The Frag newsletter has an interesting bit about the history of the english long bow. Something in it raised a question for me. Maybe some of you know.
Quote:
Interestingly, during the Napoleonic era a British army officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Lee of the 44th Foot, recommended bringing back the longbow. It was as accurate as the muskets of the time, had a longer range, a higher rate of fire, and in a period when armor was not used anymore would prove even more devastating. All sound arguments, but the high command passed on the suggestion due to the fact that a soldier could be trained in the use of a musket in a day, while proper archery would take years
to develop (and let's not forget years to make a bow!).
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Does this make sense? I can believe that it would take years to train a guy to shot a bullseye from 100 yards, but in battalion level combat does an archer need to be that accurate? Isn't the idea to have a couple hundred archers shooting a constant stream of arrows and blanketing a target area? Couldn't a guy be taught in a few minutes how to shoot an arrow into a target field the size of formation of hundreds of soldiers? I would think anyone with just basic hand eye coordination could probably do that with no training whatsoever given some arrows and few minutes to figure it out on their own.
I suspect a better (and perhaps more accurate) reason to choose muskets and balls over bows and arrows is the ability to produce the ammunition rapidly and lug it into combat. I imagine just about anyone could melt lead and use a mold and produce hundreds of balls an hour, while it would take a highly skilled fletcher to produce combat useable arrows, and he'd do so at a much slower rate. And it's easier to carry a bag of balls and enough powder to shoot it then to lug around a full quiver.
Am I on track here?
OT: Archery in combat
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