While I dont disagree about the performance, a lot of sources don't agree with your statements on armour penetration or only under specific circumstances.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Which is why I cited a source for my claims, because pop culture is leaning so heavily in the direction of "arrows can pierce tank armor" I sound absurd claiming early modern plate could stop them. But it could. Indeed, we have contemporary accounts from the battle of poitiers (a middle age era battle) saying the English arrows were *already* utterly ineffective against fully kitted French knights, and the English could only stop the French charge by taking out the less armored horses they rode on (Froissart's Chronicles, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/froissart-full.asp)
. This only gets worse for arrows as metallurgy improved, and decent-quality steel goes from being rare and expensive to cheap and plentiful after the proliferation of blast furnaces in Europe post 1500.
I propose to write a section about crossbows. A Deadly Art by Dirk H. Breiding is a good source to start with.
Edited by TheBigBopper
This article is pretty awful. Directly as effective as a gun? What? Rate of fire, range, reload speed, maneuverability (try firing a bow in a Humvee), weight, logistics, armor penetration(1), all are *massively* in favor of guns. Archery wasn't even superior to late-era arquebuses, let alone muskets or modern automatic rifles. There is a reason every single army in the entire history of humanity that *could* adopt guns and phase out archers, did, no matter how many archers they had on hand. I get Katniss is the new hotness, and everyone has a new-found adoration for archery, but come on. This article is absurd.
1: 15th century technology was sufficient to make a knight all but impervious to arrows. With modern materials science, it would be trivial. By contrast, the very latest and greatest personal armor technology all of modern society can create can not stop rifle rounds without incorporating heavy ceramic plates. And even then, the plates get hit a few times and you're back to wearing (effectively) no protection at all. Source on the impervious to arrows bit:
http://books.google.ca/books?id=I3XFsOc6QCIC&pg=PA13&lpg=PA13&dq=arquebus+vs.+plate&source=bl&ots=UOeNxv25wJ&sig=zeWjSnhaiGgJLUdqNqOGPOyh04g&hl=en&sa=X&ei=aIYjU86jFaWC2wXjtoDgCA&ved=0CG0Q6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=arquebus%20vs.%20plate&f=false
Edited by 198.90.95.219 Hide / Show Replies