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Message: <blockquote data-quote="frugal" data-source="post: 1523684" data-attributes="member: 12517">The english were required to train in the use of the longbow for the defence of the realm on Sundays and Feastdays. The penalty was the stocks, or a fine of tuppance.The usual starting age for archery practice was 5 and the average age to first go to war was about 16. So you were practicing for 11 years...You can get fairly good with a longbow in a short period of time, however one of the major reasons to spend so long training was to build up the muscles. The starting draw weight for a war bow was 120 lbs and it went up to about 180lbs (there have been bows found on the Mary Rose that were 205lbs but they were the kings elite). Being able to draw 180lbs 12 times a minute for 15 minutes takes a lot of training. The shoulder bone structure of a Medieval archer would be "deformed" by the forces upon it.What the english were famous for was putting thousands of archers together. If you have 6000 archers each shooting 12 shafts a minute that is 72000 shafts landing up on the enemy from up to 300 yards away.At cracy there were 6,000 english archers and in 8 minutes they shot over half a million arrowsThe effective accuracy of the individual arrow is not that great, half a million arrows against 10,000 men is a kill ratio of 1 in 100, but the psycological effect of having up to 18,000 arrows in the air at any one time is devestating. Each archer could have one leaving the bow, one landing and one at the top of the traectory at any one time. So there would be between 12,000 and 18,000 arrows in the air for a period of 8 minutes... They wer not called arrow storms for nothing.Only if you were the butt <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Interesting note, in a lot of old villages there is a lane called Butt Lane or The Butts that runs beside or behind the church. This was so that the men could come out of church and go stright to the butts to practice.Hmmm... This has turned into a bit of a lecture about how cool archers were <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> One last fact: The Balista Bodkin is exactly the same shape as a modern armour piercing round. I have seen medieval bodkins put completely through a full suit of armour and the dummy that was wearing it; through kevlar body armour and through bulletproof glass...</blockquote>

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