OT: Archery in combat

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

What would Napoleon do had he had the USS Voyager?

Try to burn it for being a blasphemous heresy?

Try to man it for exactly the same reason?

Pray to it?

Accidentally jettison the warp core, blowing the entire Eurasian plate into oblivion?

[Taz-in-Space]

Hmmm, interesting...

A modern FULLY SUPPLIED aircraft carrier would include NUCLEAR weapons... can anyone say WORLD DOMINATION?

... now back to the original discussion -
The English Longbow.

One limiting factor would be the need to strenght train the bowmen - An English Longbow had a pull strenght requirement of 90 pounds or more. That is a lot of pull for those who are not archery buffs. (An average bow had a pull of only 50 to 60 pounds.) And remember that this is a single shaft bow, not a modern day compound bow. The average man would quickly tire out if he had to use such a bow for long...

[Jack Simth]

Taz-in-Space said:
Hmmm, interesting...

A modern FULLY SUPPLIED aircraft carrier would include NUCLEAR weapons... can anyone say WORLD DOMINATION?

There's a slight catch to that - until they had seen the effect up close, few rulers would believe the tales of the survivors (and those who do see the effect from close enough to be considered "up close" would die shortly afterwards), and the reliable scouts sent to the devastation zone would tend not to come back (radiation poisoning over a few weeks travel to get to an area that looks like something more than a bad storm had hit the place) so they would probably have to keep "demonstrating" the nukes until after they were out to get any real use out of the threat.

However, a single fighter using a single missle to demolish one of the castle's towers, followed by a "tour" of the ship sufficient to note that the carrier holds many such, and each fighter carries many such missles, about five or ten times (once per bigwig ruler), would be sufficent threat to have most of Europe bowing and scraping.