ARROWS vs ARMOUR - Medieval Myth Busting

Well, this could work too, although yes, that's why we're here. Tods Workshop here and today we have an extraordinary film for you: Arrows Against Armor, Agincourt, which breaks

myth

s. This is something we've all wanted to see for a long time and because I have Joe the archer, Will the Fletcher and Kevin the gunsmith to help. This is a day I have wanted to do for so long. so bows and

arrows

versus armor. There are so many

myth

s and legends surrounding the longbow that obscure what happened, so we are running a series of tests with the best people and the best equipment that I can find and that we have put together;

They have done everything they can to make the equipment for today. First we have Joe Gibbs, he shoots a 200 pound longbow, he can do it and it doesn't put him in the hospital and I quote, "shooting a 160 pound longbow is easy, I can do it all day." I mean, the man is like half machine, you can't get a different Archer than Joe, he has to be Joe. And then we have Will Sherman from Medieval Arrows, he's Fletcher and Arrowsmith full time and there aren't many people who are good enough to be able to do that full time and make a living from it, you know the passion and the knowledge that goes into it.

What it has is extraordinary. So again I have no choice but to Will Sherman to do this. And then, of course, there's Kevin Legg of Plessis Armories. He is the only gunsmith I know, who does not even have a MIG welder, he lifts all his helmets, all his work is done in the style of the 14th and 15th century, he has a very good knowledge of the subject and that is not surprising because he does conservation work of metals and armory. He is an extraordinary gunsmith, he is brilliant. We don't have a predetermined outcome today, we're not following a script, as much as you want to know what happens, we also want to know what happens, that's why we're here, so we're going to do the testing and what happens is What you're seeing is not We're going to go back and do it again until we get the result we want.

We are learning here. Hopefully, you will learn here and we will all take this area of ​​knowledge of what happens with

arrows

. versus armor at a better level than we have now. Now, in forming the team to do this I needed people I could really believe in; The final member of the team is, of course, Dr. Toby Capwell, author, museum curator, and most importantly, practicing jouster, allowing him to understand armor and weapons, how they are worn, and how they are used. . So when Tod called me about this when he was putting this team together to do this experiment, I was very excited, but I also pointed out that I think we need to be very specific about a particular moment in history that we're trying to explore.

So we have chosen a specific date because the armor changes course over time, this way we can get a meaningful set of results, pointing to one date and what better date is there than Agincourt 1415. So this is an evidence based experiment , but what is the evidence exactly? I mean, Agincourt is a good battle to focus on here, not only because it's really famous and very mythologized, but also because there's a lot of evidence, I mean, we know more about the Battle of Agincourt than most

medieval

battles, We actually know the location of the battle, we know more or less what the numbers were, we know the composition of the armies, we have visual sources from the time, which gives us an idea of ​​what these people were like and how they shot.

They are shooting directly, not into the air. We have written accounts, there are eyewitness accounts from the English side and the French side, and lots of them. And then we have the material that survives, there is armor from this period that survives and enough of it that we can get a good idea of ​​the metallurgy, the construction and the way it is designed. One of the reasons I want to do this test today is that we can take all that evidence, we can take our ideas, and then we can see what the real physical world has to say about it.

Now we won't answer all the questions on our minds, but we will answer some and that's what today is about. The first step was to get some chronograph readings to measure the speed and then the energy of the arrows at different distances. Because in Agincourt we knew there were flat shots, but we don't know what the distance was. So here we shoot at 10 meters, which is clearly too short, but it gives us an idea of ​​the maximum power of the bow. So we managed to get a reading on those injections and that gave us 123 joules or 91 foot-pounds.

The next stage will be to make it 25 meters because that is the distance we are doing the bib tests and again we get a chronograph to read and that gives us 109 joules or 80 foot-pounds. Now, unfortunately, we opted for a 50-meter one, but we couldn't get it through the window. I don't know why the timeline didn't work, but we'll come back to this in a later movie. So we have readings at 10 meters, we have readings at 25, unfortunately it is too difficult for this at 50 to get into the stopwatch window. But I mean, look at that. It's very impressive, it's come all the way, it still has a punch.

Well, it's been through a fairly new straw bump and still 25 mil, an inch, sticking out the back. But he still doesn't wear armor. So, Joe, what have you done to make sure this gun is the same one they were shooting at Agincourt? I must say that visually this is a pretty impressive arch and it sure looks like things you see in paintings and manuscripts. The only bows we have left are the Mary Rose bows, so I measured them and made a copy of some of the bows on that ship. Basically, in your physique, in the weapon, you have gone through the process since childhood that they went through in the 15th century.

Yeah, I grew up shooting bows since I was 14, 15, something like a hundred pounds more, yeah, and I shoot three, two, three times a week, so what's the draw weight of this bow? 160 pounds at 30 inches, that's pretty heavy, much heavier than most people would shoot. Yes, it is these days. And is that your maximum or can you shoot higher? No, I can shoot up to 200 pounds. Well, if you can shoot a 200-pound bow, why don't we use it for the test? I think this is probably an average weight for the

medieval

period. With a 200 pound bow after six arrows I'm knackered, I can't shoot a bow, but with a 160 pound bow I can shoot all day and I can shoot accurately.

Sure, yes, and let's not forget that after shooting all your arrows you still have to be in good shape to take out your sword, your ax or whatever, and fight hand to hand. Yes, exactly, you don't want to be destroyed, you want to still have a little energy left to be able to do the business. Excellent, OK, these are the arrows we used for the test. I have to say I just walked in and looked at them for the first time. They are really impressive as objects, but you know we have to replicate the right conditions as much as possible, so can you tell us a little about what you've done so we can be sure that they are the same type of arrows that were shot at Agincourt .

Well the problem we have is that we don't have anything from Agincourt to look at so all we really have is an arrow from Westminster Abbey which is around 1403 and the arrows from Mary Rose which are around three and a half thousand . The Westminster Abbey arrow is a really small arrow, there's no way they used it to penetrate armor, so all we have to look at are Mary Rose's arrows. They have them all, well, almost most of them. I have a half inch shoulder and they taper to a certain point and the half inch shoulder allows you to have a pretty big head.

So we have archaeological evidence for the heads separately and can compare them. Yes, these are from the Museum of London, the exact head is number 7568 out of approximately 1403, so we are in that tricky area. And would some of those heads dating to the correct period basically fit Mary Rose's arrows? Absolutely. That is a crucial question; the Mary Rose is still a hundred years later, so you know we have to wonder how we know the Mary Rose is the same one Henry the Fifth's archers shoot at. But those are the kinds of things that start to give us a little more confidence.

Yes, once you take a real head and put a real arrow shaft on it and it fits and the weight is still usable and shootable, you know you're in the right area. And are they adorned with goose feathers? These are swans. Swan? Swan primary feathers. Very pretty. And they are bound to a compound of beeswax, kidney fat and copper verdigris. First you put the feathers in, join them together and then everything is heated and this nice binding and feather wrap is formed. And the heads are iron? Yes iron. Real wrought iron, we have an unhardened one here and a hardened one here.

Just to see the difference. And we have evidence that sometimes they hardened and sometimes they didn't or... Not really. Is it difficult to know? Yes, because it is a very small amount of carbon that goes outside, once it has been in the soil for a few hundred years, it is gone. But at least we have the comparison and if there is a drastic difference in performance, we can be aware of it. I mean this is no ordinary target shooting arrow, it's heavy. How much do they weigh? The complete arrow weighs 80 grams, the head weighs about 25 and then the shaft makes up the rest.

I mean, they shot arrows into my armor for other experiments, and while they didn't penetrate, they hurt and were much lighter than this one. I mean you know this is a little scary. Yes, they are scary. So we've replicated the gun and now we're here at the other end where the French Knight is being shot. It's very, very important that we're filming something that actually replicates reality, so what have we done to get there? The choice of armor pieces to copy is quite limited and from this period what I found is the Churburg breastplate 14 dated 13 90. We know the carbon content of the original, we know the thicknesses of the original, the weight and the dimensions.

So I took all that information and produced this piece. So the original breastplate is thicker in this center area here, just like mine here, it's two and a half millimeters thick in the center, a sturdy piece of steel and then the thickness tapers off to the side, so looking at it here, They have a thickness of up to one and a half millimeters. There are a number of different things that are important here: we have the shape, we have the thickness, what about the steel itself, I mean, what it's supposed to be made of. Now, the original steel was much more varied than our modern homogeneous steel;

It had varying carbon content, but the maximum carbon content we had was one point six percent. Which seems like a very small amount, but it's enough to make it hard but not brittle. That was the peak, so what we did was we backed off slightly and went with point five percent carbon steel. And have you heat treated it? The original was air cooled, so the entire piece was heated and then allowed to cool naturally, which I suppose in a modern term would normalize the steel. So this has gone through the same process so the hardness of the steel is exactly the same as the original.

What's underneath? Now, underneath this you will still be wearing a full mesh shirt; Now the mail that we have reproduced below here is riveted mail. Each link is riveted and that will increase the strength. Below that we have our representation here of the armed doublet which in turn are layers of fabric. Now the armed doublet is the basic garment that is worn only over a shirt or even next to the skin. That's what holds up all the armor, but also adds a crucial layer of padding and protection underneath. Well that's it, it's a durable garment. And then even after all those layers, everything that you're using, it still has to go to the human body underneath to make a difference that the ballistic gel itself does, if I press you can see it compresses just like the body does. human when mounted. then it will give.

He acts like a human being as if he were shot. Simply bolting the shell solidly to a target wouldn't get us anywhere, would it? That would have an adverse effect because it would limit the force. You need that force to be able to dissipate just as it would when hitting a person. It is simply pushing the person back, rather than passing through them. It's giving him that inertia. Well, it's the first time we've shot at the armor. Whose heads are we going to shoot now? These are the forgings that have not been hardened, so you could refer to them as the soft ones.

Basically the easiest to make. And most likely there were many of them around. I think so, I mean we just don't know what the end result is. Well, this could work too, although we don't know. Maybe so, that's why we're here. Those are the types of situations that we want to see what happened and we should continue. Yes I think so. Nice. That was it. That was cool. That was. He also saw. I couldn't see where, but the arrowhead flew. Yes, I mean the axis turned to the right but the tip of the arrow went up somewhere.

The noise is very loud. So first I shotthrough the mesh, through the cat, through the body. Then she hit the turned edge and made a small mark and then jumped under it. That's the next blow; there's a very deep dent there, but then she skates away without punching out. It's a little strange though because she hit really hard but didn't leave a mark. In reality, he was simply hit at a steeper angle and skidded. It completely shows what that V is for, to try to stop those bounces because that's exactly where they would have gone. I mean he did his job both times.

And that's with the soft head, let's go again with the hard one. Yeah, I think what I'll do is mark the soft so we know. Just make a mark of what is what. So that's soft number one, here really soft number two. So those were the softer, wrought iron heads and now we're going to try the hardened wrought iron. OK. And just see if they are extra hardness, the hard jacket just needs to bite a little more, they are just skating. I wonder if that will make a difference. We'll see, I mean it should mark the steel better at least, whether it penetrates is another matter.

Oh! Square, you don't have to worry about getting shot. No, you're right because there's always this myth that you go and pick them up and then shoot them again and all that. No. Not if they hit something. No. Wow, so low and to the left, so I mean that's what the curve is for. He took a left turn, absolutely straight, right? Wow. I can see the dent from here. Holy Cow. That was a big one. Well, there's a message there, right? Geez, look at that. So, that was the first one. You only feel a little bit, but there is a definite mark.

It has marked the metal much more than that one, yes, and there is this one, yes, they are biting more. There isn't enough data yet to really say, but it seems like they are behaving differently. Yeah, well, the obvious thing that we obviously haven't mentioned is that they haven't delivered. There it is, there it is yes. You must not forget that. H1, h2, then H for 'Hard' and that's the middle section that Kevin was saying is 2.5 is that, so it's somewhere between 2.5 and let's say 2 and it's done. Wow. I think we're just going to review the footage to see what we can learn from that, see if we can find the arrowheads.

Where are the rest of them? Then, that half disappeared, the heads disappeared completely. There's a crack... right there. God, I didn't expect that. It's like it's wrinkled and part of its brokenness is broken again. Yeah, well, when we look at the pictures, it's possible that it hit something on the way. I have one. That's interesting, I mean, look at the point about that. Do you know how steel changes color depending on how hot it is heated? And what color do you see in the center of that? Where is blue. It's blue, yeah, so it's like 350 degrees Celsius, I don't know what that is in Fahrenheit 500 or something.

That's interesting because when you test musket fire against armor, you can see that there is an instant of overheating when there is contact. Well, that's what happened here, so there's enough energy in that blow, that it has heated the iron so hot that it has turned blue. how cool is that? Yeah, I don't know what to do with that, but it's cool. I don't know if it matters, but I didn't think it ever happened. So here we have the first of the arrows that is forged, not hardened. Just clipping underneath, you see that the oscillating shockwave caused the gel to go through the mesh and connector, just clipping the bottom edge of the shell.

Ruin someone's day. You see that. He stepped back a little and the wave of gel passed through his chest. Then came the second one and that, it's just a hit right on the edge where the armor is curved so much that it deflects it, which of course, is exactly what the armor should be doing. As you can see, the arrow hits and then looks up and hits that V rib. Taking it away from what would be the throat. There is still quite a bit of movement in the gel and in that shot as well. I mean it definitely sets our guy back a little bit too.

Wow, here we go, hardened. Obviously, he broke the arrow in a completely obvious way. I can't answer that to anyone. Did you hit the V though Tod? Let's look at that again... and it just keeps going up, isn't it just over the shoulder? I mean it shows the mechanism of lucky shots, doesn't it? If they don't pass the plate, I think we've proven that's not the case. Uh-huh People are getting hurt in other ways. Looking. You actually saw the tip of the arrow reach, I wonder how far. Again you saw the head separate from the shaft and rotate, but the shaft actually remained in contact and slid across the surface.

Wow, that was good, let's watch it again. It basically bounces right away. Yes, he did, but maybe it's the hardening of the case, but he didn't skate. But also, if you look at the amount of movement that occurred when this occurs, I think it has moved more than any of the others. So I mean you can see I guess from the dent, he's actually transferred the energy into that one. It hasn't happened, but wow, there's some power in that. And again you can see the armor flexing, the ripples through the gel, the cart moving backwards, everything is doing what you would expect it to do.

So Joe, you're looking at that from the goalies' point of view, what are you seeing? It seems to me that with that type of arrowhead, hardened or not, there is no way for it to pierce that armor. If you're out there, where are you aiming? He would try to hit as many arrows as he can and hopefully one of them will find the soft part of all the love. So, frankly, the volume of arrows. Yes, that's what he would do. So Kevin, what are you watching? I'm looking at a really well designed piece of armor. I mean, that's the experience that puts the thickness right in the center that you need.

It is experience that put that V in front to deflect exactly what we saw in the footage. Perfect design engineering really. That breastplate is obviously thick in the front and is good quality steel even if it's not hardened, what about the legs and arms? You move towards the extremities and the armor is half this thickness, making it more vulnerable, but the turns are much tighter, so getting a square shot is harder; there is another video there. Then again the volume arrows and I guess. We killed some of your arrows today Will, so what do you think of what you saw?

I could just echo what people say: we're looking at something designed to stop arrows and it does exactly what it's supposed to do. We don't know if the head could be more hardened, maybe we can investigate it. It's going through mesh, it's going through flesh, it's obviously going through textile armor, but that's doing what it was designed to do. And at the end there are destructive arrows, you can't shoot them at people and they are ruined, that's all. Toby, what are you, what are you thinking? Well, I'm not surprised because I knew the armor was going to do its job.

I think this is helpful because it's a reminder that we're dealing with a really complex physical situation. There are all kinds of side effects and I'm incredibly impressed with how basically all the arrows just explode. But then you have all this wood flying and heads flying and the noise. I think this experiment helps the imagination, as well as trying to flesh out the actual human experience of this, because ultimately that's what matters. Looking at that breastplate and the damage it took, I can't see the arrows piercing it now. It's not to say that they won't pass through weaker pieces of armor, like leg armor or a back plate or something, but I think we can stop asking, "do they pass through armor?" Maybe occasionally, but usually not.

That brings us to the mechanism of what happens. How do you kill people? How do people get injured? So, they have to be lucky breaks, right? A strap breaks and your arm is open, or one gets stuck under your armpit. We saw him with the mesh and in the doublet. I wonder what the role of the jupon is. The English knew about them and there are depictions of English knights wearing them, but it is not typical where it is typical in France, so it is useful to have thicker textile armor over plate

armour

. I mean that's something very important in this period.

Well, let's take a look at that. Here we have a copy made by Chrissi Carnie of The Sempster. Again, like everything else, made in the most authentic way possible. the same with the linen layers and the cotton wadding and the silk on top. This is a really important part of the test, because we know that thickly padded textile armor or jupones was a particular French fashion in this period and it was typical for French knights to wear this textile armor in addition to their plates. They always do it but they tended to do it. It is certainly more common in the French army than in the English.

So we need to add that to the equation and no one has done it before. It really seems like a key element to me that they used them over the plate armor; I know you were saying that sometimes they used them underneath, but if you use them on top, it will radically change what happens when you hit it with things. Plus swords and maces and stuff like that, it will alleviate some of the pain, but I think it will also make a big difference in how the arrow hits. We'll see. Interesting, it seems you are right.

Which has absolutely captured it. We absolutely captured it and for once we also recovered an arrowhead. Did your head stay inside? I don't know, I think we'll find out. I mean it was a square in the center of the chest and all the other arrows just exploded. So far there are no explosions. Yes. Fascinating Wow Now look at that, so this is with the jupon on the shell, clearly something quite different is happening, they are behaving in a completely different way. Should we open it? The heads were smashed again. What do we have here? So those are those two strikes there.

And the other one didn't do much didn't make an impression, this is a new scratch there, I think that's what's going on here. Not much, but I mean it really completely changed the characteristics of what happened. But it's not that they are not deep dents, they are not worrying. No, not remotely. I mean they are superficial compared to this one. The fact that it has come out has come in here. Is this the one here? That's interesting because that's exactly the stroke of luck we're talking about. If it does it through the cloth... then it disappears, hits the plate, spins and goes down, but again, goes straight up under the window.

I think it's actually hit that because it's coming up at the same angle again, you know, if you put it back together, it lines up with the stop rib, it's right on the stop rib. The explosion of flying debris is very impressive, but the biggest risk to the individual it hits is the deflection of some part of the arrow into another space. In sword combat in spear combat, the skating weapon is one of the main risks in armor combat. I mean, it will certainly help alleviate some of the sting of a sword or mace hit, but I would say quite clearly that it also greatly reduces arrow fragmentation.

Imagine if you had 40 of those sticking out. I know it looks pretty, right? A true fashion accessory. Regards to Will. So there seemed to be a little difference between the hardened and unhardened ones, but it's hard to say, so what was the process like? How did the heads we made for this test suddenly appear? They were forged in wrought iron and the half that we hardened were heated to 850 degrees Celsius or 1500 Fahrenheit and then tempered in a composite of organic material such as hoof, horn and sugar and which forms a carbon layer. There's a lot of variation and a lot of cooking times changed, the level of carbon that you get in these arrowheads and there's a lot of information that we need to learn about that.

So to try to put it to sleep, I have a modern Joe arrow here, so it's a modern case hardened steel, so that's the best we can get. We've shortened the range now to 10 meters to give us everything, the best possible chance of achieving it and we'll see what it does. Test it. Let's take a look. Well, the arrow didn't fare any better. It clearly had a deeper impact, not much, but a deeper impact. My take on this is that the shell is maybe two millimeters thick at that point and, given our best pun, with a modern hardened steel case it still doesn't.

It doesn't do anything here, great, it doesn't go through, but in the thinner areas of the armor, like the size of the legs or something, it could suddenly start to make a difference and I think that's where we need to do it. go search. I think what we're seeing here is an unanswered question: does hardening really work? Is it really worth all those extra hours of work and the time and materials needed? The hardening hardened their heads and we really have to go. And take a look at that and really look at what you can do and how far you can go.

Unfortunately, the problem you have is that you can't go to a book and look at it, it was never written. It's that of master and apprentice, you do it as it has always been doneand you say "oh, great" and that's why we have to go and we have to do practical tests and see how far we can go. Wow, what a day, guys. I mean, this has been absolutely fantastic to see and thank you so much for your input. He has really been great and has answered many questions for me. Clearly many other questions have arisen that we need to get answered;

Kevin helmets! So we need to look at that about drilling the vents and sights of a helmet. Again with the hardening, but it's been fantastic. But it's really you, I hope you enjoyed it too and be sure to comment, you know we like to discuss this, we read your comments, we try to respond when we can and we learn from it, so it would be good to see you there. Thank you so much