A Essay -- The Knight vs. the Samurai

[Thresher]

Kevlar is a ballistic fibre armour and it cuts quite easily with a pocket knife or a pair of scissors so you wouldnt be entrusting anything to it in a knife fight.
While we're on the train of thought, its interesting to note the widespread issue of what is essentially 'plate armour' on the battlefield again, guess its a case of history making a full circle over time. Im just wondering how long it'll be before we start seeing a full suit of ballistic plates covering a soldier again on the battlefield rather than just inserts. Most of my military contacts are on holidays, might be interesting to catch one by the toe and make him squeel...

As for a modern day sword, the titanium would be too light I think and you still rely a fair bit on the weapon being a kinetic energy delivery system, having fiddled around with a few big lumps of titanium it would make for some impressive suits of armour!
For an actual blade, I reckon tungsten would be the go.
It bends, its heavy and when you sharpen it, it gets scary and stays that way regardless of what you stick it into. That said, theres a fair few metal carbide alloys which would do much the same things, as an alternative there might be some high-tech ceramics capable of standing up to the punishment of being smashed against something repeatedly really damn hard and as a composite combined with something like carbon fibre you could probably make them nigh unbreakable.

hmmm, for a few thousand dollars and a decent workshop I could have oh so much fun...

edit:
Oh, Im still sticking with my Chinese for the simple reason that theres a cubic arseload of them and I dont care how hardcore someone is if theyre outnumbered 10,000 to one
My second choice would be the Mongols for much the same reason.

 

[Cougar]

Looking at the way this thread has progressed has made me wonder how many people voted for the knight, simply because of the "rabid japanophiles" as LGodamus put it. Are that many people turned off by people touting the virtues of the katana and the skills of the samurai (whether rightfully or not) that it clouds impartial judgment? Are there that many "rabid japanophiles" around?

Not that I thought to have a scientific poll or anything. Just makes me wonder.

 

[Aaron L]

I think samurai are cool as heck, but I voted for the European knight. Full plate armor is not something a katana would have any chance against.


And a titanium sword would snap as soon as you put it into someone who twisted. At least thats what the metallurgists and sword experts at the swordforum say. http://www.swordforum.com/

 

[Cergorach]

I was thinking of using different materials for different parts of the sword, kind of what the did originally, but now with modern materials...

 

[Templetroll]

I faced off against a Renaissance cut-and-thrust fighter once with my katana and we both agreed that it was incredibly easy for us to kill one another almost simultaneously. I pretty much always took a thrust through the body, and he pretty much always got his head cut off.

There was a show, Ultimate Martial Artist, I think, and it showed a straight sword fighter versus a katana fighter and it ended just like that. body thrust to kill the katana user as he brought down the katana to kill the straight sword user.

 

[Dark Jezter]

Indiana Jones would beat them both!

 

[Krieg]

So the essay takes a pair of horse-mounted warriors, and takes them off horses. He takes a samurai, who traditionally is more famous for his archery than his swordwork (chambara movies aside) and limits him only to the katana. Then he places him in against weapons his armor was meant to face.

It just seems rather silly to me.

More than fair enough once you put it into context.

While we're on the train of thought, its interesting to note the widespread issue of what is essentially 'plate armour' on the battlefield again, guess its a case of history making a full circle over time. Im just wondering how long it'll be before we start seeing a full suit of ballistic plates covering a soldier again on the battlefield rather than just inserts. Most of my military contacts are on holidays, might be interesting to catch one by the toe and make him squeel...

Start your search by checking out where DARPA is investing it's research dollars.

Power Armour isn't as far off as you'd think...

 

[Dogbrain]

The reason why I voted for the Samurai was

1. The Samurai had access to ranged weapons and the bow was ever the bane of the Knight.

And at range the knight commanded archers among his followers. The only battles where "bow beat knights" required the knights to march through mud to get to them.

2. The Samurai is armed with a blade with an armor piercing tip good for finding the seams in joints or cracks in armored plates.

Odd you should say that, since German 15th-century longsword manuals show quite clearly that this sort of thrusting was specifically considered a valuable technique against heavily-armored men. Thus, the presence of such a point would be nothing the knight was not already trained to deal with.

3. The Samurai's lighter armor afforts better mobility. Lighter fighters with thin blades beat out the knights in Europe.

When and where? Give specific examples. Year, place, combatants. You will fail, of course, because no such thing ever happened.

You may or may not know anything about Japanese archaic combat, but your knowledge of European archaic combat is far too low to support the conclusion you have made.

 

[Dogbrain]

Interesting essay, and interesting thread.



Sorry dude. But my bet would be on the Malay silat warriors from any era. They were kinda like the Chinese monks, but they used a wavy-bladed dagger (called a kris) as a main weapon - besides their hands, feet and grappling.

The kris is not omnipotent. Furthermore, European knightly combat included quite a great deal of grappling. Unarmed striking was neglected primarily because it was useless against the armor.

[/QUOTE]

 

[barsoomcore]

Unarmed striking was neglected primarily because it was useless against the armor.

Striking, aye, but not unarmed combat generally speaking. both Japanese and European armoured warriors would be trained in grappling while armoured -- and grappling armoured opponents. Being able to tackle -- and the get advantage of -- an armoured opponent would be of great value in the chaos of battle.

Warriorship is not much different from one part of the world to the other. Technology may be different, but fighting is pretty much the same.

I remember looking through scans from a German swordfighting manual -- having to do with two-handed swords -- and was struck by the similarity of the stances to those of many Japanese styles.

Trying to kill people with sharp chunks of steel -- there's only so many ways to go about it. One of the reasons the Japanese styles get so much press is because they've been preserved -- an accident of Japanese cultural history, really, but that's by and large the reason. That and the tendency of the Japanese to codify and organize every aspect of their culture -- they have such well-formed notions of swordfighting in part because they have such well-formed notions of EVERYTHING -- gardening, drinking tea, writing, painting, building houses -- the Japanese have a RIGHT way to do all these things -- and schools and masters to pass on the traditions and see that they are maintained.

Up until, say, twenty years ago, if you wanted to learn swordfighting at all, you either took fencing or you learned Japanese swordfighting. Nobody else was teaching anything. At least, that's all I could find. Fencing clubs and aikido schools. Now there's the Indonesian/Philipino styles, and of course the European styles are being relearned and taught. Even if many of these styles (including the Japanese) don't have 100% fidelity to the actual techniques used in the day, it's still fun.

Swordfighting is cool.

Sometimes people see me at the gym flailing around with wooden sticks and they'll ask me what the heck I'm doing, and I'll try to explain, and it honestly baffles me that they don't think it's the coolest thing in the world.

I'm like, "I'm swordfighting! Check this out!" and they're all, "Yeah, dude. Whatever."

But then, some people don't think dinosaurs are cool, either. I mean, what's up with that?

Um, what was the topic again?