Why Did the English Use Longbows Rather Than Recurves? (weapon, compared, tactics)
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A comparison of an arrow from an English Longbow to a modern baseball thrown by a major league pitcher:
Using dutchwarbow's numbers of 200 feet per second for a 75 gram arrow gives a velocity of about 61 meters per second and a kinetic energy of about 140 joules.
Using 90 miles per hour for a major league fastball and the official 145 grams for a major league baseball gives a velocity of about 40 meters per second and a kinetic energy of about 117 joules.
However, the 200 feet per second is an optimistic number. This just might be the velocity of an arrow as it leaves the bow. But some quick web browsing indicates that the arrow would more probably release from the bow at 175 feet per second and at the time it reached its target the arrow would be travelling at only 140 feet per second, probably due to air resistance. It might not seem fair to consider air resistance for the arrow and not for the baseball, but the baseball doesn't have fletchings to slow it down.
Assuming a 75 gram arrow travelling at 140 feet per second when it reaches the target, the arrow speed is 46 meters per second and yields about 78 joules of kinetic energy, far less than the energy in a major league fastball.
For a pitcher to deliver the same amount of kinetic energy as the arrow from the longbow in the second example, he'd only have to throw about 80 miles per hour. That's about the speed of a fastball from a good 13 year-old pitcher.
On the other hand, the 78 joules from the arrow is concentrated into a much smaller impact area than the 117 joules from a major league fast ball.
I completely agree. we tried to determine the velocity of an arrow down range some years back but no one could get the arrows through the chrony at more than 60 yards.
I think they use it long time ago and it become a habit, very hard to give up ur habits. May be recurve bow is better than longbow but it not true with some one else
U can read some information about recuve bow from this site, i hope it helpful for you : topbow.net
That's a good point. I learned to shoot with a recurve, and got my first deer with one at the ripe old age of 12. To this day, I can't shoot a compound with anywhere near the accuracy that I can shoot a recurve.
The English mainly used the longbow for reasons that are more practical and suited for their needs.
The longbow was a very effective bow for piercing armour and could be distributed in greater quantities in relatively shorter period of time. You also have to consider the fact that bows and crossbows were deemed to be the weapon of choice for cowards and devils during the medieval era. Many knights wanted to partake in the glory of combat and ransoming was a much more better alternative than killing your opponents.
So I wouldn't be surprised if those factors alone didn't contribute to the reason why recurve bows were not used since forms of ranged weapons were discouraged in medieval Europe, so there wasn't much incentive to try different version of bows.
Also, the recurve bow requires more flexible birch type of wood that isn't readily available in the west, and requires a different form of craftsmanship the English were not used to. It's horribly rainy in the UK, and recurve bows are notorious for breaking due to wet and moist conditions.
So I would say it mainly came down to what was readily available for cheap and the environmental factors that made English longbow the choice.
I respectfully disagree with the idea that armor from that period could not stop musket fire. The dead soft lead of projectiles from that period were not good penetrators. Indeed, during our Civil War, the wearing of leather "armor" was fairly common and this material was robust enough to stop the .58 caliber slugs from the military rifles of the day.
For the record I served as a sgt and later lt with the NYPD Firearms & Tactics Unit, being responsible, for among other things, Research and Testing. It was a while ago (we were using a ten layer Kevlar level I vest when I started...).
Rich
Armor disappeared by a combination of facts, the main was the use of foil. Long, thin words capable of being inserted at the crevices of the armor. A trained swordsmen could do away with ten armored man if he was fast.
Take into account that armors were very different, the quality of steel wide rangin, Toledo or Damascus steel was expensive.... and muskeeters were deadly..they knew the soft spots....and then came peaks that did away armored chivalry...So feudal age was over..when cannons destroyed castles and walls....all that age disappeared with the conquest of Constantinople with gigantic guns, and the conquest of Granada using gigantic guns-bombards that shot spheres of 500 Kg. stones.
Don Quixote, at the end of the 16th century..believed himself to be the typical member of lower nobility with armor and pageant...and at that time,.... he was portrayed like a fictinal mad man, a crackpot.
A suit of plate weighed only about 60 pounds and was evenly distributed over the body of a VERY fit man. And the English men at arms the French faced in the melee were as heavily armored and fighting in the same mud. Granted the French were tired by their approach through the mud.
I think it was the bad discipline, poor leadership and cumbersome, crowded formations of the French that did them in.
French were wounded with arrows, and once in the floor they were killed with special forks inserted by the crevices, etc. Later, that developed into the foil, florete, stoke.
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