[Sean Manning]

Before he got famous, Yuval Noah Harari published "Special Operations in the Age of Chivalry, 1100-1550" (2007) https://boydellandbrewer.com/subject/medieval-history/special-operations-in-the-age-of-chivalry-1100-1550.html I would also look into how the Chinese used the big chu-ko-nu.

Complexity is very important because in a low-tech economy, its very hard for complex devices made from expensive materials to compete with just hiring a bunch of workers. Does your would-be patron spend his money hiring master cabinet-makers and blacksmiths to make Jörg's device, or hiring master archers who know the "shoot a handful of arrows" trick?

What does your device currently weigh without the bow?

[Benjamin H. Abbott]

Thank you for working on this fascinating project, Tod. While I believe magazine bows potentially could have been useful in medieval/Renaissance warfare, the results with Joe Gibbs in your latest video aren't particularly impressive.

Gibbs averaged an arrow roughly every 4.67 seconds with that 160lb bow, an arrow every 1.6 seconds with the 95lb SIL bow, & an every 4 seconds with the 120lb SIL bow. Shooting the 120lb SIL bow seemed more tiring for Gibbs than shooting the 160lb bow.

I assume Gibbs will shoot better with SIL bows with more practice, but I'm going with the available evidence for now. 95lbs is pretty light for military archery, especially with the mediocre performance of yew, & 120lbs is still on the lighter side. I doubt there were any historical situations where you'd want the 120lb bow shot slightly faster over the 160lb bow. The SIL system seems revolutionary in theory because its proponents promise speed, power, & accuracy. Shooting swiftly alone is quite possible with technology that dates back to antiquity. I'm confident there were plenty of historical archers who could shoot 95lb bows at 1.6 sec/shot or faster by holding arrows in the bow or drawing hand. Lars Andersen can do an arrow every 0.5 seconds with a 53lb bow, & he's past his physical prime. Kassai Lajos can manage an arrow every 1.5 seconds on horseback & hitting thrown discs. In the 6th century, Procopius wrote about how Persians archers shot swiftly with weaker bows while the Romans used more powerful bows more slowly. He favored the Roman style because of its ability to defeat armor.

Such speed-shooting techniques don't appear to have been popular in Western or Central Europe, but various Western/Central European armies faced armies with archers who likely used these techniques & shoot extremely rapidly at times. These doesn't appear to have devastating on the battlefield; potentially effective, but not dramatically so. Additionally, in various places where speed shooting was known & practiced, many military archers preferred to focus on power &/or accuracy over speed. While this might be an accident of history, the style of military archery that endured the longest, the Manchu style, stresses power & precision with heavy arrows. Peter Dekker claims there no evidence for speed-shooting techniques in Manchu/Qing archery.

Regardless of technique, shooting rapidly necessarily fatigues an archer more. They're exerting more fore & expending more energy during a shorter period of time. Numerous historical archers preferred to shoot fewer but more powerful shots.

At best, I'd guess the medieval SIL design would have allowed historical European archers to shoot a cavalry-weight (75%) bow about as rapidly as speed-shooting techniques allow, for as long as the magazine lasts. The device's technical complexity & the disadvantage of having to reload the magazine strike me as a lot of trouble to replicate what a person can do with proper skill using a conventional bow, but then speed shooting does seem very challenging & laborious to learn.

[Sean Manning]

[Gregg Sobocinski]

Watching this bow in action reminds me of the latchet crossbow: Impressive to watch and drawing me to want one very much, but in the end, it would probably be used mainly for civil defense.

[Benjamin H. Abbott]

[Jonathan Dean]

[Will S]

Jonathan, one thing to note is that many hundreds of the Mary Rose arrows are far less than 1/2" diameter. Many are 10mm or less at the shoulder, some are over 13mm and plenty are inbetween. This means that we can't call anything a "Mary Rose shaft" as there simply isn't a standard.

This goes for length as well, of course. There are average peaks, but a huge range either side. The larger majority of the shafts is 30.5" draw length, with a smaller peak at 28".

As for the socket of the head being larger than the arrowshaft, the majority of the Mary Rose arrows would dispute this. Most of them have a very clearly defined shoulder cut all the way around, to ensure the head sits flush with the shaft. This is quite time consuming as compared to simply tapering the point and shoving the head on, allowing it to sit proud of the shaft so was obviously a very important step in construction.

[Jonathan Dean]

[Will S]

I'm not entirely sure why the Westminster Abbey arrow is an issue, as nobody has yet done any testing with one. What is clear however is that whoever made the arrow TRIED to make the shaft and head as seamless as possible, by filing the arrowhead shoulder down to meet the shaft, instead of just leaving it proud with a defined edge.

It's also clear (and Hector Cole has made this point himself) that the head is badly made and should not be used as a standard example. The barbs are welded poorly, and are even different lengths on the original. It's also worth noting that the tip of the head is blunt, as it would be if it had hit something hard. The impact of this could easily be enough to push the head further onto the shaft, opening the socket slightly. This is why it's slightly dangerous to take single items and assume large things such as the majority of arrows were made with a head larger than the shaft. When you look at a much larger group of items such as the MR arrows, it's clear that obvious attempts were made to get the socket to sit flush with the shaft.

As for the smaller Mary Rose arrows, I'm currently working on a number of new replicas of the 10mm and 10.5mm socketed shafts, and none of the ones I'm looking at are breasted, but are all either parallel or bobtailed.

[Greyson Brown]

The arrow and bow weight discussions seem like very interesting topics for other threads, but I am curious if there are any other insights on Tod's original post/question. I am still inclined to see this device as something that makes the most sense in a defensive role, but Tod's suggestion of a small "special forces" group is interesting (if a bit modern feeling). Are there other possibilities that we are missing? I don't see this as offering a huge advantage from horse back or from a static battlefield position, but others might have considered things I have not.

-- Greyson

[Ian Hutchison]

[Jean Thibodeau]

[Pieter B.]