[Jean Thibodeau]

David;

The pict you show is of a halberd and not a pike: With a thrust I don't think the target would feel the difference if the pike head is a thin and narrow one.

Pike: Just a small headed spear with a stout 18' to 21' shaft.
The later type of halberd you show has a spike at is very similar to an awl pike type pollarm and about the same length as the 6' to 8' halberd.

An Italian Bill of the early 16th century would be similar at least as the thrust is concerned.

A & A makes one: http://www.arms-n-armor.com/pole066.html

My appologies if any or all of this is something you already knew.

The pollaxe also has a nice poky thing: http://www.arms-n-armor.com/pole010.html

Halberd: http://www.arms-n-armor.com/custom927.html

English Bill: http://www.arms-n-armor.com/pole030.html

[Benjamin H. Abbott]

[Jean Thibodeau]

[Carl Scholer]

I doubt the KE of a lance blow to the chest would be fatal to an armoured individual if his armour held. If no significant indenture or penetration is made the KE is going to be felt by the wearer of the breastplate in the form of the breast plate slamming into his chest. That spreads the KE pretty evenly over the entire surface area of the chest and I really doubt a lance blow has the kind of energy necessary to collapse the chest cavity in this way. In any case it's far more likely that the knight will be knocked off his horse. Knights jousted with thick and heavy blunted lances all through out the late and high Middle Ages without dieing on the first joust.

In my opinion that is one of the advantages of plate over mail. Unless dented severely or defeated all together it will spread the energy an attack over a wide surface area and significantly reduce the threat of blunt trauma. Mail on the other hand, even with an adequate gambeson, will still concentrate the energy of an attack on a relatively narrow area.


As for mail against spears,

A test was shown on the discovery channel about the Vikings where a military weapons testing lab put a reproduction piece of mail against a simulated spear thrust, unfortunately they didn’t state what kind of spear thrust. The mail was made by a Viking historian and consisted of alternating solid and riveted links. The mail alone was tested and it was pierced by the spear. With the addition of a linen gambeson the spear penetrated through the mail but failed to make it through the last layer of the textile defense. I suspect though that the spear thrust would have still been very harmful to wearer despite the last thin layer of textile holding.

Another test was done on the discovery channel where a javelin was thrown at a mail coat thrown over a pig carcass. The javelin penetrated a few centimeters into the pig carcass. Without the mail coat the pig was nearly skewered through IIRC. I don't remember the quality of the mail coat though. I think it may have been alternating riveted and solid rings.

A test by the weapons that made Britian showed a simulated weighted lance head plowing deaply through a mail and textile defence.

However, I can think an account during the crusades where an infantryman was struck by a javelin that pierced through his mail coat and most of his pour point but failed to kill him. Vegatus thinks a javelin, if thrown forcefully enough, can penetrate a cuirass. The armour of Vegatus' day was primarily mail so I believe he was probably referring to mail. A Muslim account of the crusades describes how a Muslim cavalryman lanced an individual who he thought was unarmoured only to find out that he had a mail hauberk under his shirt and survived the blow to continue fighting. In the Viking sagas though there are spears that are described as being designed to penetrate mail, and in those sagas mail doesn't appear to offer a good defense against spears.

All in all it’s pretty tough to say. I think anything weighted like a halberd, pilum, or a lance should have no problems plowing through mail. Mail armour when combined with significant textile support seams to give decent resistance against normal spears though... however even when it holds it’s always pretty close.

[Rod Parsons]

I agree with Jean, a man in a good suit of plate is fairly safe. But not impervious.

Incidentally, a good few years back I had a friend who had a pot helm made, it looked very heavy and thick and all his arrows ricocheted or broke on it. He reckoned he would be safe wearing it but changed his mind when I broke an arrow on it at 30 yards.
He was delighted to see the arrow break until he realised that my shot had gone through the eye slit and put a ding on the inside rear of the helm, breaking the shaft as it vibrated inside the eye slit.

All very amusing, but not particularly relevant.

What little testing I have done against padding shows that the type of arrowhead makes a very significant diifference to the penetration achieved. The longer more tapered points are capable of greater penetration with padding than the plate specific points.
It may be that the best point against plate and padding would require a compromise between weight and length, since the shorter pointed heavy might penetrate plate but would be retarded more by the padding than a longer type, but if too long and thin, the plate would be likely to defeat the point.
Rod.

[Dan Howard]

[David Ruff]

[Rod Parsons]

Since the standard response appears to be that where penetration is achieved the test was most likely not representative of good period armour, then please define the acceptable criteria for the target in such a test.
We are in agreement in principle, but no progress will be made with testing unless we can define some realistically achievable criteria for the object of such a test.
Rod.

[Benjamin H. Abbott]

[Jean Thibodeau]

[Dan Howard]

[Nathan Robinson]

[James Odell]

not to senselessly cast myself into the fray, but a point to take into consideration is that penetrating power and target
composition aside, the form of the targets surface is important. the curved surfaces on plate armour can deflect projectiles
if hit at certain angles, therefor while the weapon may be designed to penetrate the armour, it will never be 100% effective.
probably another reason not to attempt to fire at a target at anything over 40 yards. as stated earlyer thats the range at which
an archer can reliably hit a point on a mansized target. ideally a point that doesn't feature a curved surface to deflect the shot.

$0.2

[Jean Thibodeau]

[Dan Howard]

[David Ruff]

[Carl Scholer]

David;

Well I think it's important to remember that some pretty good tests have already been done on the subject by universities with expensive lab equipment and people with doctorates. Most of the data is contradictory, though not extremely, to the results of your tests.

Out of curiosity though what kind of steel are you using for your bolt heads. I'm thinking it might give me a clue as to why your bolts are penetrating so easily. So far I have been researching the materials you have been using in your tests on matweb.com. It looks like 1020 steel has a Vickers hardness rating of about 126 and 1050 steel has a hardness of 242 as rolled. The 1050, at least in terms of hardness, is equivalent to later run of the mill armours of the 15th through 17th centuries. The 1020 looks like it might decently represent the hardness of 14th century iron armour and earlier. Some of the better armours could have harnesses in the 300's and 400's, for example this suit averaged 340 in Vickers:

http://www.wallacecollection.org/i_s/conserva...armour.htm

Of course these are all really rough estimations. It may be that this is only the surface hardness of the armours instead of their actual hardness.

It's also a good idea to remember that if your armour is limited by poor mettallurgy so are your arrowheads. Projectile deformation is a very important component of ballistics testing. After all we don't test WWII tank armour by shooting depleted uranium at old 1940's Panzers

P.S.

We do have an armour which suffered some punctures to the shoulder plate from the strikes of a pollaxe. I have a picture of it on my computer but I don't remember which museum has it.

[Rod Parsons]

The shooting should be done by those who can draw the heavy bow with a suitable point on a heavy war shaft, such as Simon Stanley or Mark Stretton.
Certain of the reported tests by PhD holding "authorities" utilised the wrong point types, unrealistic support of the plate and bows of insufficient power.
What is needed is provision of properly representative targets to be tested under controlled conditions by those who are capable of shooting the right equipment.
One of the questions about period plate concerns it's uniformity, since due to the manufacturing process it seems likely that only the very highest quality would even approach the more uniform hardness of modern manufacture.
What I would like to see is a specification for the plate and it's assembly with padding etc.that the doubters can agree upon and such a piece being tested by those who are competent with the heavy bow using a suitable projectile.
To my limited knowledge, most tests have thus far fallen short in one area or another. Some to a laughable degree, such as the TV programme by a UK academic which demonstrated that plate could not be pierced by using a long needle bodkin in a poorly conceived and executed test.
Rod.

[David Ruff]

[Carl Scholer]

Actually the composition and shape of the longbow bodkins was based on the findings from over a hundred bodkins found through archeology, some of which actually came from the battlefield of Agincourt IIRC. The arrows and armour tested were put under the Vickers scale to see that the hardness’s were accurate. In another test, which also made their materials the old fashioned way, the best bow tested was a 150lbs longbow that was put up against a replica breastplate which was placed against of soft clay mold (which was considered by the ballistics lab to a good representation of the human chest) of a human chest with a gambeson underneath. That 150lbs bow had more than twice the KE and momentum of 175lbs steel crossbow presented in the plate tests and the 450lbs tests until a heavier bolt was used. A 1.9mm wrought iron plate was tested against a crossbow bolt which contained 80J which made it about 5mm, again more energy than the 45J bolt that punched through a 2mm plate to depth of over 20mm.

For example the 70lbs(?) longbow that was put up against mail in the earlier internet test probably put an arrow out with greater KE than the 175lbs bow in the test.

As for the lack of uniformity in medieval armour, well luckily the variance is pretty well documented. For example with a breastplate of 150 Vickers hardness the majority of the variance was in the 125 and 175 Vickers range. The hardness’s given were the mean hardness’s. For example a breastplate with 225 as its mean hardness from 1610 had a max hardness of 375 and a min of 158. The mean should still give the best representation of what a projectile will face in trying to penetrate.

Some of these more modern tests are very rigorous with regards to accuracy. I see nothing amateur or false in the conduction of these tests.