OT: Archery in combat

[PvK]

EvilGenius4ABetterTomorro said:
I would think that one sides artillery would make the other sides Longbow Archers hard to deploy If such a hypothetical use of archers was ever considered.

Why? The effective range of longbows is as good as muskets, and the force with longbows would have its own cannon and cavalry.

I saw something on History Channel that showed that the battle field in Agincourt was super muddy. The French bogged down and were then targeted at long range by the archers.

Yes, General Mud was a big factor. Also, even if the ability of bodkin longbow arrows to go right through armor at long range were slightly exaggerated, horses were not very heavily armored and were larger targets than the knights, and when they fall and get run into from behind by other knights, it gets messy.

I should have bought stock in the History Channel!
...

I suppose. They're good at exposing the masses to something historical, though their authenticity and completeness is often pretty low.

PvK

[Puke]

PvK said:
Most people think "gun > bow". After all, look at the fire and smoke.

this feature alone goes a long way to making the gun superior to the bow. despite its poor reload time, accuracy, high manufacturing cost, and questionable reliability, the early musket proved to be the superior weapon of war.

more important than its actual efficiency, is the morale effects on the battlefield. the loud bang, bright flash, and smoke will shake most enemies. and being the cause of a loud bang will bolster the morale of those wielding firearms.

This is a particular good presentation on the evolution of weaponry:

http://www.killology.com/article_weaponry.htm

[dogscoff]

>>PVK: Most people think "gun > bow". After all, look at the
>>fire and smoke.

>Puke: this feature alone goes a long way to making the gun
>superior to the bow.

Schlock agrees with you:
http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20001111.html
and
http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20020902.html
and pretty much every other strip

[Puke]

but why isnt there going to be any 'blam' on this mission?

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Small forces of longbow archers would certainly be effective. Reloading a musket is terribly difficult (doing it properly is, at any rate) but any imbecile can put another arrow on a bowstring.

After the battle of Gettysburg, thousands of Confederate muskets were found to be poorly loaded. The Confederates used recruited civilians as the backbone of their army, and this resulted in a massive lack of quality in fighting skills. Thousands of muskets were found to have two balls in their barrels. About two thousand had three balls. Several hundred had more, several dozen were found with over ten balls. One musket was loaded with 24 balls! Had its owner fired, he would certainly have killed someone - himself. The gun would have exploded in his face!

Had they used longbows, this would (possibly) be different. You can't fire 24 arrows at once, even an Epsilon-Minus Semi-Moron could have figured that out. (Well...) If longbows outrange muskets as well, then it would CERTAINLY be handy to use them; it would be like a Napoleonic assault rifle.

African Americans browsing this thread, you should be pretty glad longbows weren't used after the Middle Ages. If the Confederates had used longbows, there would be a good chance they would have won the Civil War, and then you would probably all be working on Texan sugar plantations now.

Just speculating... what if Napoleon had used one Longbow? Firing guns and anti-tank missiles from a kilometre away, he could have wiped out the combined British and Russian armies without them even knowing what was hitting them. (Bye bye 1812 Ouverture...) He would have conquered EVERYTHING between the East side of the international date line, and the West side of the international date line. (in order east to west) How would the world look like now if Napoleon had founded "La France de la Monde"?

[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.

[PvK]

How long before a modern warship becomes inoperable due to complete lack of supply and replacement parts?

How many people on a US warship have archaic international language and diplomacy skills?

How well does morale, discipline, and mental health survive this time warp scenario?

Why would the captain decide to become a world-dominating powermonger, and if he did, how would his command structure and loyalty of subordinates evolve?

One of my cousins and a friend got into this discussion once about twenty years ago. I think my dad had the correct answer (besides just ignoring it as multidimensionally silly): if a handful of time-warped modern people with some modern equipment thought they could use the equipment to rule the ancient world, the contest would not be about combat, but about guile and politics, and older generations had that in abundance.

PvK

[PvK]

Modern aircraft are not really armored - bullets will damage them... if they ever get hit.

Damage potential in the Final Countdown scenario would mainly be limited by lack of resupply, I would think... I wonder though if say the CVN sailed into Pearl Harbour before they figured out the date and the Jap strike hit just then with hundreds of planes, if the CVN could scramble and intercept quickly enough to avoid getting torpedoed.

PvK