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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Galloglaich" data-source="post: 5206812" data-attributes="member: 77019">Bows are different due to the shape and hardness of the projectiles but there are applicable correlations.I want to stipulate though, that the issue of longbows vs. armor specifically has been an internet fault line for close to a decade and is still an unresolved argument.   I don't really care that much about this argument, though I do have my own opinion (which I'm going to share) but I don't claim to know anything definitively, all I can do is share the data I have available and my own $.02.There have been many tests which have been done with longbows and armor, and none of them satisfy everybody in the debates; people claim different things about the armor used in the test (based on thickness, metalurgy, or tempering if any), or the padding under or over the armor (esp. important with mail), or the bow (estimates of English longbow strength go from 90 lbs to 200 lbs draw, though a consensus is emerging that 110 - 120 was about average during the heyday of what many people are now calling the English Warbow) or the arrows (whether needle-point bodkins or broadheads work best is another point of contention) are correct.Anyway my current personal OPINION** is that a longbow could not penetrate good quality plate armor*, but it could penetrate mail at most distances (depending on some other factors like how thick the aketon or gambeson is) and could penetrate thinner or more poorly made munitions-grade armor, and go around armor espc. on horses.  Obviously massed archery was effective against armored heavy cavalry that couldn't get out of the way just as massed gunfire was well before the era when firearms were capable of directly defeating the best plate armor at long range.   According to Alan Williams the longbow could generate around 80 Joules, but he was testing with a pretty weak bow (I think 70 lbs).  If you extrapolate from the power of the weapon he was testing with to more like the ones found on the (16th Century) wreck of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Rose" target="_blank">Mary Rose</a>, you could double or even triple that to perhaps 250-300 Joules, but that is still not sufficient to defeat the best quality plate armor and the penetration falls off rapidly with distance.   Add in steel armor piercing arrow heads you might get close enough to cross the threshold into penetration for a typical iron (if not a tempered steel) breastplate, but probably only at very short (point blank) range.  In my opinion anyway.  Williams estimates that it takes about 1500 Joules to penetrate Medieval Iron armor of 1.9 mm thickness with a lead ball, 900 Joules to penetrate with a steel ball.  Tempered steel roughly doubles this to 3000 / 1800 Joules.Anyway I've got to run my lunch break is over but I'll follow up on this with some more data after work.G.*Crossbows may be another story, but more about that later.** This could change subject to new data becoming available</blockquote>

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