The Great Longbow Debate

[El Mahdi]

...A powerful bow hits as hard as a biggish handgun at close ranges. ...

Respectfully, this isn't accurate. I don't disagree with anything you said except this. The energy in Newtons of a bow is significantly less than most firearms. A longbow with a pull of 200 pounds, and a very heavy war arrow, would have similiar amounts of energy as a .22. The ability of an arrow to penetrate was less about the energy behind it (although more energy does mean longer range and more penetration at impact) but is about the energy being focused at a very small point. This is the same thing that makes a knife able to penetrate a bullet proof vest easier than a large caliber weapon. In fact a small .22 pistol round has more penetrating ability through kevlar than a large caliber caliber pistol round.

 

[El Mahdi]

I don't know anything specific about archery, but the arrow will have its maximum kinetic energy at release unless the arrow falls below the firing height at some point. Barring some sort of helpful wind, after release energy is only converted between kinetic/potential energy or dissipated by air resistance.

This is 100% percent true. Maximum energy of a projectile (unless it has a continuous source of thrust) is at it's highest at release, and diminishes steadily over the duration of it's travel. Gravity has an immediate and constant effect upon the velocity of a projectile (remember vectors in high school math).

 

[Legildur]

...Gravity has an immediate and constant effect upon the velocity of a projectile (remember vectors in high school math).

Just for clarification, you aren't talking about the horizontal vector of the velocity here, are you? That should only be affected by wind resistance, and when it hits the target.

 

[Umbran]

I don't suppose anyone could fire a longbow at a target from 5, 10, 15, 20-ft. and give us penetration measurements?

Penetration isn't everything.

There are several different things that all contribute to how damaging a weapon is to the body - penetration, energy transfer, momentum transfer, how quickly and well the resulting wound stops bleeding, and so on.

Respectfully, this isn't accurate. I don't disagree with anything you said except this. The energy in Newtons of a bow is significantly less than most firearms.

Energy is never in Newtons. Newtons are a unit of force, not energy.

He talked about how "hard" it hit. We could debate what that really means, but I think for most intents and purposes, how "hard" a hit is isn't about energy, it is about momentum transfer. And on that score, the arrow and the bullet are on more even terms. The bullet is faster, but you aren't squaring velocity, and the arrow is much heavier than the bullet.

Plus, arrows almost never pass all the way through the target, while bullets sometimes do.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

This is 100% percent true. Maximum energy of a projectile (unless it has a continuous source of thrust) is at it's highest at release, and diminishes steadily over the duration of it's travel. Gravity has an immediate and constant effect upon the velocity of a projectile (remember vectors in high school math).

I think this issue with this isn't velocity but trajectory, as arrows tend to have a weird trajectory for the first 10 feet or so making point blank accuracy a little trickier.

 

[WayneLigon]

The best advice I can give you is to just decide on a set of data that you like and ignore everything else. For the most part, accounts of what medieval weapons are capable of are either so conflicted that they're doing the same thing you will be, or so tainted by being copied as gospel from Victorian armchair 'research' that the data is too corrupt to be worth anything. This also goes for re-creation groups.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

I think it's less the "Great Longbow Debate" and more the "Great Crossbow and Firearms Debate"

Simply put, the idea of firing six arrows into a target in one round from five feet away is a wee bit prepostorous. But the game says "WHO CARES THIS IS KICKING RAD" and lets you do it anyways. And there's nothing wrong with that.

The issue is when other, non-bowranged weapons walk up and would like to play too, and the game demands total realism in every negative case, and then removes the good parts of their realism to boot.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

When guns first appeared, they were less effective than bows. Less accurate and a slower rate of fire. What made armies switch to guns was the lack of training and upkeep necessary for an effective gunner compared to an effective bowman. Effective archers were well trained professionals. Any moron with two weeks of practice can be dangerous with a gun.

 

[pawsplay]

Longbows were indeed better, in many respects, than early firearms. English law required most able-bodied men to learn the longbow for several seasons in order to maintain a vast recruiting pool when longbowmen were needed. During the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin advocated for longbows over muskets, but it was discovered the importing fully trained longbowmen was too expensive, and training a local force would take too long.

1) What's the shortest range at which a longbow can be fired with enough force to kill a person?

Approximately the distance the arrow projects from the front of the bow when the string is lax. Call it half an arrow's length.

2) Just how accurate are they at extreme ranges?

Either very, or terrible, depending on whether you mean "relative to other weapons" (very) or in absolute terms (good luck hitting anything with anything more than a hundred yards away without using a laser sight).

3) What differentiates a longbow from a shortbow (seems obvious but you'd be surprised)?

Longbow usually refers to one of several historical weapons, notably the English yew longbow and some composite bows used by the more Western American Indian tribes. Shortbow is a mostly non-technical term that refers to a bow sized to be relatively portable. Roughly, longbows are taller than the bowman's shoulder, shortbows are generally not.

 

[El Mahdi]

Just for clarification, you aren't talking about the horizontal vector of the velocity here, are you? That should only be affected by wind resistance, and when it hits the target.

Yeah, you're right. My Bad!