A longbow could shoot how far???

Factual Questions
21

Not sure where the information about 400 yards comes from. There are several people who appear to be expert on the abilities of the longbow who talk about it being accurate and able to kill a person at 300 yds. One of the people who discusses this himself has shot longbows in competition, so I imagine he’s not completely unaware of the ability.

It would be interesting to know from that records page what the difference between the “English” and “American” longbows is in modern times. If the current “American” longbow is equivalent to the old English longbow, the record listed is over 400 meters.

22

Back in 1991 Scientific American had an article called Early Bow Design and Construction. There was a drawing of one on the cover (looks like a recurve to me) and it included the caption

23

Calling into question a person’s sanity – particularily my own – is a sort of speciality of mine.

:slight_smile:

24

That foot bow number is absolutely staggering.

25

We’ve moved on from the total surviving sample of five bows and one arrow quoted in the 1980 paper by Kaiser.

Since the Mary Rose was brought to the surface in 1982 they have recovered 137 complete longbows and 3500 arrows :eek: Both the bows and the arrows came in a variety of sizes but the average length of the bows was about 6ft 6in and the the arrows 30in. The *Mary Rose * site does not give an estimate of draw weights but this site says they ranged from 88 to 176 lb.

Cetainly a 180lb pull is feasible - it is actually done regularly by modern bowmen using recreated war bows. This site gives a range of 330-350 yards but it is not clear whether this would have been an effective range in warfare.

26

Don’t forget that these longbowmen pulling a yew bow with 200lb draw weight were trained from childhood and practised regularly - by royal decree if necessary. Longbowman skeletons show visible deformities as a result. That’s one reason why gunpowder weapons got a foothold even though they were slower to fire and worse in accuracy - you could train anyone to use a musket in a very short time, whereas if you wanted a supply of longbowmen to draw on you had to plan it around a man’s entire life, and then you had some very dangerous peasants wandering about the place if they started to be unhappy with the social order.

27

One more issue to throw in here for the non-archers, at least more technical data.

Draw weight does increase arrow speed, with more speed meaning more distance… BUT, it does so SLOWLY. For every 5 lbs of weight you add to a bow you get an increase of about 1ft/s. (about, very aproximate, will depend on arrow weight as well)

Which brings us to arrow weight. My modern bow shoots arrows that are fairly light. The increase when using lighter arrows is much greater. For every 5 grains of weight you save, you pick up 1ft/s. 1 grain = 0.00228 ounces.

I changed from aluminum arrows (better than wood, but now very un-durable technology) to a carbon arrow (tough, strong, light), and picked up 20ft/s by losing 100gr of weight.

You lose “impact punch” when you move to a lighter arrow, but gain distance and flatness of trajectory.

In modern hunting, the 30-40 yd range, we are attempting to hit a “dime” we want to be RIGHT ON, shooting exactly at a point on the deer, but will accept some variance. In competetion archery, they routinely shoot at 80 yds, but at very large targets. As the target moves further, the target gets bigger.

While I’d certainly believe that modern archers, even with “homebows” (home-made traditional equipment) can reach out to 300+ yards, they can’t hit man sized targets reliably. As I said above, that doesn’t matter when you have 1000 of your friends throwing arrows to the same arena, but does not mean they are “accurate” at 300+yds. The mission is different, it’s not the same comparison right from the start.

If I had a large enough safe area, I’d love to try this out. Alas, I’m not sure I can pull this off in the area I live in. Hopefully the posters above will report back their results. Please let us know your “group size”!

28

Just for comparison purposes, Ted Nugent can hit a squirrel in the liver from 150 yards.

29

I like Ted. He has spunk. But he needs to be taken with a grain of salt with some of his hunting exploits/brags. Not that he doesn’t put the meat on the table, and he does it well, but I doubt he’s talking archery there. Now, with a .223 and a nice rifle, no problem.

Now, Chuck Norris on the other hand… :smiley:

30

Or Legolas… :smiley: :smiley:

31

I like Ted too, but the only time I saw his show they were hunting okapi or dromedaries or something, and they go to absurd lenths to trick these dumb animals- cover themselves in scent of horny female okapi, lay okapi food around then hid a tree and shoot the dumb thing from about 50 feet away- not impressive at all actually.

32

AND they have their weapons at home. Muskets, arquebusses, matchlocks, etc would get locked up between wars.

While skateboarding! :smack:

33

I believe it was Asimov who pointed out that this was the real key to England’s successful use of the longbow: Pretty much everyone knew the technology behind the bows themselves well enough, as well as the kind of training regimen needed. But only England trusted her commoners enough to give them that kind of power, so only England reaped the benefits.

And let me just chime in with the awe at the over-a-mile footbow range, there… I’d hate to have to face off against those with medieval technology! You’d never be sure you were safe.

34

Of course, they’d have a hell of a time HITTING an enemy camp unless they had a good vantage point or some kind of spotter setup (maybe a dude with semaphore flags on a hilltop?)

That said, the difference between 200 yards and 400 yards and a mile is purely academic if you’re standing ankle-deep in frothy mud with only a spear and maybe some chain mail to protect you. Knights with plate mail and shields had it a bit better, I understand, but at closer ranges, even they could get taken out by that generation’s equivalent to a HEAT round, the bodkin arrowhead.

And I have it on good authority that if you’re holding a shield, and an arrow hits that shield, you’ll have some nice bruising to show for your efforts at the very least.

35

I’ve just got to know what your good authority is…I smell a story.

36

Well, the guy from Conquest on the History Channel. Comon, he’s a freaking Technomage!

In any case, it seems like if you have an arrow that can penetrate plate mail (at short ranges), it’d probably hurt like the devil to be holding a shield that catches such a thing.

37

Didn’t longbow men get paid more than a foot soldier?

38

As an interesting aside, most northerly climes never developed or used the recurved horn-and-glue recurved bow, although quite effective. Darn things kept falling apart every times there was a soggy day or a morning frost. :smiley: It’s an amusing thought, bu the Mongols were defeated as much by rain as anything else.

39

I’m failry certain that longbow men were payed more than regular footmen, not to be confused with man at arms (essentially knights on foot).

The longbow wasn’t very effective against plate armor, however. Even mail, depending on it’s quality and manufacture could be expected to provide decent protection against the weapon. Of course, they were still a good harrassing unit capable of inflicting serious casualties on lightly armored troops (which would have made up the majority of men in an army of the period anyway).

40

Considering that longbowmen were trained from birth in the use of a highly demanding weapon, while most foot soldiers were just whatever schmucks you could grab off the local farm and shove a pitchfork in their hands, I’d say that it’s probably not unreasonable to suppose that the bowmen might be better paid. Why do you ask?