Battle of the Alibamo Fort, La Florida el Inca, Book II, Ch. I. Of Hernando de Soto,

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Thereupon the general attacked with fifty cavalry, and received upon the front of his helmet so violent a blow that the arrow bounded at least to the height of a pike. However, without being disconcerted, he drove the Indians so briskly that he compelled them to quickly throw themselves into the fort.

This is a question that can be argued yay or nay endlessly :( There is only one way of really answering it fairly definatively, and that is one that is never likely to happen. That is for several people, in *authentic* period-correct armour and undergarments(all made with period correct materials) to stand out on a field at let themselves be shot at with accurate, full-strenght reproductions of medieval bows and assorted arrowhead types at 'average" battlefield ranges. Once this has happened, have doctors examine them for the appropriate wounds. Any takers for such an experiment ?

duplicate post, please ignore

I've been hit repeatedly with an aluminium baseball bat hard enough to knock me off balance and barely felt the impact within the cuirass. I've done the same thing with mail over a woollen sweater and I received bruising but nothing more. In the worst bruise you could see the weave of the mail links in it. I was sore for a few days but not debilitated.

^Agreed, the polyens and couters , gorget would extremely vulnerable even if the torso were immune because those places have to have flexible plates in order to turn your head and use a weapon. The neck to much that people can die from whiplash and allot rope near their neck and their own falling body weight. Also, to compare a aluminum bat to flanged mace, poleaxes hammer head or war hammer head is disingenuous. A aluminuim bat is more like blade heavy sword than either of those things. Impact of bat is not nearly as concentrated. I find it ironic Eric that you say you would assume when you send a post on thisvery thread that we shouldn't assume anything when conversing.

I suspect even a person wearing a hardened breastplate would eventually succumb to blunt trauma if battered in the torso for long enough. I can buy the idea that target a plate-armored torso wasn't likely to accomplish anything. The sources for armored fighting I'm familiar with do instruct that combatants target the head/face and sometimes limbs and belly. In any case, various sources indicate that at times historical warriors in the age of plate did beat one another into submission in a manner perhaps akin to the Battle of the Nations, albeit with less shoving and at least occasional thrusts. Describing Flodden Field 1513, Thomas Ruthall mentioned how the armored Scottish pikers were "so mighty, large, strong and great men that they would not fall when four or five bills stroke on one of them at once" but that still "they could not resist the bills that lighted so thick and sore upon them." By this account it took more than four or five bill strokes to drop an armored Scottish piker, but bills strokes nonetheless got the job done. As discussed earlier, El Victorial includes repeated cuts against plate armor, with single-handed swords and other weapons. Maybe it's stylized, though at other places the action reads as vividly realistic, but this at least shows that walloping your foes as hard as possible with a sword to demonstrate your strength was an aristocratic ideal. Artwork from the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries likewise frequently shows swords and polearms held above the held, apparently giving mighty strokes against armored foes. As previously noted, Fiore de'i Liberi wrote that a certain pollaxe blow would kill through a helmet. English lead mallets at Agincourt supposedly could knock out or kill through a helmet with a single blow. Sir John Smythe thought that lusty (vigorous) halberdiers who gave blow at the head and thrust at the face would carry all to the ground.

Francisco Núñez de Pineda y Bascuñán described how blows from macanas, Mapuche military clubs, left him senseless despite his armor during Cangrejeras 1629 (see the Spanish here):

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After they wounded my right wrist with a spear, rendering me unable to bear arms, they hit me with a mancana, which is what these enemies call these strong, wooden clubs, and they have been known to knock down even a horse with one fierce blow, and following up the first blow with others they knocked me off my horse, leaving me senseless, the backplate of my armor was jammed against my ribs and the breastplate pierced by a lance [presumably a long Mapuche infantry spear/pike].

Bascuñán came to in captivity. His armor allowed him to survive but didn't save him from being incapacitated and captured. His experience highlights key vulnerabilities of plate armor: wounds to the thinner armor over the limbs, blunt force, and possible penetration by lances and pikes (usually nonlethal, but doubtless unpleasant). It's unclear whether he wore any protection over his wrists, but in any case the hands and wrists could never be armored as surely as other parts of the body. Given the date, Bascuñán's armor probably wasn't hardened, though it may have been thick.

As far as the original question goes, it do think it would be unlikely for arrows to cause any significant harm to folks armored in plate via blunt trauma. I'm sure enduring a barrage wasn't fun and could reduce morale and cause fatigue, but meaningful injury doesn't seem too plausible assuming a good harness.

Mark Stretton said the number 80J and so unless we compare like for like it can't really mean anything, so a hammer or a bat can give direction to the discussion but not answer unless you know mass and speed.

I have been shot with 65j and 55j at point blank with 18mm diameter blunts into a brigandine for the first and 10mm of leather over a magazine for the second, both to the belly.

Both were fine. You certainly felt the strike, and the leather on the magazine stung a bit like I had been smacked with a ruler, but no more, the brig felt like nothing much.

Yes I know that the blunt is not a bodkin, but on the basis that the bodkin will not penetrate anyway then actually there is little difference between the two.

You asked if anyone would stand in front of a 140j arrow wearing a breast plate. If the plate was properly made, then yes I would. From experience you feel a bit twitchy in these moments, but its fine. Life affirming, thats all. I have also put my face behind 6mm polycarbonate and watched the bodkins come in - also life affirming and makes you blink.

I will say it again, if a man can take an assault rifle round to the chest, he can certainly take a longbow arrow to the chest, given suitable armour.

Tod

A good swing with that at say 30 m/s would generate around 900J and yes that is likely to hurt a lot, but wasn't the OP referring to Mark Strettons post and arrows?

Benjamin Abbot wrote

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This doesn't necessarily follow. While it has much more energy, a 5.56mm NATO round has about the same or less momentum as a heavy arrow from a heavy yew bow. A 4.02g bullet at 991 m/s has 4 kg·m/s while a 100g arrow at 54 m/s has 5.4 kg·m/s. 7.62mm NATO round does have somewhat more momentum, though: 7.8 kg·m/s.

My low grade physics won't allow me to counter this neatly. Using 1/2mv2 gives an absolute number in joules and so the assault rifle round is (depending on whose table you pick) 20 to 60 times the energy of a longbow arrow.

A one tonne sledge on ice, pushed at half a meter per second (i.e..slow) has a great deal of energy and momentum, in fact its energy is 125j, so around the same as a longbow arrow, but it will not penetrate a breast plate or even a person, take that same energy and translate it into an arrow and you start to have something really dangerous.

Energy and momentum are related, but not the same thing, however my low grade physics won't allow me to continue this conversation in an elegant way, so here I stop.

Tod

Here is a blunt Indian arrow next to a normal pointed Indian arrow, I am not sure if this was for hunting or for impact in war as is being discussed here, are there European blunt arrow examples?


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On the long running discussions of arrow effectiveness my opinion remains the same, the medieval enthusiast should avail himself of some hunting experience. Specifically high powered rifles 2000fps+, low powered(under 2000fps= handguns, shotguns and muzzleloaders) and modern vertical bows and crossbows. This will put the great range of paradigms, anecdotes, statements and buzzwords he may have heard( such as 'blunt trauma) into a categorical perspective and clear up a lot of discussions before they even start. As to the question will arrows not causing penetrating wounds in armour, still cause blunt trauma. The answer is possibly yes, in the sense of a contusion may be formed. Will the blunt trauma/contusion be lethal or even disabling? Rare/doubtful.

Hi Eric, yes there are lots and lots of blunt arrows like that found in European contexts going back to the mesolithic. They were (and still are) used for hunting small game across the world.