Some stuff on stuff

[Choinski, Burton]

||> Hello!?  McFly!  8.5sec = 3 phases.  I have bowmen take only 1 phase to
||> reload, and you complain, when real life has them take 2 phases? :}

I'm sorry, that must have come out wrong.  That was ment as a joke, not an
insult at him.

||So..
||
||1) I can't seem to find anything about reload times for normal bows
||(non-crossbows) in the books. Where is it?
||
||2) Isn't it great that the Romans had these real accurate watches?
||Seriously though, I'm wondering where those 8.5 seconds came from? Seems
||rather slow to me. Or is that two loads (as in "load and reload a
||bow...")? That would mean 1 phase per shot.

from: http://www.historicalweapons.com/bowandarrow.html

--------------------------
   The best longbows were made of yew. The staves were cut in winter when no
sap was running, from the junction of the inner heartwood and the outer
sapwood. The staves were seasoned and worked on gradually over a period of
three to four years. Today only six longbows survive, none from the "golden
age" and sources do not agree on the dimensions. Most give the length as
about 70in. with a drawing pull of 75-100lbs. The arrows were between
27-36in. long. A trained archer could shoot 12 arrows a minute, but some
sources say that
the most skilled archers could fire twice this number. The arrow could wound
at 250 yards, kill at 100 yards and penetrate armor at 60 yards.
... skipped text and image...

      At the battle of Agincourt, sources estimate that there were about
5,000 English archers. At a rate of fire of 8 arrows a minute, 40,000 arrows
could be loosed each minute! The battle began with dense flights of arrows
from the English archers. The heavily armoured French knights replied with a
charge, but their horses sank into the muddy ground and their immobility
made them an admirable target for their opponents. The battle was decided
within about the first half-hour. After the battle, observers wrote that the
white feathers from the flights were so thick on the ground, it looked like
snow.
----------------------------

12/minute = 1/5 seconds ~= 1/2 phases
8/minute = 1/7+ seconds ~= 1/2 phases

The above text DOES account for the best of the best firing at double rate
(1/phase), but from my own archery experience when going for speed you
sacrifice accuracy.  The high rate was probably ONLY for arrow storms, where
you are simply lofting mass numbers to rain down on an area of targets.

My personal best, in timed shoots on the argery range at 30 seconds, is 5-6
arrows.  I am not that great in skill, so most of mine that hit the target
are pretty far off the center.  The best SCA archers I saw in timed shot
made good hits out of 7-8 arrows, which is closer to the 3/4 rate that
Brandon indicated in his followup.  But that is for the best of the best
level archers.  EL?  Pretty high.

Could these same SCA archers pull it off in war, with all the death and
confusion around them?  Probably not.  But for a person trained in it I
think we can safely extrapolate.
       -- Burton


Burton Choinski
Principle Software Engineer, Quality Engineering
email: burton.choinski at matrixone.com

phone: 978-322-2135
fax  : 978-452-5764

MatrixOne, Inc.
Two Executive Drive
Chelmsford, Ma 01824
www.matrixone.com

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