HYW - Longbows, etc.?

[Cubster]

12 aimed shots a minute was the minimum requirement for archers wishing to join the bow companies of the Agincourt campaign, not sure how much standards were lowered half a century later. The maximum for skilled archers could be double that.

But since it was common for longbows to be countered with crossbows (or other longbows) then what often happened was that the battle would begin with a long range duel at extreme range until the arrows ran out. Agincourt was a bit of a freak because the crossbowmen had left their pavisses behind and had wet strings, so they didn't stand a chance against the English and Welsh bowmen who had kept their strings dry.

[Invisible officer]

12 arrows in 60 seconds gives you 5 seconds to grap the arrow, draw the strong bow, aim and let fly. Possible.

Duble that number gives you 2,5 seconds. If you arrange the 24 arrows stuck in front in the ground you may do the grapping, drawing and let fly process. But realy aimed? Not at a single target. Aimed in the direction of the enemy, possible.

The single master archers performance was impressive. But the battle records of the 15th century show that the archer salvoe was not very effective, except from rare special conditions. If you take the archers of Charles the bold (many English and Welsh among them) the result against the Swiss was not very convincing. Every battle lost. Not even protected at the Gruenhag did they kill many of the attacking Swiss foot.
For the Rose war we are told by scholars that the archers neutralized each other. Sounds nice, but what happens to the arrows shot? 2000 archers , shooting a sheaf in short time should get at least have 1 effective hit per archer. 2000 dead or wounded. Imagin, 48.000 projectiles flying around. But , just a few hundred hits at best.

More reasonable explanations are long distance shots with badly calculated range, men getting weak from illness and famine, battle stress, wind and weather effects. But a good archer should be able to cope with these problems, apart from the physical ones.

We all know that black powder arms are impressive at the firing range. But in battle it's an old saying that it takes a man's weight in lead to kill him. It would be a great mistake to assume that the archers performance was different, just because we read of the superb deeds of archery experts on the range.

[Cubster]

12 arrows in 60 seconds gives you 5 seconds to grap the arrow, draw the strong bow, aim and let fly. Possible.

Duble that number gives you 2,5 seconds. If you arrange the 24 arrows stuck in front in the ground you may do the grapping, drawing and let fly process. But realy aimed? Not at a single target. Aimed in the direction of the enemy, possible.

You can doubt all you like, experts achieve results others find unbelieveable all the time. It happened, it's recorded, it's not a debate.

Salvoes are very different, like the difference between indirect and direct artillery fire. They are not aimed except in a general area and a lifted shield or a suit of armour would be sufficient to protect someone. It was effective against lightly armoured or unarmoured targets, horses, or for just keeping someone's head down and disrupting formations.

Like I said, people knew how to counter the longbow and did their best to make that happen. Plus of course not every commander was as dilligent as Henry V in providing sufficient arrows and they could run out.

EDIT: It's just occurred to me you may be talking about the gulf between performance on a range at the butts and performance on the battlefield. In which case I thoroughly agree, theoretical maximum performance is never matched by actual results, yet the same is true of all weapons. How a tool is used is more important than what it can do.

[Invisible officer]

"It's just occurred to me you may be talking about the gulf between performance on a range at the butts and performance on the battlefield."

Exactly.

Like Annie Oakley and other famous shootists that could not be taken as a measurement what a horsed shootist with a Revolver would do an a Battlefield. Poor Mr. Custer, his Webley Buldogs did surely not hit a dozen Indians.

It is not impossible that the single follower of the French army did something disgusting with his two fingers and received some arrows in his hand and arm in reply.

Or like the contemporary drawings of armoured men at arms doing artistic stunts like handstands or climbing a ladder from the underside by hand only like Boucicault. No doubt that it is possible to do this. (I would hardly be able to do so even without armour....) But it was thought to be extraordinary and that was the reason for recording.

Archery needs a lot of training and superb archery needs superb training. Bishop Latimer wrote in 1549 how his father teached him. The bows getting bigger and stronger according too his own strength. But in 1549 he wrote about that as a thing from the past. It was no longer the favoured (or enforced) weekend pastime of the peasant.

[Cubster]

I remember being in the midst of a debate about Rorke's Drift and the gulf between rounds fired and casualties caused. One poster was stunned at the poor marksmanship on display. I forget the exact figures but I think it was in the region of 20,000 rounds fired, with under 400 dead confirmed (although many more would have been hit and injured, some mortally).

Now there would be a difference between a quartermaster's pre-battle count, his post-battle count and actual amount fired. Some would be lost, some would be duds, some would be jams, some would be elsewhere and otherwise not counted, but even so, it was a lot of lead thrown out. But if you consider such factors as suppressive fire, several shots perhaps hitting the same target, the fact that most of the battle happened during the night, the amount of cover surrounding the post, the sheer length of the action and the fact that accuracy of the weapon, let alone the man, would suffer the more the rifle was fired ... well, perhaps it's not so surprising after all!

[grafthomond]

Just some thoughts on rules for longbows and handguns we will be testing (hopefully) soon:

Handguns - short range only (yes I think they were that inaccurate) but enemy morale capped at 6+. Not sure about the crossbow-like no traversing/closing fire rules to simulate the slow rate of fire. Perhaps the range limitation is enough.

Longbows - enemy morale -1 at short range (a nod to their superior power without making them super-weapons).

As an aside, what do you think about making better English (and possibly other) longbowmen heavy rather than medium infantry to simulate their training, armour and close-quarter weapons (as well as possibly that last, very close range, shot). Obviously they wouldn't get double-handed weapons as well.