History nerds on Agincourt and experimental archaelology

[jimbob]

A very interesting youtube video about the battle of Agincourt,

And a lot of the comments below the line are referring to primary sources to expand on the points made in the video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1dFzFwgrfE

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I decided I wasn't interested in that one when I saw a longbowman put three arrows in the air at the same time. Close, yes, but it was clear that the third one left the bow well ahead of the first one hitting the ground. OOF.

[tom p]

I decided I wasn't interested in that one when I saw a longbowman put three arrows in the air at the same time. Close, yes, but it was clear that the third one left the bow well ahead of the first one hitting the ground. OOF.

What's wrong with that?
According to this site English & Welsh longbowmen could fire up to 12 arrows/minute. That's one every 5 seconds.
That means that the first one only has to stay airborne for 10 seconds.
Is that totally implausible? According to this stack exchange discussion a longbow can be fired around 400 metres. Given that it will have a curved trajectory, the actual distance through the air would be more like 460 metres. In 10 seconds, that's an average speed of 166 km/h or a bit over 100 mph, so the starting speed from the bow for the first arrow would have been around 200 mph.
A baseball pitcher can chuck a ball at about 100 mph. A bow shooting an arrow ought to be significantly faster, so it seems possible.

If all you're trying to do is look impressive by putting 3 arrows into the air at once, then the 2nd and 3rd ones don't have to be drawn back that much - just enough to fire properly without looking really sh.t. That could buy you an extra second or so per shot, surely, meaning the 3rd arrow could have been shot after 8 seconds, well ahead of the first one hitting the ground.

Is there something I'm missing?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Having been on the receiving end of gunfire more than once I'm adverse to things down to pointy sticks.

Oh, and the reference I read, in conjunction with a paper on "Henry V" (Branagh) mentioned that a properly paced archer would have three arrows in the air at any one time. The result was a lot of arrows firing in a relatively short period.

[bolo]

You shoot arrows. You don't fire them. Unless they are fire arrows, in which case you fire them, then shoot them.

/pedant

[Gawdzilla Sama]

You shoot arrows. You don't fire them. Unless they are fire arrows, in which case you fire them, then shoot them.

/pedant

I used to shoot twin fifties in a power tub. Not worried about what got fired and what got shooted.

[Martin Y]

It was an interesting discussion though. An archer might have been capable of getting, or even sustaining, three arrows in flight at a time, but how effectively and for how long before he ran out of arrows? Just how many arrows might an individual archer have typically carried?

I can see the point of a tactic of using archers at the limit of their range, dropping a sufficient number of arrows onto a mass of French knights to harass them and provoke them into attacking before further French forces arrived, but the chances of an individual shot actually striking a man or horse in that way must have been fairly low.

[Allo V Psycho]

You shoot arrows. You don't fire them. Unless they are fire arrows, in which case you fire them, then shoot them.

/pedant

I love this nerd stuff. So, you don't 'fire a bow' unless you are (a) expelling it from a device at a rate of knots or (b) setting light to it.

[Martin Y]

… So, you don't 'fire a bow' unless you are (a) expelling it from a device at a rate of knots or (b) setting light to it.

If you're expelling it from a device by means of fire then yes. You are giving fire to whatever stuff is going to do the expelling.
By any other contrivance, like catapults, springs or I suppose compressed gas, you are shooting it, but not firing it.

[Gfamily]

It was an interesting discussion though. An archer might have been capable of getting, or even sustaining, three arrows in flight at a time, but how effectively and for how long before he ran out of arrows? Just how many arrows might an individual archer have typically carried?

I can see the point of a tactic of using archers at the limit of their range, dropping a sufficient number of arrows onto a mass of French knights to harass them and provoke them into attacking before further French forces arrived, but the chances of an individual shot actually striking a man or horse in that way must have been fairly low.

But the harassment worked.
More interesting to me was the discussion* that archers are not generally portrayed in contemporaneous manuscripts as shooting at the ~45 degree angle to maximise the range, so they seem to have been working at a shorter range.

I guess you didn't want to just waste arrows.

*I had it on while working on a spreadsheet so I may have missed something,

[Tessa K]

You shoot arrows. You don't fire them. Unless they are fire arrows, in which case you fire them, then shoot them.

/pedant

The command is 'Loose!' rather than 'Fire!'

It's interesting to see which dramas get it right. Some do even if they're not very historically accurate. You can of course say 'Fire!' if your weapon of choice is a dragon .

[Gawdzilla Sama]

It was an interesting discussion though. An archer might have been capable of getting, or even sustaining, three arrows in flight at a time, but how effectively and for how long before he ran out of arrows? Just how many arrows might an individual archer have typically carried?

I can see the point of a tactic of using archers at the limit of their range, dropping a sufficient number of arrows onto a mass of French knights to harass them and provoke them into attacking before further French forces arrived, but the chances of an individual shot actually striking a man or horse in that way must have been fairly low.

As I understand it they were to track on the charging forces. Obviously as the range shortened they wouldn't have been able to keep to the three in the air orders, but having a wall of armored knight and horse coming at you would provide a wee bit of adrenaline that might have caused them to break records both in the arrow firing category and the messy trous category.

But then the Brit line troops at Agincourt weren't wearing pants.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

You shoot arrows. You don't fire them. Unless they are fire arrows, in which case you fire them, then shoot them.

/pedant

The command is 'Loose!' rather than 'Fire!'

It's interesting to see which dramas get it right. Some do even if they're not very historically accurate. You can of course say 'Fire!' if your weapon of choice is a dragon .

But I was referring to an action rather than a command. I will allow the person most upset about that usage to shoot me in the eye with an arrow as my penance, but only if they cry "Harold" first.

[Vertigowooyay]

It was an interesting discussion though. An archer might have been capable of getting, or even sustaining, three arrows in flight at a time, but how effectively and for how long before he ran out of arrows? Just how many arrows might an individual archer have typically carried?

I can see the point of a tactic of using archers at the limit of their range, dropping a sufficient number of arrows onto a mass of French knights to harass them and provoke them into attacking before further French forces arrived, but the chances of an individual shot actually striking a man or horse in that way must have been fairly low.

The idea was that accuracy was unimportant, and the longbows were for range and to shoot arrows in such numbers they would be lethal. There’s contemporary reports of the sky black with arrows. At Crecy, the French had some mercenary crossbowmen, who fired at the English archers and dropped far short. When the longbows retorted, it was deadly.

Worth pointing out Tomp’s maths is definitely based on war bows that were upwards of 90lb draw weight. My strongest longbow is 50lb and that certainly isn’t shooting an arrow 400m. And I’ll forgive you for not using yards for longbows. It’s very old fashioned in competition...

[dyqik]

Physics nitpick: it's the altitude reached that affects the time of flight, not the distance along the ground. Maximum time of flight is achieved by shooting straight up. Which is otherwise suboptimal...

t = 2√(2 s / g), where s is the altitude reached by the arrow, ignoring air resistance (assuming I can still do maths in my head).

[Woodchopper]

You shoot arrows. You don't fire them. Unless they are fire arrows, in which case you fire them, then shoot them.

/pedant

The command is 'Loose!' rather than 'Fire!'

It's interesting to see which dramas get it right. Some do even if they're not very historically accurate.

Yes, as used by Shakespeare: https://books.google.no/books?id=wKrOjo ... &q&f=false

[bolo]

Air resistance is probably not negligible for arrows, so an angle less than 45 degrees may actually get you more range.

[jimbob]

Air resistance is probably not negligible for arrows, so an angle less than 45 degrees may actually get you more range.

And lift.

The first video in the series:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBxdTkddHaE

explained how they tested their best reproduction bows, arrows and armour, and the choice of draw weight for the bow.

[dyqik]

Air resistance is probably not negligible for arrows, so an angle less than 45 degrees may actually get you more range.

There's usually other considerations for the angle of landing (and thence for launching) for projectile weapons as well.

High angle shots (e.g. mortars) are used for going up and over defensive walls etc. Low angle shots are used into crowds to maximize the chances of hitting something (particularly effective with projectiles that can bounce off the ground), or to increase damage to defensive walls that could be toppled.

[Tessa K]

You shoot arrows. You don't fire them. Unless they are fire arrows, in which case you fire them, then shoot them.

/pedant

The command is 'Loose!' rather than 'Fire!'

It's interesting to see which dramas get it right. Some do even if they're not very historically accurate. You can of course say 'Fire!' if your weapon of choice is a dragon .

But I was referring to an action rather than a command. I will allow the person most upset about that usage to shoot me in the eye with an arrow as my penance, but only if they cry "Harold" first.

Yes, I was adding rather than contradicting.

[Martin Y]

… The idea was that accuracy was unimportant, and the longbows were for range and to shoot arrows in such numbers they would be lethal. There’s contemporary reports of the sky black with arrows.

Which brings me back to my earlier question of how many arrows each man might be expected to bring to the field. Anyone have a reference for that?

[Vertigowooyay]

… The idea was that accuracy was unimportant, and the longbows were for range and to shoot arrows in such numbers they would be lethal. There’s contemporary reports of the sky black with arrows.

Which brings me back to my earlier question of how many arrows each man might be expected to bring to the field. Anyone have a reference for that?

48 - each archer was issued with 2 sheaves of arrows of 24 each. Arrowstorms would have been terrifying, but short, no more than 3 minutes or so. Archers started the battle and then the melee started (with the archers also trying to recover arrows)

Edit - Arrowstorms were fairly rare, and didnt always work. There's stories from the War Of The Roses of the Lancastrians firing the Yorkists arrows back at them when the initial volley didn't work out right.

[dyqik]

… The idea was that accuracy was unimportant, and the longbows were for range and to shoot arrows in such numbers they would be lethal. There’s contemporary reports of the sky black with arrows.

Which brings me back to my earlier question of how many arrows each man might be expected to bring to the field. Anyone have a reference for that?

I don't know the answer to that, but I have heard that people were tasked with running around and picking up used arrows for reuse. Both from return fire, from shots that fell short and as the enemy fell back to regroup.

[Martin Y]

Wikipedia suggests more than 2 sheaves per man; perhaps 60-72 arrows each, and boys tasked with resupply during battle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_l ... oting_rate

It also mentions the very heavy draw weight of these bows meant high rates of fire couldn't be sustained as it was simply too exhausting. I hadn't really considered that the medieval laws requiring archery practice weren't just about developing skills, they were about building the required musculature.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Muscle first, then volume, then high volume with fair accuracy, then high volume with high accuracy, then death from old age.