> Now I must make a confession. I reported to someone that the
I asked, and now I find my suspicion confirmed. A 70 lbs longbow has about the speed of a 55 lbs recurve bow, which means about the same penetration. The monster longbows shot by the English yeomanry had an average draw weight of 160 lbs, which demands a lot heavier arrows to fly straight, which means a much greater impact on the target. From my experience, an arrow loses about 1/6 of its penetration from 10 metres to 60 metres, which is the reasonable killing distance for man-sized targets.
Unless Jones finds some archer still mastering a real military longbow and not a hunting bow, I won't credit this test too much.
> I have also discovered another amazing fact. A scholar
I suppose lancet-form multi purpose arrows, which did well enough against contemporary (pre-crusade by 2 centuries) ring- or chainmail.
Not that Vikings in general were known for effective archers. The main exception is Einar Tambarskelve, featuring in Olav Tryggvason's Saga (Stanza 108, where his arrows penetrate a solid piece of wood by the enemy jarl's head before his bow is shot apart by an enemy archer, and he complains that the king's bow offered as replacement was far too weak) and Olav the Holy's Saga stanza 21 as an archer. In the latter he is said to have shot right through a hanging oxhide (which usually will stop even modern low-diameter high-speed arrows shot at speeds unreached by any medieval bow).
> Out of 31 extant spearheads, only 1-6
> (I forget the exact number, but 'twas few) was steel. The others were
> soft iron, that would be unable to penetrate mail.
Again, these had to cope with contemporary armour, which wasn't as developed as the French in the Hundred Year war. Neither were their archers...
> This is a consideration -- even given that Gloranthan bronze
> is not the same as Earthly bronze, it may be quite hard for a weapon
> of hardness X to penetrate armor of hardness X.
Depends on the type of weapon. Swords are most effetive against little armoured opponents, but their slashes are quite effectively countered by armour - which is why it became popular. Axes, with their greater reliance on impact, will be less hampered even if of inferior material.
> In all medieval literature, we don't have a single narrative
> source saying that a person was killed by an arrow piercing his
> armor, chain _or_ plate.
One source tells us that at Hastings the Hirdmen of Harold Godwinsson were felled by the dozens by arrows fired in a high arc initiating William's (desperate) last attack. Not even shields held up were reported to have protected against this hail of arrows. (I just borrowed off my reference, but I think it was Guillaume de Poitiers who reported this.)
Anyway, the final stage of the Battle of Hastings was victorious to the Normans only because the core of Harold's force was slaughtered by archers.
> This is important, especially when wounds to
> knights caused by many weapons are so clearly described, or even
> over-described (see Song of Roland), even those of archers --See
> Henry V's wound in the cheek by an arrow at the battle of Shrewsbury.
Ths just means that mass slaughter by archery occurred at just those battles where the enemy charged right into a swamp and arrow fire - i.e. Agincourt, where the French Connetable made every possible error, according to Spaulding and Nickerson. For example he turned down the offer of the citizens of Paris to muster a contingent of crossbowmen...
Anyway, I don't claim that Agincourt wastypical for the effectiveness of longbows. It was a once in history effect, similar to the importance of war elefants. According to Dave Arneson's summary on Men-at-Arms in Strategy and Tactics, war elefants were effective until the enemy developed anti-elefant tactics. Afterwards, they endangered their own side at least as much as hte enemy's. Longbows weren't as capricious, but once the chivalry had learned not to charge into massed archers in a defensive position, their losses to them were reduced considerably.
> Longbows weren't used for long - they came into prominence
> around 1300, and by the Wars of the Roses (1450) were pretty much
> defunct.
Wrong. They didn't dominate battles any more - like most novelties, they were reduced to fixtures with well developed counter measures. The British army had archer contingents with better accuracy and rate of fire than any musket unit well into the Napoleonic wars. The drawback was that noone could afford to muster large numbers of these, but as specialist units they survived longer than you want to make us think.
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