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Why do guns do so much damage?
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<blockquote data-quote="Doug McCrae" data-source="post: 8294771" data-attributes="member: 21169"><p><em>The following passage is from the chapter 'Tactics and the face of battle', by Clifford J Rogers, in European Warfare 1350-1750 (2010):</em></p><p></p><p>Even mediocre plate armour was very tough to overcome with weapons powered by human muscle. Normal bows and light crossbows were practically unable to do it; in fact, the very definition of a quality suit of plate was that it had been tested with an arrow or a bolt and found to be 'proof' against it. Still, heavy crossbows and arrows loosed from the extraordinarily powerful English warbow <em>could </em>penetrate mild-steel plate – thin pieces like gauntlets, greaves, or visors fairly easily; thick breastplates or bascinet-tops only at close range and with an ideal angle of impact. Properly quenched high-carbon steel, with a Vickers hardness of around 350 (as opposed to around 150 for air-cooled medium-carbon steel) was another matter. It could successfully resist a weapon striking with <em>double </em>the kinetic energy required to defeat an old-style harness. It was nearly impossible for even the strongest longbow or windlass-drawn crossbow to cause serious injury through a breastplate of that sort, and only a lucky shot from a strong bowman would even be able to cause a limb wound worth mentioning. At Flodden in 1513, for example, English bowmen found that the Scottish pikemen were so well armoured that arrows 'did them no harm'.</p><p></p><p>Handguns, on the other hand, were not limited by the energy-producing capability of the human body. Modern tests have demonstrated that the very strongest archers (who had 'hands and arms of iron' and 'bodies stronger than other men's') could put a formidable 130 to 150 J of kinetic energy behind their armour-piercing shafts. A heavy steel-bowed crossbow produced somewhat more energy initially, perhaps up to around 200 J. But a well-charged 1.5 oz (42.52 g) musket-ball could leave its barrel with around 3,100 J, a 1 oz (28.3 g) arquebus-ball with around 2,700 J; even a cavalryman’s pistol could deliver over 1,000 J. It is not simple to interpret the implications of these numbers for practical effectiveness, because ballistics is a complicated subject. For example, round bullets in their flight rapidly lose energy to friction with the air, unlike streamlined arrows or modern bullets; and hardened steel arrowheads are far better suited for penetrating armour than are soft lead spheres. Hence, a pistol ball at 200 yards (182.88 m) could easily be stopped by even the cheapest vambrace, whereas a strong archer's war-shaft could still punch through the armour like a cobbler's awl. But if fired from just outside the reach of an enemy's lance, a pistol stood a fair chance of killing a well-armoured sixteenth-century man-at-arms, which an arrow or bolt did not. A musket-ball could penetrate a high-quality corselet at 200 yards (182.88 m), defeat an average one at 400 yards (365.76 m), and ruin an unarmoured horse or man even at 600 yards (548.64 m), a distance far outside the range at which even the best bowman could return fire. Moreover, the wounds inflicted by early-modern bullets were generally much worse than those caused by arrows. A bodkin arrowhead that pierced through its target might create a wound cavity of around 45 cm[sup]3[/sup]; by contrast, modern testing suggests that at close range an arquebus-ball might blast a hole in a human body three times that size at 100 m, or eight times at 9 m. It was common for men wearing good fifteenth-century armour to suffer multiple wounds from arrows or crossbow-bolts and still to be able to fight. By contrast, Bayard was killed by a ball from a musket that struck him in the side, apparently penetrated his armour, and continued on to break his spine…</p><p></p><p>Hence firearms became, by the mid sixteenth century, the predominant shot weapon for European soldiers. To be sure, there were also many other reasons for the replacement of man-powered missile weapons by gunpowder weapons, ranging from cultural and dietary changes in England, to the accelerating urbanisation and monetisation of the European economy, to the declining price of saltpetre and the rising price of yew staves. Indeed, although rarely noted in the modern literature, the technical improvements of the weapons themselves (particularly lengthening barrels) contributed significantly to this development. But superior armour-piercing capability was integral to the replacement of traditional weapons by firearms.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Doug McCrae, post: 8294771, member: 21169"] [I]The following passage is from the chapter 'Tactics and the face of battle', by Clifford J Rogers, in European Warfare 1350-1750 (2010):[/I] Even mediocre plate armour was very tough to overcome with weapons powered by human muscle. Normal bows and light crossbows were practically unable to do it; in fact, the very definition of a quality suit of plate was that it had been tested with an arrow or a bolt and found to be 'proof' against it. Still, heavy crossbows and arrows loosed from the extraordinarily powerful English warbow [I]could [/I]penetrate mild-steel plate – thin pieces like gauntlets, greaves, or visors fairly easily; thick breastplates or bascinet-tops only at close range and with an ideal angle of impact. Properly quenched high-carbon steel, with a Vickers hardness of around 350 (as opposed to around 150 for air-cooled medium-carbon steel) was another matter. It could successfully resist a weapon striking with [I]double [/I]the kinetic energy required to defeat an old-style harness. It was nearly impossible for even the strongest longbow or windlass-drawn crossbow to cause serious injury through a breastplate of that sort, and only a lucky shot from a strong bowman would even be able to cause a limb wound worth mentioning. At Flodden in 1513, for example, English bowmen found that the Scottish pikemen were so well armoured that arrows 'did them no harm'. Handguns, on the other hand, were not limited by the energy-producing capability of the human body. Modern tests have demonstrated that the very strongest archers (who had 'hands and arms of iron' and 'bodies stronger than other men's') could put a formidable 130 to 150 J of kinetic energy behind their armour-piercing shafts. A heavy steel-bowed crossbow produced somewhat more energy initially, perhaps up to around 200 J. But a well-charged 1.5 oz (42.52 g) musket-ball could leave its barrel with around 3,100 J, a 1 oz (28.3 g) arquebus-ball with around 2,700 J; even a cavalryman’s pistol could deliver over 1,000 J. It is not simple to interpret the implications of these numbers for practical effectiveness, because ballistics is a complicated subject. For example, round bullets in their flight rapidly lose energy to friction with the air, unlike streamlined arrows or modern bullets; and hardened steel arrowheads are far better suited for penetrating armour than are soft lead spheres. Hence, a pistol ball at 200 yards (182.88 m) could easily be stopped by even the cheapest vambrace, whereas a strong archer's war-shaft could still punch through the armour like a cobbler's awl. But if fired from just outside the reach of an enemy's lance, a pistol stood a fair chance of killing a well-armoured sixteenth-century man-at-arms, which an arrow or bolt did not. A musket-ball could penetrate a high-quality corselet at 200 yards (182.88 m), defeat an average one at 400 yards (365.76 m), and ruin an unarmoured horse or man even at 600 yards (548.64 m), a distance far outside the range at which even the best bowman could return fire. Moreover, the wounds inflicted by early-modern bullets were generally much worse than those caused by arrows. A bodkin arrowhead that pierced through its target might create a wound cavity of around 45 cm[sup]3[/sup]; by contrast, modern testing suggests that at close range an arquebus-ball might blast a hole in a human body three times that size at 100 m, or eight times at 9 m. It was common for men wearing good fifteenth-century armour to suffer multiple wounds from arrows or crossbow-bolts and still to be able to fight. By contrast, Bayard was killed by a ball from a musket that struck him in the side, apparently penetrated his armour, and continued on to break his spine… Hence firearms became, by the mid sixteenth century, the predominant shot weapon for European soldiers. To be sure, there were also many other reasons for the replacement of man-powered missile weapons by gunpowder weapons, ranging from cultural and dietary changes in England, to the accelerating urbanisation and monetisation of the European economy, to the declining price of saltpetre and the rising price of yew staves. Indeed, although rarely noted in the modern literature, the technical improvements of the weapons themselves (particularly lengthening barrels) contributed significantly to this development. But superior armour-piercing capability was integral to the replacement of traditional weapons by firearms. [/QUOTE]
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