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Anthony Clipsom wrote:


While the simple answer is yes, the complicated bit is working out how much and whether it is significant. Take how the knight is moving in relation to the path of the arrow. The chance of the arrow hitting at precisely 180 degrees to the direction of travel is quite low, and some sort of vector analysis would be needed. Obviously, the angles of the glancing surfaces and how they are affected by motion would also come into play. I think there may be some more complex physics around rate of energy transfer from arrow to target that would be affected by a moving target too, but it is well beyond my knowledge of such things.


Thanks for the point about the angles.
Ryan S. wrote:
Augusto Boer Bront wrote:
Ryan S. wrote:
I wonder, does anyone of thoughts on how riding on horseback would affect arrow penetration? For example, would a knight charging on horseback be hit harder because he is moving in the opposite direction as the arrow?


Of course, it's simple physics.

You just need to add the speed of the horse to the speed of the arrow.

Thing is, good luck hitting anything.

So yes, the arrows would hit marginally with more energy, IF you it anything.


Do you mean that an archer would have a hard time hitting a horse and rider charging him, or that the archer would have a hard time hitting the rider in a place where it would count?

According to the first google result I found, a horse gallops somewhere around 25-35 mph. I took the low end and converted it into m/s and got 11.176 m/s. In one of Tod´s videos, Joe was shooting around 55 m/s with an 85 g arrow. That should have an effective speed of about 66 m/s. If my calculations are correct, that is an increase from 128 joules to 185. That seems to be a significant increase to me. I think, though, one should also take into account the mass of the rider. Of course, if 128 joules is enough to penetrate mail, and 185 is not enough to penetrate plate, then it would make no practical difference.

Maybe the more interesting question, is what about with horse archers shooting backwards? The loss of 11 m/s is probably more of a game changer than a gain of the same amount. Of course, the role of angles is important because archers probably don’t ever shoot the exact opposite direction that their horse is going.


You simply can't aim deliberately at weakspots in the armour.

Not like Joe did or like Tod did with his scope. You're just lobbing arrows hoping they will hit anything at all. The rider keeps going up and down as he comes towards the archer, and arrows take a bit to reach the target, they are not laser beams. So an archer has to take into account the speed of the rider and the angle that the whole cavalry formation has approaching the frontline of the archers while shooting.
The nearest that i can recall was Mark Stretton's tests with his motorized charger.

How Effective is an Arrow Against a Charging Knight?

Does an Advancing Target Increase the Combined Impact of an Arrow onto Armour?

While his test armour is notably in the lower end, being 1.6mm of medium carbon steel and its also facing the perfect storm of heavy arrows at point blank from a high power bow.

[ Linked Image ]

Joe Gibbs shooting at really too close for comfit.
Only a minority archers would be in a position, be ready and have the nerves to take that single shot.
Augusto Boer Bront wrote:


You simply can't aim deliberately at weakspots in the armour.

Not like Joe did or like Tod did with his scope. You're just lobbing arrows hoping they will hit anything at all. The rider keeps going up and down as he comes towards the archer, and arrows take a bit to reach the target, they are not laser beams. So an archer has to take into account the speed of the rider and the angle that the whole cavalry formation has approaching the frontline of the archers while shooting.


I am not sure if I understand what you are saying. If you are saying that an arrow actually hitting a weak spot is more luck than skill because it is so hard, then I agree with you. Not even Joe had laser like accuracy against a still standing target with his bow.

If you are saying that archers didn’t aim at all, then I am sceptical. I think it depends on the range, but I think the rule is that archers aimed at individual enemies, and not the masses. If it was a 1/100 or 1/1000 shot, I don’t know, but they did shoot a lot of arrows.

Graham Shearlaw wrote:
The nearest that i can recall was Mark Stretton's tests with his motorized charger.

How Effective is an Arrow Against a Charging Knight?

Does an Advancing Target Increase the Combined Impact of an Arrow onto Armour?

While his test armour is notably in the lower end, being 1.6mm of medium carbon steel and its also facing the perfect storm of heavy arrows at point blank from a high power bow.

[ Linked Image ]

Joe Gibbs shooting at really too close for comfit.
Only a minority archers would be in a position, be ready and have the nerves to take that single shot.


Thanks, that is really cool. It is interesting how even a test that is not the highest quality can provide some useful insight. There is the trade-off between shooting fast or shooting accurate, and even though it wasn’t a real knight, the archers felt pressure, and there is also the learning curve. I don’t think that is anything one can learn from shooting at a butt on Sundays.
As far as steeled arrowhead goes, I recall there's interesting, if bit cryptic Polish source from around 1575 :

Quote:
Kto chce przebić rzecz niepodobną, jako się to trafiło na cesarskiem dworze dworze panu Stani[sławowi]
Łaskiemu, że moźderz przebił miąszy, ten ma umieć kunszty o rozmaitem hartowaniu żeliaza,
o czem się wtórych księgach, spominając
naukę kowalską, mówiło.


It translates roughly to

"Who would like to strike trough impossible thing, as it had happened on Emperor's court to Stanisław Łaski, when he pierced thick mortar, he should know various arts of tempering iron, as it was mentioned in other books, those about blacksmith art"


So apparently Stanisław Łaski put the court of Emperor Charles V in awe, by piercing thick mortar (I imagine it has to be type of cannon, not any vessel for grinding stuff, though it's not explicitly mentioned) with an arrow.


And author describing it doesn't mention strength of the archer or bow, but mentions metallurgy of arrow as most important thing.

In previous part of his book, he writes

"If you want iron delicatus for sharpening, so you can drag it out, make it sharper, you quench it in oill, as they do it with razor. If you want it hard, so it wont' break, quench in water. And if you want it truly tempered, strong and too hard as they do with czekans, then quench it in goats blood."

Dunno if Sarnicki had any real knowledge about iron work, or if he was just repeating some tales as it often happened in Renaissance work, but I thought it's very interesting anyway.
Benjamin H. Abbott wrote:
The aventail tested here gives a sense of how heavier mail may have performed historically. The idea of mail being rubbish against penetration conflicts with a number period sources. We do have plenty of accounts of arrows defeating mail, but also of mail resisting arrows or of mail claimed to resist arrows. For example, Augusto Boer Bront on Facebook a year ago described a circa-1453 Italian military manual that recommends good-quality hauberks for light cavalry over brigandines because they stop crossbows, bows, spears, swords, & handgonnes while covering more area. These claims seem hard to believe because of modern tests, but we don't know exactly what they meant by good-quality mail. We do know that some mail was made of hardened medium-carbon steel, at least in the early 16th century..


Dunno if this isn't thread necromancy, but I found this military manual, and it seems to have one even more interesting passage there. If I read this Renaissance Italian right, with the help of Google Translate, at least. :lol:

Quote:
Et in defecto de bone pansere, piutosto coraczine che triste panzera, che le triste panzera omne debile ponta La passa


Seems to mean "in absence of good mail, prefer corrazina over bad mail, because the bad mail lets every weak point/thrust pass" which is fascinating and seems to actually be in accordance to some observations today, bad Indian or Pakistani mail, or very light mail indeed does seem to offer almost no protection against points sometimes.

While there are sources/experiments telling it could be incredibly resistant, on the other hand.

So the questions remains about what's exactly 'bone pansere" and what's "triste pansere", but it seems to be quite a hierarchy here, mail is better than brigandine or coat of plates, but only if mail is "good".
Bartek Strojek wrote:
Benjamin H. Abbott wrote:
The aventail tested here gives a sense of how heavier mail may have performed historically. The idea of mail being rubbish against penetration conflicts with a number period sources. We do have plenty of accounts of arrows defeating mail, but also of mail resisting arrows or of mail claimed to resist arrows. For example, Augusto Boer Bront on Facebook a year ago described a circa-1453 Italian military manual that recommends good-quality hauberks for light cavalry over brigandines because they stop crossbows, bows, spears, swords, & handgonnes while covering more area. These claims seem hard to believe because of modern tests, but we don't know exactly what they meant by good-quality mail. We do know that some mail was made of hardened medium-carbon steel, at least in the early 16th century..


Dunno if this isn't thread necromancy, but I found this military manual, and it seems to have one even more interesting passage there. If I read this Renaissance Italian right, with the help of Google Translate, at least. :lol:

Quote:
Et in defecto de bone pansere, piutosto coraczine che triste panzera, che le triste panzera omne debile ponta La passa


Seems to mean "in absence of good mail, prefer corrazina over bad mail, because the bad mail lets every weak point/thrust pass" which is fascinating and seems to actually be in accordance to some observations today, bad Indian or Pakistani mail, or very light mail indeed does seem to offer almost no protection against points sometimes.

While there are sources/experiments telling it could be incredibly resistant, on the other hand.

So the questions remains about what's exactly 'bone pansere" and what's "triste pansere", but it seems to be quite a hierarchy here, mail is better than brigandine or coat of plates, but only if mail is "good".


I can think of a couple of things that make mail bad. It could be damaged, it could be made from low quality metal, it could have big gaps or made from thin wire. What usually makes modern mail bad?
Ryan S. wrote:

I can think of a couple of things that make mail bad. It could be damaged, it could be made from low quality metal, it could have big gaps or made from thin wire. What usually makes modern mail bad?


The quality of riveting, and shaping of the overlap is the main culprit generally, yes.

Dan Howard compiled this little list o, in his opinion, main catches.

http://myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.19189.html

The thing with thin wire is that it doesn't necessarily make mail "bad" just light, I imagine that period people were aware that they shouldn't expect say, sleeveless haubergeon that weighs 11 pounds to perform nearly as well as the ones that weighs 20.

Lots of Indian mail has links that are of decent enough width, but fattened really thin, which is probably very bad for resisting shearing forces in particular, but again, some historical rings are shaped kind of like that too.
Bartek Strojek wrote:
Ryan S. wrote:

I can think of a couple of things that make mail bad. It could be damaged, it could be made from low quality metal, it could have big gaps or made from thin wire. What usually makes modern mail bad?


The quality of riveting, and shaping of the overlap is the main culprit generally, yes.

Dan Howard compiled this little list o, in his opinion, main catches.

http://myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.19189.html

The thing with thin wire is that it doesn't necessarily make mail "bad" just light, I imagine that period people were aware that they shouldn't expect say, sleeveless haubergeon that weighs 11 pounds to perform nearly as well as the ones that weighs 20.

Lots of Indian mail has links that are of decent enough width, but fattened really thin, which is probably very bad for resisting shearing forces in particular, but again, some historical rings are shaped kind of like that too.


Thanks. It seems like there is a difference between modern bad mail and historic bad mail. I wonder if there was an established grading system, or if most people could tell what was good by having it in the hand. I always thought that there was a spectrum of mail quality. That does help interpret historical accounts varying on the effectiveness of mail.
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