arrow volleys in (movie) warfare

[Cornelius_Tuggerson]

@Incubus

Some other interesting note another Doper (sorry, don’t remember who or the cite) mentioned was that Mongols notched their arrows in such a way that their opponents could not use them against them.

That also happenned in The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, although I don’t think thats a very historically accurate book

[Cervaise]

@Debaser

I’m an archer. Using modern equipment, I can consistently hit a person at out to about 50 yards.

Don’t you get, y’know, complaints?

[Bryan_Ekers]

@Cervaise

Don’t you get, y’know, complaints?

He shoot 'em in the leg and then outruns them.

[TV_time]

@rainy

Almost every film you see where medieval mass combat is portrayed has a scene with a massive arrow volley. You know the one where one side’s archers all release their arrows in a very high arc to rain down on the advancing front line of the other side’s foot soilders.

Is this a historically accurate military tactic or just Hollywood?

I seem to remember that the leader of the Spartan forces at the battle of Thermopolae (sp) when informed that the Persian army would unleash so many arrows that it would blot out the sun, responded by saying something to the effect of, “Well, it looks like we will be able to fight in the shade, then.”

This suggests to me that huge flights of arrows were more than just a creation of Hollywood if it was being threatened as early as the Greek city-states.

[DrDeth]

@Debaser

Another big factor is range. An arrow is obviously going to go a lot farther if you shoot it up at a 45 degree angle than if you selectively target an individual with a more horizontal shot.

I’m an archer. Using modern equipment, I can consistently hit a person at out to about 50 yards. (Modern bows have advanced cam systems and are made out of magnesium or aircraft aluminum.) My father carves his own bows from a single piece of wood. He is probably accurate out to about 25 yards. However, even his bow could probably shoot hundreds of yards effectively if the only targetting requirement was hitting a general area.

Well- you also shoudl know that the professional “welsh longbowman” had a very high “pull” bow, one that few- if any- modern archers could now pull. Some skeletons were found of these paragons- their upper body skeleton was significantly warped from the constant pull of the bow! :eek:

[Gary_Robson]

@Captain Lance Murdoch

Archers were expected to fire six arrows per minute…

@Cat Jones

At a rate of fire of 8 arrows a minute…

This seems awfully slow if you’re just aiming high and releasing. Granted, I haven’t practiced archery in quite a few years, but 7-1/2 to 10 seconds is plenty of time to nock an arrow, aim, and fire. With the blanketing volleys, it seems that 15 arrows per minute would be easy to achieve. Why so slow?

[Speaker_for_the_Dead]

With something as heavy to draw as the English longbow (one surviving version had a draw of something like one hundred pounds), an archer would be slowed, wouldn’t he?

[silenus]

Release, pick up new arrow, nock, wait for command, draw, wait for command, fire.

8 arrows a minute would be about right. You want them to arrive en masse, not in dribs and drabs.

[Gary_Robson]

@silenus

Release, pick up new arrow, nock, wait for command, draw, wait for command, fire.

8 arrows a minute would be about right. You want them to arrive en masse, not in dribs and drabs.

Wasn’t it a “fire at will” situation, where you want to just keep a solid stream of arrows flying for a minute or two? If you leave the “wait for command” steps out of your sequence, it would produce a much heavier (and probably more devastating) rain of arrows.

[AZRob]

IANAA, but had a Dad who, as a history buff, often pointed out to me that the longbow, and it’s user, were formidable.

A quick Google seems to bear this out…

English longbowmen were well acquainted with shooting hard in the bow though. For long periods of time, the English people were subject to numerous laws promoting the use of the longbow. There were often laws concerning the compulsory ownership of longbows for people in certain wage categories. Under the reign of King Henry II, everyone who earned 2-5 pounds per year had to be armed with bows (Assize of Arms, 1242 CE) (Wilkinson, pp.164). It was mandatory to practice in the bow on Sundays for many English citizens (Wilkinson, pp.164). Churches were required to maintain butts (targets) so that anyone could practice in the bow. There were even rules about the distance one must shoot at the butts from. Keep in mind that these laws were not intended for professional soldiers, for there were very few in those days. (Professional soldiers were mercenaries, not members of a standing army.) These laws were intended for the average citizen, who might be called upon at some point to fight for England. (This is the case for the whole spectrum of soldiery in the Middle Ages.)

cite
… and:

Most give the length as about 70in. with a drawing pull of 75-100lbs. The arrows were between 27-36in. long. A trained archer could shoot 12 arrows a minute, but some sources say that the most skilled archers could fire twice this number. The arrow could wound at 250 yards, kill at 100 yards and penetrate armor at 60 yards

cite (Thanks to **Cat Jones ** for this web page.)

**AZRob **

[Triskadecamus]

@TV time

I seem to remember that the leader of the Spartan forces at the battle of Thermopolae (sp) when informed that the Persian army would unleash so many arrows that it would blot out the sun, responded by saying something to the effect of, “Well, it looks like we will be able to fight in the shade, then.”

“Our friend brings us good news. If the Persians darken the sun with their arrows, we will be able to fight in the shade.” ~ Dieneces of Sparta ~

[Squink]

@rainy

Why is this any more effective than just instructing each archer to pick out a target and fire as they would when hunting or taget shooting?

You’ll get maximum range if you fire at an angle of 45°.
Firing high also allows compact masses of men to fire without endangering the archers immediately in front of them. With a double line of well disciplined archers, you’d have a density of about one arrow every two feet. With archers massed 10 to 20 deep, you’d get 5 to 10 times that firing density.

[rainy]

Man, you guys are all over it. Thanks to everybody for all the great answers, historical info, and blatantly obvious common sense stuff that somehow managed to ellude me while I was pondering this.

Please carry on – this is utterly fascinating.

-rainy

Oh, yeah, one more question. With such as prodigious rate of fire burning up arrows, how many shafts did an archer carry with him to the battlefield?

[Chronos]

You’ll get maximum range if you fire at an angle of 45°.

Certainly, if we can ignore the atmosphere, but I’m not sure we can for arrows. This would probably lead to the optimum angle being a bit lower.

The reason you want to fire on signal is to saturate the enemy. If you fire at will, then at any given moment, there are only going to be a few arrows incoming, and dodging or blocking is feasible. But if all of your archers are launching on command, then trying to dodge any particular arrow is futile, and the attempt will probably just throw your forces into disarray.

Along the lines of saturation of fires, I’ve also heard that a common tactic, when the enemy was closer than extreme range, was to fire two volleys, the first one high and the second low, such that both would reach their targets at the same time. If you hold your shield above you to try to stave off the arcing fire, you get the flat fire in your face, and vice versa.

[Askance]

@Cat Jones

From this site about historical weapons

Quote:
At the battle of Agincourt, sources estimate that there were about 5,000 English archers. At a rate of fire of 8 arrows a minute, 40,000 arrows could be loosed each minute! The battle began with dense flights of arrows from the English archers. The heavily armoured French knights replied with a charge, but their horses sank into the muddy ground and their immobility made them an admirable target for their opponents. The battle was decided within about the first half-hour. After the battle, observers wrote that the white feathers from the flights were so thick on the ground, it looked like snow.

(Thing is a lot of the archers were actually Welsh but that’s our little secret.)

According to the Battlefield Detective series, the arrows had very little impact (boom) on the battle - in fact they demonstrated they could not have penetrated the French armour, by a long shot (tish). Certainly they killed horses and disorganised the French, but the main problems were the sticky clay underfoot - once a metal boot had gone in it was literally impossible to pull it out - and the crowding effect of too many French knights being funnelled into too little frontage. Once the French were down the archers came out and did much more damage with their knives and axes than they did with their bows.

Essentially the French lost the battle, the English didn’t win it.

[Debaser]

@Cervaise

Don’t you get, y’know, complaints?

Heh.

Let me rephrase:

Using modern equipment, I could consistently hit a person at out to about 50 yards.
Not can. Could. Sheesh. I haven’t actually shot a person. Yet.

[Debaser]

Regarding picking up discarded arrows: Wasn’t there a famous battle in Asia where an army was known for it’s archers and they were out of arrows on the eve of an attack? They filled several ships with dummies made of straw, manned them with skelaton crews and sent them upriver towards the enemy. They floated back down a few hours later bristling with arrows that could be re-used against the enemy. Maybe a Sun Tsu story? I’ll search for it online…

[Debaser]

Here is a link to the tale:

http://members.shaw.ca/mobbing/mobbingCA/insp-1.htm

[tdn]

I seem to remember a thread about this on a different message board (devoted to this type of subject matter). Apparently when using such archery tactics it was considered a bad idea to just aim in the general direction of the opposing army. Even if arrows tended to miss their marks, aiming at specific individuals increased casualties dramatically. I have no idea why this is so.

[DrDeth]

@Askance

According to the Battlefield Detective series, the arrows had very little impact (boom) on the battle - in fact they demonstrated they could not have penetrated the French armour, by a long shot (tish).

Essentially the French lost the battle, the English didn’t win it.

Except that more or less the same thing happened at Crecy & Poiters. And, the only thing that was the same was the massive amount of longbow fire.