up to an enemy. If you're on foot though I don't think they could risk getting that close without being charged by the heavy infantry or, worse, cavalry. English longbowmen only managed it by being put on the flanks behind a row of stakes. So I imagine on an ancient battlefield the archers had little choice but to shoot upwards and rain arrows, enormously restricting their potential.
The difference with the longbow, or English Warbow as it ought to be called, was firstly the bodkin point, secondly an army that could consist of as many as 80% archers, and thirdly these archers were strong enough to draw the bows. This cannot be understated, it needs a lifetime of preparation to draw a bow of 150-200 lbs weight. A few rare people can do it today, but the very most that bows usually come at today is 70 lbs. I could just about draw that but would struggle to get on top of it. So I'd say that the longbow was successful because the state was prepared to invest the resources to make an endless supply of powerful bows and arrows, and compelled the population to train with them. Bows have always been this powerful, even back into unrecorded history, but how many people could pull one, nevermind control it enough so that the arrow went off in more or less the right direction?
ShieldWall
Ashigaru
posted 01-15-13 03:55 AM
EDT (US)
12 / 14
Pitt - I had a look at that, I'm particularly fond of the chap who challenged people to shoot bodkins out of 150 lb longbows while he stood at 100 yards in full armour. I've seen someone shoot half inch diameter shafts with big bodkins out of such a bow, the speed they come out at has to be seen to be believed, and they travel more or less flat out to 200 yards. People have always placed too much importance on the question of "can the longbow penetrate armour?" and have demonstrated that it couldn't with a series of massively flawed experiments. It definitely can penetrate armour, not with certainty on every shot or every dozen maybe, but it doesn't have to penetrate. You have to remember that you've got thousands of archers shooting twelve arrows a minute into a mass of men, only a small handful of whom could afford the finest armour.
Yet it's been demonstrated that the thick layers of wool in a simple gambeson could stop an arrow from penetrating. Proof that the longbow was useless? Not at all, because the impact of one of those arrows will knock the man clean off his feet, leave him winded, break a bone or two, maybe rule him out of the battle all together and so it will certainly slowly break up the formation that he was a part of. And with thousands of arrows being shot every few seconds, it won't be the last one that hits him. So the man standing at 100 yards in armour probably won't be killed as all those bodkins hammer into him, but one way or the other he'll be in Accident and Emergency at the end of the day, and his armour will be trashed.
The same applies to antiquity. Just because the arrow hasn't found a way through the armour doesn't mean that it hasn't done any damage. As I said these things fly out of 150 lb bows at such a speed that the impact alone is enough to hurt someone. It doesn't bounce off harmlessly as if someone was throwing a stone at a tank.
ShieldWall
Ashigaru
posted 01-15-13 11:55 AM
EDT (US)
14 / 14
I wouldn't disagree with that. If it was easy to penetrate armour then 5,000 archers between them shooting 60,000 arrows per minute, well it would have been a very short battle! So those numbers alone confirm that it couldn't have been like the first day of the Somme for the advancing infantry. At long distance archery is more of an annoyance, keeping heads down, wounding horses, and the odd lucky shot finding a way through to wound or kill someone. I've also heard it said, daft though it sounds, that the sheer amount of arrows in the ground makes it a bit difficulty to walk over the battlefield. They're not twigs that can be snapped just by standing on them, the shafts are half an inch thick and you would not like to trip and fall on one.
As soon as the enemy formation is around about the 100 yard mark, the bodkins are brought out and they will start to drop people. While the three men on the battlefield who can afford the very finest armour will be quite safe, the mere mortals around them will not be so lucky. As I said the impact alone is enough to do damage to a man, breaking bones, severe winding, bending armour and seizing up joints, and all the time the formation is fragmenting.
Not to say that bodkins cannot penetrate though, because they most certainly can and with a lot more ease than they are given credit for. Now I'll happily put my hand up and admit my bias, I'm an archer and I'd like to believe in the myth. But from my biased point of view a lot of nonsense has been talked about the weakness of the longbow in recent years, with some utterly loaded experiments apparently demonstrating this. All of which was repeated as fact right up until the point when Simon Stanley, one of the few people in the UK who can shoot 150 lb warbows, stood up and proceeded to send arrow after arrow through a dummy wearing typical medieval armour over chainmail over cloth.
I'm sure there's bias in all reconstructions though. The archers shooting close range at armour which isn't really up to scratch, while those who favour the impenetrability of armour will pretend that every man in the middle ages was dressed up like a King Tiger tank.