long bow vs crossbow
i own medieval crossbows upto 750lbs and an english longbow that is 127lbs. I have range tested both using bolts and arrows based off examples given in text and what i can find in museiums.
A crossbow shooting a hard wood tapered bolt that is a copy from bolts in the tower of london on displat with a 3/4 oz war head will travel just short of 300 yards off a 750lb war crossbow. This type of crossbow was VERY common in the late 1400's to early 1500's after they started getting spring steel making down right. This combo will also blow a hole through 1/8" C1018 plate steel at 80 yards and have enough energy left to bury into a hickory tree upto the socket of the bodkin (about 1.5 inches)
The longbow with a average arrow wieghing in at 600 grains will travel just over 190 yards with a 127lb longbow. It has the energy to pierce the same plate, but not go through it (bodkin makes hole but bodkin doesn't go in) at 35 yards. The same combineation WILL bounch off 16 and 18 guage "welding plate" at ranges over 70 yards. It pierces at 50 yards and will start doing serious damage on said thin guage plate at under 45 yards. Complete pass through seems to happen at under 30 to 25 yards. I consider a 127lb long bow about "average" for the bows used. Heavier bows were seen, but in my studys they seem to be 90 to about 140lbs.
Bolts have a better ballistics in flight then arrows do, war quarrels usually weigh in a tad more then a war arrow but travel around the same speed as a arrow - they impact harder. A simple example of this is to fire a long bow through a crony and a steel prod crossbow, a 127lb long bow is about 165fps and a 750lb crossbow is about 169fps - both using their war missiles.
From my studies it was possible in the later 1500's to early 1600's that the heavyest of war bows (the siege crossbows and longbows that a crossbow was known to puncture 12 inches of bound oak while a longbow was only able to puncture 4" of the same bound oak. These were the heaviest of the bows before blackpower ended the plate armor. The crossbows able to do this measured in at UNDER 1500lbs with most being 1200lbs. These were heavy seige type brace shooting crossbows with crankqines. Windlass crossbows stopped at about 800lbs.
As for the battle of Argincourt. You have to remember that it rained before the battle. The english took there strings off the bows and put them where they did not get wet. The crossbow toting french could not do this. Due to the fibers used then the wet strians stretched making the crossbow useless and unshootable - OF COURSE it was a slaughter. That said i beleive that if the french could have returned fire and based off there numbers vs the english the english would have taken heavy damage. The english walked over the french due to the ablity to fire volleys into a paniced army.
There is no doubt however that the longbow is a "machine gun" compared to a war crossbow. I personally can get 9 arrows off in one minute aiming. Even my 450lb "light" goatsfoot crossbow i can only get 5 bolts off in one minute and that is in a hustle. So rate of fire is on the side of the longbow - however the longbow loses to range and shear force down range of a heavier missle shot. **** depending on the weight of the crossbow shot)
For a referance my 450lb goatsfoot crossbow will only range out at 230 yards and doesn't have the impact of its heavy brother.
Again this is just my experiance with bows i build and play with. I do these as a part time fun job and while im not expert - firing live ammo shows me both weapons have thier advantages and disadvantages. Each weapon had its "area" that it was designed to be used. Open battle ground was not a good place to use a heavy war crossbow, unless you were opening a volley with them, after that - the longbow would eat you alive in shear numbers of arrows blanketing the ground.
The effective range of a crossbow was over 90 yards, it is said and backed up by the way my thumb board is made that the "point blank" of a heavy war crossbow WAS 80 paces/yards. This means i aim at your head i will strike you NO LOWER then the throat at 80 yards. This is due to the upward sweep of the properly made shelf of the crossbow.
Volley fire at 150 yards of the longbow was ment to cuase MASS confusion, think about this. 1 arrow per square foot. take a 100 foot by 50 foot section of land. 5000 archers loosing arrows at a rate of 1 every 6 seconds in volley fire at sections of the oppsing army. Thats blocks of armies getting hit in all none protected area. The sound alone was enough to make you pass out i bet!!!. Lines panic, sheilds drop - more carnage. Your talking 5000 archers with 8 to 12 arrows a minute - do the math over a 2 to 3 minute period which was COMMON in opening volleys.
The lonbow was effective on a non armored person out to his max range and it is said the common archer was able to strike a human at 150 yards 8 out of 10 times. However add light plate, chain mail and leather the archers effective killing range or "mess the persons world up" was about 50 yards and under. This was to get a good clean pass through leather and light armor. It was under 25 yards to get thru plate. Most archers of the time were long gone if a knight was within 25 yards.
Figure a archer had a dagger, a sword if he was lucky, very little armor and VERY little hand to hand training. Why take on a sharging knight. archers killed armor in multi archers picking one target more times then not.
For the 1200 lbs He found that weight by hanging weight to draw the string to the nut (7inches) The weight of that crossbow was 18 lbs and the bow was 3 feet 2 inchesThat the one that shot 450-460 yeads (over the straight measured on an ordnance map What he call a hear war crossbow is 15-16 lbs and the bow was 2 feet 7inchesHe said that the range was about 390 yards.Both crossbow where original and the distance where measured with a surveyoræ¯ chain and used windlass. I would imagine that poundage is in the range of what uccrossbows is using 750-850 lbs.
He was shooting bolts of 12 inched weighting 2 oz
In all reality my studies show the average target crossbow was in the range of 50 to 250lbs - this is about the max you would want to belthook - you can belt hook upto 400lbs but it is not fun. Hunting crossbows were in the 200 to 500lb range. This also began a war crossbow. This is were goatsfoots are used, however 450lbs in about the max you want to play with a goatsfoot due to material strenght and speed. In came the windlass. These are for hunting bows and turned into war bows. 450 to 800lbs is were a windlass shines. I have seen elk hit with 600lbs, the elk never knew it was hit and stood there and fell over dead (captions in history tell us of knights that died this way after a crossbow hit).
The crankline was used for the heaviest bows ever produced in period. They were a 30 to 49 to 1 ratio and had to be as they cranked the 800+ bows. They took a long time to crank but when things got hit by the bolt they died. Cranklines are also a real pain in the butt to make - as is the prod and crossbow they use them on - they were very rare to see.
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A crossbow shooting a hard wood tapered bolt that is a copy from bolts in the tower of london on displat with a 3/4 oz war head will travel just short of 300 yards off a 750lb war crossbow. This type of crossbow was VERY common in the late 1400's to early 1500's after they started getting spring steel making down right. This combo will also blow a hole through 1/8" C1018 plate steel at 80 yards and have enough energy left to bury into a hickory tree upto the socket of the bodkin (about 1.5 inches)
The longbow with a average arrow wieghing in at 600 grains will travel just over 190 yards with a 127lb longbow. It has the energy to pierce the same plate, but not go through it (bodkin makes hole but bodkin doesn't go in) at 35 yards. The same combineation WILL bounch off 16 and 18 guage "welding plate" at ranges over 70 yards. It pierces at 50 yards and will start doing serious damage on said thin guage plate at under 45 yards. Complete pass through seems to happen at under 30 to 25 yards. I consider a 127lb long bow about "average" for the bows used. Heavier bows were seen, but in my studys they seem to be 90 to about 140lbs.
Bolts have a better ballistics in flight then arrows do, war quarrels usually weigh in a tad more then a war arrow but travel around the same speed as a arrow - they impact harder. A simple example of this is to fire a long bow through a crony and a steel prod crossbow, a 127lb long bow is about 165fps and a 750lb crossbow is about 169fps - both using their war missiles.
From my studies it was possible in the later 1500's to early 1600's that the heavyest of war bows (the siege crossbows and longbows that a crossbow was known to puncture 12 inches of bound oak while a longbow was only able to puncture 4" of the same bound oak. These were the heaviest of the bows before blackpower ended the plate armor. The crossbows able to do this measured in at UNDER 1500lbs with most being 1200lbs. These were heavy seige type brace shooting crossbows with crankqines. Windlass crossbows stopped at about 800lbs.
As for the battle of Argincourt. You have to remember that it rained before the battle. The english took there strings off the bows and put them where they did not get wet. The crossbow toting french could not do this. Due to the fibers used then the wet strians stretched making the crossbow useless and unshootable - OF COURSE it was a slaughter. That said i beleive that if the french could have returned fire and based off there numbers vs the english the english would have taken heavy damage. The english walked over the french due to the ablity to fire volleys into a paniced army.
There is no doubt however that the longbow is a "machine gun" compared to a war crossbow. I personally can get 9 arrows off in one minute aiming. Even my 450lb "light" goatsfoot crossbow i can only get 5 bolts off in one minute and that is in a hustle. So rate of fire is on the side of the longbow - however the longbow loses to range and shear force down range of a heavier missle shot. **** depending on the weight of the crossbow shot)
For a referance my 450lb goatsfoot crossbow will only range out at 230 yards and doesn't have the impact of its heavy brother.
Again this is just my experiance with bows i build and play with. I do these as a part time fun job and while im not expert - firing live ammo shows me both weapons have thier advantages and disadvantages. Each weapon had its "area" that it was designed to be used. Open battle ground was not a good place to use a heavy war crossbow, unless you were opening a volley with them, after that - the longbow would eat you alive in shear numbers of arrows blanketing the ground.
The effective range of a crossbow was over 90 yards, it is said and backed up by the way my thumb board is made that the "point blank" of a heavy war crossbow WAS 80 paces/yards. This means i aim at your head i will strike you NO LOWER then the throat at 80 yards. This is due to the upward sweep of the properly made shelf of the crossbow.
Volley fire at 150 yards of the longbow was ment to cuase MASS confusion, think about this. 1 arrow per square foot. take a 100 foot by 50 foot section of land. 5000 archers loosing arrows at a rate of 1 every 6 seconds in volley fire at sections of the oppsing army. Thats blocks of armies getting hit in all none protected area. The sound alone was enough to make you pass out i bet!!!. Lines panic, sheilds drop - more carnage. Your talking 5000 archers with 8 to 12 arrows a minute - do the math over a 2 to 3 minute period which was COMMON in opening volleys.
The lonbow was effective on a non armored person out to his max range and it is said the common archer was able to strike a human at 150 yards 8 out of 10 times. However add light plate, chain mail and leather the archers effective killing range or "mess the persons world up" was about 50 yards and under. This was to get a good clean pass through leather and light armor. It was under 25 yards to get thru plate. Most archers of the time were long gone if a knight was within 25 yards.
Figure a archer had a dagger, a sword if he was lucky, very little armor and VERY little hand to hand training. Why take on a sharging knight. archers killed armor in multi archers picking one target more times then not.
For the 1200 lbs He found that weight by hanging weight to draw the string to the nut (7inches) The weight of that crossbow was 18 lbs and the bow was 3 feet 2 inchesThat the one that shot 450-460 yeads (over the straight measured on an ordnance map What he call a hear war crossbow is 15-16 lbs and the bow was 2 feet 7inchesHe said that the range was about 390 yards.Both crossbow where original and the distance where measured with a surveyoræ¯ chain and used windlass. I would imagine that poundage is in the range of what uccrossbows is using 750-850 lbs.
He was shooting bolts of 12 inched weighting 2 oz
In all reality my studies show the average target crossbow was in the range of 50 to 250lbs - this is about the max you would want to belthook - you can belt hook upto 400lbs but it is not fun. Hunting crossbows were in the 200 to 500lb range. This also began a war crossbow. This is were goatsfoots are used, however 450lbs in about the max you want to play with a goatsfoot due to material strenght and speed. In came the windlass. These are for hunting bows and turned into war bows. 450 to 800lbs is were a windlass shines. I have seen elk hit with 600lbs, the elk never knew it was hit and stood there and fell over dead (captions in history tell us of knights that died this way after a crossbow hit).
The crankline was used for the heaviest bows ever produced in period. They were a 30 to 49 to 1 ratio and had to be as they cranked the 800+ bows. They took a long time to crank but when things got hit by the bolt they died. Cranklines are also a real pain in the butt to make - as is the prod and crossbow they use them on - they were very rare to see.
http://netsword.com/ubb/Forum8/HTML/000234-2.html
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