True, a spike is pretty much the only thing that makes sense to put on the top. And if you do that, you at least have that damage type covered. But I have to stress that a thrusting spike and a chopping spike are entirely different features on a weapon.
I mean, it is a spike, but for the purposes of this conversation you might as well think of it as a spearpoint. I know this is not technically accurate, but what is a pollaxe if not a winged spear with funny wings?
To piggyback on Pystro and J A, the main focus of this video as stated in the beginning was "right-angled, projection weapons." So, and I'm just assuming based on context clues, I believe he meant "spike" in a narrow sense of " projecting 90°/crosswise from the handle" (as opposed to, say, a "point," which may be defined as "projecting in line with the handle").
As ive mentioned b4 in your comments section im roughly half native & those are one of the types my tribe used. Its true it will get stuck, though those were mostly thrown & when they were used in hand it helps if you use it more in a slashing manner in an up close & personal way or aim for the head so it stops em cold. Which it would only be one of the many weapons carried by a warrior. The bow is the main weapon. The tomahawk in dominant hand & the off hand dagger are secondary. At least within the tribal cultures I descend from.
You gonna strap a halberd to your side to go to the pub? You're gonna opt to fight without a shield when the only armor you have is an extra tunic and a helmet you found?
This video was a good discussion starter. I tested and experienced exceptions to this. It’s covered in a video that only a true tomahawk enthusiast would enjoy. There are several spike and tomahawk chopping blade geometries that entirely eliminate extraction issues-they bury to the handle and pop right out just as quickly. These shapes are historic to examples seen in North America, and I have tested these designs against fabric, flesh, and bone and customers have demo’d these on pig heads, etc. Gets nasty but with the right shape, even for a spontoon tomahawk, you will have zero extraction issues. I filmed this in a family friendly video titled “Tomahawks: Penetration and Extraction on Pumpkins” - but pumpkins are much stiffer than people and tend to exaggerate extraction issues vs. flesh and bone targets.
Piercing, interestingly, is almost never desirable in D&D either. It's the one you are STUCK with if you use a bow, but it's pretty much never the one you WANT. Skeletons need bludgeon, zombies need slashing, what needs piercing?
Experience chopping firewood would suggest a weapon stuck in your opponent gives you a really good handle for controlling them; you can use a hatchet to pick up and move wood, so perhaps you could yank them of balance or even off their feet?
The human body is really really heavy though, and especially if they're using muscles to resist. If it takes you 2-3 seconds to maneuver their body off balance, that's enough time for them to strike back at you.
I remember my grandfather talking about bayonetting in WW2, saying if you stab into the gut, the muscles contract around it as the person doubles over, so getting it out again was a bit of a problem and they basically had to stand on the enemy to pull it out. Not exactly ideal when there are lots of other enemy around.
A friend of mine used to work as a bouncer in a strip club, and tells a similar story. He got stabbed twice. Once was in the thigh. The knife got stuck there, and it took several hospital staff to hold his leg down and pull on it until it came out.
Great food for thought presentation, Matt. But a few points for further consideration. 1st - if you make a solid strike with any mass weapon there's a lot of energy deposited into your foe. 2nd - people who get hit hard - MOVE & quite often Fall. This means that your extraction would Not remain a 180° reciprocation of the initial striking angle. Sliding a hand up the haft (primary or support hand) and wrenching away as your opponent's body weight pulled away or fell would facilitate a lot of the needed extraction force. 3rd - axe or hammer blows are to break through an enemy's defense whereas the spike was most often reserved for finishing blows or prying past & into armor, often once both opponents had grappled to the ground. 4th - a lot of straight or hook spike work was done using 2 hands on the weapon's haft to direct the spike's point into the vulnerable or critical target areas once the foe's Defenses had been pushed past. Such as wedging plate away so a Rondel or other dagger could be inserted. ...And not all armor was top quality, perfectly fitted or metallurgically sound. Your observations on double-kill combos are valid but look to your own training & competition experience. You don't make a hit & then stand there waiting to see if your opponent will oblige you by dying instantly. You hit & keep moving, defensively or setting your next attack into motion & respond to what your opponent does (or if the judges or buzzers sound off). The dynamics of the fight don't end just because a single good hit has been achieved, whether using blades or firearms. You keep attacking, striking, stabbing, shooting, etc - until ZERO THREAT remains. Several of your other respondents have also observed that the force you would exert into a foe's body in attempting to extract even a stuck blade, would move an opponent around like a puppet on a stick - not fun for either person I'm sure but that would also mean that your weapon would continue causing further damage & trauma as you sought to dislodge it or until you decided to resort to a secondary or back up weapon. A lot of dynamics going on there - That's my context. 😁👍👌🖖🤺
I use a spike end tomahawk as a pickaroon when cutting/splitting firewood. Just reach out and snag a round out of the pile without having to bend over and pick it up. Works pretty well, but CAN be a chore to unstick sometimes. I use the blade end for trimming a trunk of branches, thereby saving gas, noise, and/or electricity (been using a cordless saw lately as I get older and more decrepit). For limbing, the hawk has a longer reach than a hatchet, and lighter than an ax. Nice intermediate tool, actually, for this work. Use a sword cane to get around with, or when I don't know how long I may have to stand in a line. Thanks for your channel.
Ikr. I personally can't think of any advantages to having a beak as opposed to a hammer on a pollaxe. A hammer face would presumably be more effective against plate. And if you're fighting an unamored opponent, just use the axe end lol, or the top spike Added the word 'top' for more clarity
Hard to say ive seen several manuscripts and in one of the swiss ones they do show men in formation having halberds with their spiked end in the front to deliver strong downward blows against their fully harnessed opponents. Iirc some of the skulls from the towton massacre also have such wounds. Other reports also seem to indicate that it was indeed possible to blow through armour. I think that rather the axe blade is something more rare at least when i look at tallhoffer and other manuscripts.
@@logiii6854 most soldiers would have been equipped with first gambeson, than later maille and or brigandine. A spike would be good against standard infantrymen.
Usually the spikes aren't actually sharp, like on the French Crow's Beak (Bec du Corbin). The whole point (lol) is that the spike penetrates due to the weight of the head and narrow shape of the beak, rather than the sharpness of the point.
I did knife fighting as a part of a hand to hand combat fighting course in the military. It was mostly focused on being sure your knife ends up in the other guy, regardless of what happens to you, IE thrusts. They didn't say this but I am pretty sure the doctrine was developed with the idea that if you're fighting hand to hand, you fucked up, you're already dead, and whatever damage you can inflict is a plus. I had done some kali escrima, told the instructor (marginally competent, he was a tae kwon do guy) he was wrong. He got marks across his eyes, both sides of the throat and I was sawing at the tendons of his right shoulder when he figured he won the bout clean because he stuck me in the kidney with the arm I was busy removing. Shitty course, don't recommend it.
Having tried Kali, how do you feel about the idea that hatchets and such were to be used with a knife? A tomohawk would be good for hooking a guard out of the way or pulling someone onto a stab.
I don't know if your conclusion need apply necessarily, because even just only going on what he said in the video, you're still of course better off having DEFINITELY hit the other guy even if there's a CHANCE he hits you back, even in the worst of the set of options presented. So it still makes sense to prioritize hitting the other guy. It could be the case that in modern loadouts, it more just isn't worth the weight to carry around a freaking shield or whatever, and isn't worth the time and resources spent training for it, due to rarity of application? "yeah it'd be nice to have a shield right in that moment and know how to use it. But assuming you don't, and you can't run away, what's best? Hitting the other guy as a priority, yeah?"
@@gavinjenkins899 I agree with you there. Hand to hand combat is simply not a priority, and many soldiers will seek out better instruction on their own time. Its a skill that takes years to get actually good at, not weeks or months. The course itself was bad when judged against actually learning a skill properly, but in terms of giving a mass group of untrained people a good chance of tactical success it's about as good as it could be. My main martial arts are judo and wrestling, been at it continuously since I was 6, dabbled with a few others like Muay Thai, kali and HEMA, but really I just enjoy beating up arrogant TKD guys that think a belt means something special.
@@canadianeh4792 having learned some TKD while deployed in korea, i agree. TKD itself has been ritualized and turned into an all out competitive sport rather than an actually useful combat art. sure, there are bits and pieces that have a practical application, but it's not really anything any actual combat art wouldent know to teach. i found actual combatives training to be far more useful. it was a much better use of time training to turn almost any strike at me into some sort of joint lock for the purpose of breaking a limb than it was to memorize a sequence of punches and kicks from specific stances.
This discussion reminds me of a rule in the tabletop game GURPS. Picks (or generally, swung weapons with an impaling or piercing point) can get stuck in a target, making them unusable for attacks or parries until removed. I don't recall how realistic the rules are (I think there's a Strength roll involved to retrieve the weapon) but it's cool that they tried to include that sort of detail. In most tabletop games, the difference between "longsword" and "warhammer" is maybe a single point of damage, and a damage type which rarely comes into play, with no consideration for how they interact with armor or flesh.
Those considerations aren't an oversight, but rather they've been removed from the largest system for sake of simplicity. In chainmail, the combat system for the original iteration of D&D, there was a weapon vs armor table, showing the benefits of using a given weapon against a given armor, pretty self explanatory. Memorizing such a table wasn't practical, and must have been something players didn't like checking, so it was removed. In the age of digital tabletops, it may be possible to create these systems again. Edit: if I were DMing 5e and a player said "I thrust the point of my halberd to counter my enemy's mail" (ofc they'd probably phrase that more naturally) I'd at least give them Inspiration or a bonus to attack
@@relzyn5545 AD&D 1 had that table, and it was horrible and never used. GURPS has a simple rule, not a table, and it's the tradeoff for being able to do devastating internal damage--as Matt notes.
@@thekaxmax GURPS goes horribly overboard with trying to have rules for everything. I much prefer to have the difference in weapons narratively and not mechanically.
I've been having a lot of similar conversations about this topic recently, but basically, both sides of the conversation are perfectly good, it just comes down to a sliding scale between "combat simulation" VS "combat abstraction." GURPS and Chainmail are at the simulation end of the scale and D&D 5e is doing a great job as a combat abstraction, and there's plenty of space for everything in between! cheers
GURPS is nice. You can make custom polearms using whichever heads you want. Facing armor? Might want the hammer head. Favor disabling foes by hacking at arms and legs? Go for the axe head. Prefer to deal gruesome damage to the torso? A pick head is perfect.
I don't know what I love the most: the fact that he does this joke every single time or the casual and subtle way in which he does it, almost as if he's not doing it at all.
An alternate thought: If your right-angle penetration weapon is stuck in your foe, you have a control handle to use against them. To control their movements to a degree, perhaps to drag them closer for the off-hand knife, or to use them as a shield against another combatant. - Just a thought I had, that's all.
i was thinking the same, borrowing olympic wrestling ideas on leverage, you could potentially pull them forward, or even down to one knee with said control handle. of course, if one must absolutely abort, that's why you always carry a dagger or some other side arm. spears and weapons with wooden parts broke mid battle often enough, that's usually when people switched to using swords in battlefields.
While it's probably possible I wouldn't really count on it. Like the thing won't be stuck indefinitely and the person you hit is probably trying to get away/pull it out. trying to use it as a handle might just dislodge it.
Part of the reason why pistols (revolver days) used by officers (at least in the US) became higher caliber was to increase stopping power because officers fighting at close range would shoot an enemy in CQC and the shot enemy would still get run through with a bayonet.
The .45acp 1911 semi-auto pistol was actually invented, by John Moses Browning, in response to US soldiers being cut down with swords by drug fueled Moro warriors in the Philippines, even after emptying their small-caliber revolvers into them. Of course, the weapon that eventually made the biggest difference, in that conflict, turned out to be the pump-action shotgun (also invented by Browning). Both weapons went on to be extremely effective in the trenches of WWI.
I guess, a straightforward question with another long answer, but assuming the point is intended as a disposable oneshot, what about drawing a secondary weapon to defend, or using this as a specialized and disposable weapon. I have heard the same concerns about the bayonet, I think infamously in All Quiet on the Western Front, the bayonet was disparaged versus the spade for many reasons, but this was one of them. If you drive your rifle deeply into a target, you have to pull it out of them. Whereas with a spade you could continue chopping. I wonder too about the hammer blade, which would effect a glancing motion after impact versus a spike which would remain stuck. Especially those rectangular cross section crows beaks, I would imagine they would drive quite deeply, even into plate. Bone is another problem. Imagine getting a spike stick between ribs or clavicle. I think the spike is unquestionably more lethal, however.
Why do you think cross and scalloped triangle cross section bayonets were so common before the far shorter modern knife style bayonet? To make a wound that doesn't grip the bayonet as much! That said, even with a modern knife bayonet mounted on a modern rifle, I'd definitely carry a couple of backup blades in case the opponent grabs the rifle in a way that forces my bayonet out of line and/or tries to pull the rifle away. As the opponent tries to pull it away from me, they will find the rifle has a three part one and a half sling system with either the one or the half clipped into my webbing vest, just in time for a face full of backup gladius carried across the small of my back for a semi-concealed easy draw.
Note that the style of warfare had changed by Western front. Bayonets were, in some regards, an evolution of pike-and-shot warfare. The world wars were fought in trenches rather than armies on a field.
Well in All Quiet on the Western Front was specifically referring to the German saw-bayonet. Which due to its serrations for cutting wood would often get stuck in people. The German soldiers disliked it because their weapon would be stuck and the Allies disliked it because they thought it was deliberately cruel. German soldiers captured with them would often be beaten or killed in "retaliation".
I nearly had a problem with the spike on the back of my battle axe. Its called nearly tripping over a boot when you're putting the bloody thing away after you have cleaned it.
I saw the spike, and thought you were going to say it was used to exert force on the enemy after hitting them. If you embed the spike in the first three layers of their gambeson, maybe you get a pinprick through to the skin. But you've got a grip that's basically nailed to them. You can pull if the weapon is being wielded one-handed, and if it's a two-hander you have the choice of whether to pull or to push sideways, whichever direction you think will throw your enemy off-balance so that you can make your next blow count.
I've always assumed that in knightly bludgeoning weapons' like pollexes/polehammers/becdecorbin/etc... the bludgeoning portion was for engaging in combat against other armored opponents, while the spike would likely be reserved for dispatching a foe who had already been knocked on their ass and unable to retaliate effectively, or against unarmored opponents for whom you'd have little defensive concerns as a man in plate armor anyway. Thoughts?
Along with the minuses involved in having your weapon stuck in the enemy, it DOES give you a nifty handle with which to leverage and lever your enemy about.
It seems like a "no-brainer" in terms of designing a weapon (increased leverage for your Scream-style stabbies), but it also seems like a weapon who's weaknesses come out with testing/training. Maybe they had a more specific purpose, at least in medieval times: I'd imagine the spike would have been very useful for "cleaning up" after a battle. It would be a quick way to execute a downed opponent without getting too close (presumably you don't want someone slashing at your ankles with a dagger). This way, you could preserve your edged weapons, or get around the fact that they may be extremely dull after a battle. You probably wouldn't even have to remove the guy's helmet. Plus, in that context, you would be surrounded only by allies. Furthermore, in my opinion, many of the spike wounds in medieval skulls appear to have been carried out "execution style" against someone kneeling or lying down. It also makes sense that the spike would be "mounted" on your primary weapon (so convenient). It could be readily deployed during lulls in the battle as well. When used on a defenseless & immobilized person, the spike makes sense. Maybe there was a component of honor as well (e.g. I'll give you a quick death, if you'd do the same for me). I'm just speculating (I don't know anything lol).
I think you are correct ; after action slaughter of severely wounded is rarely talked about ,but probably took place often . It's a gruesome reality . When the s**t is going down a fighter would be wise to abandon that weapon if it's function or retrieval became problematic .
Polearms, are meant for fighting in formation with two lines of men going against each other, one is pretty safe and covered by everyone else in the line, the goal of the combatants is to hook the enemy by the axe part (some of them have specific uneven shape just for that) and drag them out of their formation, and therefore out of cover, where they will get stabbed to death by the pointy spear bit, or their head crushed by the hammer bit once they're on the ground, another perpendicular spike could be an option, but definitely not a necessity as it indeed can get stuck and one needs to recuperate quickly after a kill so they can be efficient element of the line, covering others again I imagine.
Dear ballistics gelatin manufacturers, please provide professor Easton with testing medium!!!!! This needs testing. I believe the spontoon hawk will pull out...... easier than a traditional tomahawk. Awesome content!
When I was a kid and was first misinformed about the purpose of a fuller, it was for a similar reason. I think it was my Dad, and he told me it was called a “blood groove”- because according to him, when you stuck a blade into someone, it would be locked in there due to suction, and the blood groove allowed a channel for air to get into the wound (and the blood to run out) and release said suction. Wow. I’m so glad that I read a lot even back then, and found out for myself what the purpose actually was! No offense to my Dad (RIP), as he was a voracious reader as well, but I’m sure that one of his uncles was to blame for that particular old wives tale. My Dad was more a reader of modern (WWII-current era) historical fiction than he was of nonfiction historical arms and armour. Anyway, thanks for the great video 👍🏻 Edit: I do wonder, though, if there’s any truth behind that reasoning? Having never personally run a sword through a person, I don’t know if suction could possibly play any part? Doubtful, but if anyone knows, please let me know!
I was once told in Chinese Jian forms to thrust the sword slightly downwards after it enters the body, to make it easier to pull out. I've no idea if this is true for the same reason.
All weapons have this problem, swords have a tendency to get stuck if you cut too far down on the blade. Thus it's recommended to cut with the last 2-4 inches of the blade 'so that the blade may free itself'. Consider where the center of percussion is for most blades and think if the blade will free itself if you cut there. Hawk and Dagger...by the time you embed your Hawk in someone's head/body you are stepping in with your dagger. Timidity is not allowed when using two short ranged weapons. Also watch yourself wiggle that Hawk 'as you try to remove it' and imagine what that is doing to the person. Lastly when you have a spike imbedded in a body, you now have a ton of leverage you can apply. Think of how a hook works on Plate armor, you can now manipulate the person with that spike sticking in them.
I imagine getting a spike out would involve a bit of fulcrum action, or perhaps a solid twist to wrench it out. Either way, it would make the wound even messier. Just guessing, though.
“They can stab you back”. This is why, I’m rapier, we put a toooonnnnnnn of emphasis on striking with control over your opponent’s sword. As you thrust, you capture their blade on your hilt, deflecting their point out of presence and also controlling it enough to prevent a cut. This makes you safe while close, but you also need to get out safely maintaining control of the opponent’s sword with your hilt. So often, folks stop the action when a hit is landed, but we should really not stop the action until you are safely out of measure. Rapier and dagger is actually more dangerous. A rapier is long, so if I stab you and have a foot of sword out your back (really my simulator is extremely bent, your point is behind me - as long as I guard against a cut, I’m safe. If you have a dagger though, you still have an offensive weapon that I have to contend against with my dagger. That’s the best case. If I have sloppy form and don’t have control of your sword, you have two offensive weapons for me to counter with just my dagger.
Miyamoto Musashi in his book The Five Rings makes it clear that no matter what weapon you are using the aim is to strike your enemy in such a way that he is not in a position to strike you back. Not through sheer strength but through control. You do not look for that opening - you create it. One of musashi’s other commandments is to never favour one weapon over another (because to have a preference leads to weaknesses with all weapons) but he makes it clear that the sword is the most versatile of all weapons - the ‘not too long, not too short’ sword, that is. The longer katana Musashi says invites weakness in technique. Musashi’s other dictum is ALWAYS use a sword and the ‘companion sword’ ie the short sword in the off-hand.
How much would the "getting stuck" disadvantage matter for a horseman's pick? Was it effective because it was used when the enemy was fleeing, and therefore you didn't have to worry about a counterattack? Was it harder to extract because the horse helped you drive it in? Easier because the horse helps you pull it out?
plusses and minuses across the board. They are anti-armour, so they would have been left behind if they got stuck because you can't take the time to remove it if you're riding past. Possibly the best way would be to have a spare on your saddle.
For a horseman using a 'pick' you would want to 'stick' it in to manipulate the person. Imagine hooking the armor then spurring your horse on, dragging the guy off his horse.
Gets stuck, but you could use it as a dagger to finish by hand, not quite for striking when you don't want it getting stuck, but not bad if you don't have a dagger. If you use an axe with a long spike in the back that is. 😅 Short spikes deliver more force on a single point and thus getting more force to the bone behind the armor, because the force of the swing is concentrated on the sturdy tip of the small spike, where a hammer spreads the force on impact more. 🙂 Correct me if I'm wrong 🙃
In late period medieval warfare, fully armored combatants were so well protected that you would literally have to immobilize them, and then either get them to submit or strip their armor away and slide daggers into their exposed area. Having a spike stuck your oponent's arm would indeed allow you to immobilze that limb. It was also a good tool for executing an immobilized/captured foe as we see from numerous forensic archeological studies of graves found during this period.
It should also be noted that points are much more likely to glance, especially when used against plate armor (which is incidentally designed to do exactly that). All the force being focused on a small point is devastating with a flush hit, but if it glances all of that force is lost (essentially). With a hammer face, flanged mace, or otherwise larger surface area on a weapon, more of the force of even a glancing blow will be imparted (I'd imagine this would be why the beaked warhammer didn't eclipse the flanged mace, nor the Bec de Corbin the hammer faced pollaxe).
I've heard Bec de Corbin which sometimes had small side spikes as well were used by heavily armoured men at arms in pike/bill formations with the purpose of getting tangled up in reigns of mounted opponents to topple or at the very least make armoured riders vulnerable.
What you're talking about is the difference between trying to pierce something via making greater efficiency of the inertia by using a fine point, vs. penetrating with a focused but still relatively blunt point or edge and increasing the inertia. As noted above, the flanged mace is a good example. Another good example of something designed for exactly that, is the spike on the special forces style tomahawk. The spike is a diamond profile, but the tip is rather blunt. Some do sharpen it, though it wasn't meant for that. The idea is to crush through the target so that the hole it makes is not nice and neat, allowing for faster recovery of the point. Like a hammer that has been focused to deliver its impact to a much smaller area, rather than a pick or spike.
Spiked impact weapons are made to this very day, for the purposes of modern combat. I own a tomahawk by RMJ Tactical of Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA, and it has a traditional tomahawk/axe blade on one end, combined with a ferociously sharp, reinforced spike on the opposite end. Tomahawks with heads such as this have been used as weapons here in the US since about the mid-1600s.
About the spiked axe and warhammer, wouldn't it make sense to fight with the axe or hammer side until you got you opponent into a position where they can't fight back and then using the spike to take them out?
Awesome the pole axe with the spike and hammer seem amazing especially for versitility. Question! Did they have smaller pole axes like a hatchet to the axe or were they all very large like a spear?
Does HEMA have any mention of techniques for after contact?..such as if you drive the spike in and then follow through with a pulling/dragging them as of sorts...or when your thrust is in deep leveraging the blade in directions of advantage..ie rib/spine or between pelvics/femars? Thanks for another video
One thing about a spike one one of them is disabling. If you don't have a weapons or skill to use the weapon to get in-between plates of armor then the spike can focus force at those joints and damage them and even deform them to make them less functional like they cat caught on other pieces or simply cause damage to the wearer and not want to make movements. As far as tomahawks, they were known to be thrown in quick movements and followed up with a knife. Normally the shock of the thrown axe that might not kill but can break into bone which would be a lot of pain and trauma including ribs into the lungs or heart. Allows them time to run up and finish off with the knife and they can easily wrap their hand around the connection point of the handle to the head and pull it out and keep moving. Ambush type warfare like that is why that shape of a Spontoon Tomahawks effective. At the time the armor was coats of leather and maybe fabric clothing so there was not much to stop it.
If your weapon embeds in the opponent, you also got a handle on him. He's not an unmoving, rooted treestump. You can pull or push him with your weapon, unbalance him or even bring him to fall. All of which can be used to make his attack go wide. 9:58 "... with the hammerblade ..." ;-D .... I suggest, singing "ohhohooohooo can't smack this". Now I want you to make a video about the hammerblade. Treatises do seem to show predominantly bec de corbin style heads, but I do not have all of the sources available and didn't actually count the bec heads, so I may well be wrong. ... I am still amazed at the unfailingly deadpan delivery of the at this point, I'd say regular innuendo. You do not even bat an eye or twitch a muscle. Impressive. You should get another job as the PR guy for crazy ppl. Like, film stars, politicians or other indecently rich ppl.
Though a challenge to forge it needs a 3 or 4 face curved tapered piecing point that flares out to a hammer head face maybe even with raised lip or points so that the taper doesn't bind when driven home.
Good point :) On a somewhat related note, do you think a broader bladed axe (maybe 6 inches or more cutting edge) would have any appreciable effect on a heavily armored target? My instinct is that it would at least have similar percussion to a mace, but I'd like to hear your thoughts on the matter.
This applies in unarmed combat too, I've been asked more than once why when I've won a match I always complete the movement, throwing or pinning or disengaging. It's because having been caught in a real fight I'm more conscious of the fact that a solid strike or throw isn't necessarily going to stop "anybody", I don't know how an opponent will react so I "complete the movement" to make sure I'm safe
100% there is a story of a security or police officer who had trained himself to disarm someone threatening with a pistol so he could do it fast enough to not get shot without telegraphing. When he faced such a situation while on duty, he was shot dead. The disarmament technique worked flawlessly, but. When he trained, he had gotten complacent and seemlessly transitioned to reinserting the mag and handing the pistol back to his sparring partner, grip first. Thus, when he disarmed the gunman in the live situation, he completed the trained routine in full, handed the pistol back to the gunman,who promptly just grabbed the grip and fired before the officer had even realized what he had just done. Just as you do, in offense or defense, martial arts for civilian self defence or military combat, at sea, on land or in the air always train as you want to do if forced to do it with someone trying to kill you.
@@SonsOfLorgar nasty, poor bloke 😔 When it comes to firearms I've been taught to do it, my teacher always said you never go for the weapon just disable the person and stay out of its way. But thank Christ I've never been in that situation the adrenaline would kill any kind of co-ordination
after watching this video I gotta say my gut feeling on your new tomahawk axe is that it's made to be ideal for throwing perhaps? As a melee weapon, the difficulty of getting the axe out of the target means you're more likely to let go of it once it's in the target anyway, as you explained, + also this same factor might make it more effective as a throwing weapon as the opponent now is the one who has to worry about the axe being stuck in him and not you - both pointing towards ranged and not melee as being ideal for that design
I would love to see this tested with a ballistic gel+bone dummy or perhaps a pig carcass. It would be interesting to see this in action and not intuited.
Remarque described the same problem with bayonets in his book. There it's the advise to go for the belly for not to get stuck between the ribs. So that's not a demonstration, but at least another source.
One way too look at certain spike weapons is as part of a group action, not duelling. The large heavy spike is driven in and left, the user pulling back while others cover. Especially true of hunting parties against dangerous animals with tough hide. The hooking ability of the hammer or spike is useful, obviously. I think the axe and spike makes it a better utility tool for most things outside of battle. Because the battle portion is fairly rare. But there is a lot of camping work and utility work the spike is great for. I keep a tomahawk in my car's emergency kit that is axe and spike. If I come upon an automobile accident, the spike is a better tool for getting people out of a vehicle. In Afghanistan and Irag, several personnel liked the axe and spike tomahawk for opening doors. The spike could break a padlock and axe could open a standard door lock. Where I look at those big front loaded spikes on a hand weapon as the kind of thing to drive into a leaping or charging animal and let go of. I know people who have dealt with wild boars. One tactic was deliver a fatal injury and climb a tree until it died.
Lots of people mentioned using the embedded point to control the opponent, but what about this - there's some expectation that an opponent will have a shield, and embedding a lever right into the enemy's shield with the point on your weapon could give you a *massive* advantage in controlling the shield so you can land a proper attack with your off-hand or your buddy fighting in the front line right beside you can take advantage of the guy who can't defend. Thoughts?
I do think you have a very good point and I mostly agree with you, if you weapon get stuck is a big deal. But, I think you can have a big advantage: if after a good hit and your weapon get kind of stuck you may move back pulling the weapon and your opponent backward, with decent speed and reaction you likely (in my opinion, I haven't ever test it) could pull your opponent out of balance and knocked him down,or to the very list get your weapon back or get the opponent to follow your movent, giving you the advange. It very could be that it's more complicated than I describe or imagine, but even if the odd off success is 1 to 10 (just a throw numbers), it's a helpfil option.
It could be that that type of tomahawk, once it’s point was embedded in an opponent, could be used by the wielder to push/pull, and more or less control their opponent’s movement. In some cases, you would be able to control your opponent through crippling pain by pushing and pulling. Other martial arts that use hook-like weapons are often paired with an offhand weapon, in the case of a tomahawk perhaps a large knife, allowing the wielder to pull the opponent into a knife stab. Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if the native Americans who used these types of tomahawks employed a kind of teep-kick which would help loosen the axe and provide distance from similarly-armed opponents.
Hi Matt, Hitting with the point of sword or knife and hitting with a spike of a mounted weapon is really different. If you hit you opponent in a not immediately incapacitating point with a mounted wapon you bring him down or move it around using the leverage you get from the tool. The torque you get will help liberating the spike, once down or turned you dislodge and hit, it is not like hummering a nail. Also by moving and dragging the opponent you can actually make it harder for him to counter. For example by moving on his blind spot and making for him impossible to turn. At that point you are actually in grappling but the contact is via a chunk of metal stuck in the body of the oppenent connected to you via an handle that has a 90°of leverage.
I reply to myself 😅. Is similar to strangling someone. If like in the movies you put the hand on the neck and squeeze, you will be in range for him to hit you back, so you usually shake him and unbalance him and then mount on top. You don't stay still in range you bring him down take him off balance and finish him.
You missed an important point. Even if the point is stuck in the opponent, it would allow you to push and pull them about, causing immense pain and to a certain extent allow you to control them, making it difficult for them to strike back, even if they weren't in shock. I would think it would be easier to force them onto the ground and then you would have time to pull out a secondary weapon and dispatch them easily.
@@spektr540hemi Sure, although against an armoured opponent I would prefer something slimmer, such as a bollock knife to slip into the gaps in the plate and pierce the chainmail.
On the other hand, if the weapon's point gets stuck in a shield or gets stuck in someone's armor without causing significant damage, then you could easily lose that weapon.
@@Intranetusa That was his point. But, like I said, it gives you control over the opponent and at worse, you push him away or down and draw a backup. Then your opponent has your weapon stuck in him impeding his ability to fight.
This video ties in with the one you did on the use of Tomahawks in N America. The literature repeatedly mentioned the preferred strike was to the head, which is more likely to be the instant "off switch" needed to keep from being struck back. I would assume that our Medieval European ancestors reached a similar conclusion with their spikey tools, and strikes to the face/head were preferred/recommended. Thanks again for all the well though out content.
Per Lynn Thompson: If you’re fighting with a tomahawk, at a minimum you should have a 18-24” sharp stick in your off hand. If you don’t have a sharp stick, make one, you have a tomahawk.
Regarding the pollaxe, I'd argue that, with a two-handed shaft (aka pole) weapon, putting your weight behind a thrust is much more effective than with smaller weapons (your hands can be further apart, offering more control and stability, which results in a more precise and better aligned thrust). In addition, switching the spike with one of the side heads (hammer or axe) would make the hammer or axe head ineffective as it would only be usable with thrusting motions. Having a spike on top also allows it to be longer while remaining easy to pull out of an opponent, as you explained with sword thrusts. The added weight of having 3 heads is also less detrimental on a two-handed weapon, so this is the best configuration to have all three options.
3:03 "t'is but a scratch" 😉 I would think that the Ponoontomahawk you have could be easier to get out again than the axe you had. Because of the form of the blade. Wiggeling means that the points at the end of the axeblade could find things to get caught in. While this tomahawks blade meand that the part that has penetrated is narrower than what is still outside. ( in the longitudinal direction)
Great explanation! And this Tomahawk even has barbs behind the spike... once it's embedded, you'll never get that one out of a body while in the fight.
Steve Jackson also made the sticking point, with things like picks and axes, in GURPS (the Generic Universal Roleplaying System) back in the 1980’s. It was a part of the game mechanics and I’m sure still remains so. You did a great job-thank you.
That is a really nice poleaxe. Who is the maker? I've been looking around for a good one, but can't seem to find one with recessed langets (which this one doesn't have). But if it has Matt's stamp of approval, it must be a solid piece.
Is the spike not originally more for a tool use like a hook a roon, or a pew, or a logger spike? As far as the curved hooked boarding style hatchets? I would definitely direct people to the tools i mentioned if you think no tools have a wicked spike or hook I used a pew for logs and salmon fishing for 35 years, Also as a logger and sawmill worker, hook-a-roons and pikes and types of pew’s were always used, also I would suggest that the spike if not coming from a labor tool then perhaps a butchers killing spike, to be used in the situation of completely taking life with no “fuss” to the killer or killed?
I feel like a short weapon that's prone to getting stuck in your opponent lends itself to a very aggressive, close-in style. You know, yank them around by the weapon that's stuck in them and push/kick/grapple to get it out again.
I bet it'd hurt like hell if you got one of these spikes embedded in you and then they just start wiggling it. If it's a beak with a sharper edge oooh, the wound's getting turned into shredded paper
One thing you can do when the spike is stuck, in addition to blocking with a shield or trying to pull the spike out, is to push or pull the target with the spike. Maybe it can disrupt the target a bit or cause more damage.
I use a poleax in SCA combat, weighted and balanced close to museum examples, and have had it used against me a good bit too, and I find that the shock of getting hit with the head end tends to put people off being able to swing back in any way. You get so much momentum going even with relatively light blows that is throws all but the heaviest people off balance, so unless it really is a simultaneous hit there isn't a follow up. I imagine that for any pole arm with a heavy head (poleax, halberd, war pick, whatever) the momentum transfer after a swing is the biggest protection from "oh hell, the weapon is stuck and now he is going to hit me before he dies." Doesn't help much on the thrust probably, but then all thrusty things have that problem.
A spike will often get stuck in plate armor if it penitrates deep enough. As for mail & gambison over a body it doesn't stick very much. A straight spike on a hammer into a unarmored person doesn't take much effort or time to remove unless it is a thinner spike & it hits large bones. The spike on that war hammer is thick enough that it shouldn't get stuck in anything on the battlefield besides plate armor and possibly a shield. As with any hand held weapon you are most vulnerable during your attack, it doesn't matter if you are going for a penitrateive, slicing or impact attack.
If you whacked someone wearing mail with that axe spike or tomahawk, would it actually penetrate to the point where it can’t be withdrawn though? Wouldn’t the mail hold and actually prevent a tight penetration, which would allow you to freely remove the point. Also, against plate armour, the spike is not necessary to penetrate but also perhaps to damage or degrade the armour.
One very small thought: If, in your defensive dodge at 8:49, you maintained a firm grip on the tomahawk, the result would be a twisting motion of the spike in the wound. This would impart greater wounding/pain and help free the spike.
Could the purpose of the spiked point on the back of the hammer/axe be to strike the flat side of other weapons and perhaps break them? Is it possible for large swords or axe heads to crack or shatter if struck directly? The other thing i thought of was injury to the arm behind a shield. Cool channel!
I think others have said it in some fashion or another. Weapons are a part of an overall kit that should be taken in the context of their use. I often wonder how fighting/martial arts are affected when your marching in a formation for example. For example, Is a spike being stuck in someone as big of a deal when your shoulder to shoulder with your buddies with shields, and you have a sword to draw?
Fighting style absolutely matters! 300 isn't exactly a historically accurate film, but the phalanx made spear and shield extremely powerful. If you're in midevil Europe, the pole axe is better, because horses are coming at you. Today, of course, I would choose a gun... but military chooses a smaller knife, for convenience of carry as a secondary weapon. No longer a sword or pole arm.
@@zuhalter0071 from my limited understanding, the poleaxe was not a particularly common weapon for the peasantry. Rather, lines of pikemen would be used. In these scenarios, it was a test of whether pikemen would break rank upon seeing a charging horse. If they cab stand their ground, calvalry becomes ineffectual.
I notice the spontoon tomahawk has sharpened edges, like a very short, broad dagger. How sharp are the edges? Could they be used for (admittedly weak) draw/push cuts?
As a guy who has spent decades on the BJJ mats, I have to say that arguments about what can be done against multiple attackers are almost always spurious. I literally can’t count the number of guys who have showed up at the gym talking about how taekwondo, or Okinawa Karate, or kung fu, or whatever is more effective against multiple attackers than jiu jitsu. Nearly all of them proceed to get tapped out by every white belt in the building. To be fair, this is much less common now than it was 20 years ago because so many more people are aware of the effectiveness of clinching and ground fighting. There is likely truth to the concept of a wounded opponent lashing out and striking his killer who’s weapon is embedded in him. But, all other things being equal, if we are about to wrestle and flail at each other until one of us is dead… I would much prefer that you already have a spontoon hawk embedded in your head or torso. Also, if we are going to go full-on armchair ninja about it: having a spike, beak, or spontoon hawk sunk deep into your opponent’s chest or shoulder should give you insurmountable leverage and control over their position. It would be mighty difficult to throw an effective strike while being dragged around by a tomahawk handle welded to your chest via a mortal wound.
Something I notice about the Raven Forge tomahawk that might mitigate the issue you bring up - that of being unable to withdraw the spike from armor, or even a human body - is that it has a rounded hammer on the opposite end. Using that, one would be able to deal equal concussive force without needing to take time withdrawing the weapon from the armor. If someone is wearing mail armor, a hit with the rounded hammer will do as much as a cut with the same force, assuming ideal mail armor
I think the spikes might have been used more as a way to control an enemy, by hooking their shield or armor. I think it's more likely that they were used to drag an opponent around or unhorse them, rather than as a means to inflict injury. I believe that if the spike did manage to do some damage then that would have been seen as a bonus, but I don't think that inflicting injury was the primary purpose of the back spike. But I don't know how extant the historical evidence is for the spikes being used intentionally as a weapon to injure opponents, so I could be wrong. For all I know, killing enemies with a back spike might have been the thing that all the cool kids were doing in the late 15th century. P.S. I'm not talking about the spontoon tomahawk in this video, on that weapon the blade-point was obviously intended to be the primary means to inflict injury. I wonder if that weapon design was originally intended for the new world market, and if it was, was it a European copy of a native design? Sometimes that was done for trading purposes. The original native weapon might have had an obsidian blade then, and the spontoon tomahawk was just copying the style. I'm really just guessing on that one, based on pictures of trade tomahawks that I saw in a book thirty five years ago. I'm sorry that the people who could have told us with authority how to properly use these weapons have been dead for hundreds of years. I appreciate the efforts of modern historians who work hard to rediscover the secrets of the lost martial arts. I'm secretly hoping that renaissance era greatsword dueling will one day become the new Crossfit.
Hey Matt thanks for all the great content! I have a question. what is the best way to get into longsword training without access to a hema club? any advice is much appreciated.
Matt can you also talks about spear's disadvantages in fully armoured combat, either battlefield and one on one? I feel like most times when people talks about "Spears outranks swords/everything" tests, they seems to be talking about it in more of a armourless manner, with a one-hit judging system that people die when being stabbed only once, but never considered the situation when the opponent wearing armour, giving them better chance to close-in when spear can't penetrate the armour and stopping them from minor damage it gives.
I think the spontoon might actually have less of an issue with this give the back of the axe is tapered from the widest point on. The blade is also relatively wide so there should be some stopping power.
The spike adds balance and weight so you can still hit harder and it would also have basic utility outside of combat And even if you can’t go through plate armor you can still stab in the gaps much more effectively than with the axe as its a smaller more dagger like point, All in all its better than just a battle axe with no spike Edit: also you can have the spike bladed so it can cut its way free and not get stuck also making it do more damage and causing worse injuries so the enemy would bleed out much faster
Great vid as usual, absolutely - weapons sticking in the opponent is a very real scenario...(could you share any first hand accounts that you've read?). Anybody who's chopped wood with an axe compared to a splitting maul knows that too sharp / fine a blade causes sticking instead of splitting issues. Also, If you've butchered large animals you'll know that fresh bone will grab onto a blade too, thats why old butchering cleavers are so huge - the weight makes all the difference. I imagine whacking a tomahawk into the large bones of some poor unfortunate enemy really will make that weapon stick. I've not really thought about it before - very enlightening. Thanks.
and if you've ever seen a butchering cleaver.... Huge, weighty, and have a hook on the end so you can use leverage and your body mass. One of the Witcher fights has a guy in the back carrying one. Same shape, size, and hook as a clog knife, by the way, and for the same reason.
If you search Matt's earlier videos, he made a couple detailing first-hand accounts; most of which are taken from Swordsmen of the British Empire, by DA Kingsley.
My limited experience with a tomahawk that has an axe and a spike is this. When using the axe the spike is always pointed in the general direction of your neck and head. Close in to grapple and the spike could wind up in you. Don't know if this is a legitimate concern but it always crosses my mind.
Do you think the spontoon hawk would be used to target the head the same way you talked about in your video about period accounts of tomahawk fighting? I'd imagine the spike on any axe being used to target the body more because it's less likely to get stuck or glance off.
Somewhere in the castle armoury in Bohemia, I saw an interesting warhammer with a short stout spike in the centre of the hammerhead. I didn´t know at that time what it was for but now I think you enlightened me. Thanks.
I think the trade-off isn't get stuck or not, but is it better to stick in armor/flesh or not get into it in the first place? A mace trades that for frequently a bit more weight, and a slower "rate of fire" as it were. I've thought the point of the beak was to debt and warp or cut sharp edges into plates not punch through deep into a body.
Do those little curls on the tomahawk help with getting it out? At first I thought it was just decorative or to keep the blade from going too deep but after seeing you faff about with it it looks like they could help with levering the blade out. Kinda like a morbid bottle opener
Don’t bayonet a man in the rib cage for many of the same reasons. As they fall and twist it binds the blade… and if it’s come down to bayonets, you may want to be able to use yours again without delay.
Suspect the spike is more useful when _choked up_ and in close as an ersatz knife, with the handle flush the under-forearm. Would the axe be viable parrying with that grip higher up, blade as the 'hand guard', handle presented more or less vertical to incoming strikes to parry/pass guard (or high in the icepick grip)?
This is why I prefer the Pollaxe with an axe blade, hammer head, and spear point. Like you said with the sword point, thrusting with a spear point lets you put your whole body into pulling back and freeing your point if it gets stuck. And you get a bludgeoning, slashing, and piercing option.
I've read up on research suggesting that the hammer end was used to attack and not the spike. The spike portion was only used to finish up the job once the opportunity arose.
With the polearm, you have much less of a problem with retrieving a spike I feel! Since you can wrench it free easier compared to a singlehanded weapon, with both of your hands moving opposite directions to get the spike out!
We can see same issue with early Slavic (and Hungarian fokosz) axes, with long thin and narrow axeheads with very shirt blade, like kind of pickaxe which can penetrate very easily into shields and so on, so very often those axes have thick and short spike on the opposite side, for hitting without deep penetration...
Even worse, imagine your 90 degree pointy stick gets stuck in the opponent's shield? Now your weapon is useless (for a time) and the other guy isn't wounded.
I recall in one of Tod's videos, he was hitting a gambeson (or gambeson with mail on top) with a warhammer, and he found it interesting that that paticular one didn't penetrate the gambeson - but that the focused impact pushed a big indent into the gambeson. Like the beak side was also blunt impact, only more concentrated on a point. Meanwhile, the spike on your axe looks like it could break a chain link and penetrate through a gambeson into the flesh. (And your spontoon tomahawk against unarmoured targets could get deep) Perhaps even these nuanced differences within "the same weapon" - e.g. similar sized warhammers with broad vs. narrow beaks - could have drastically different results and therefore different implications for how to use them.
Who would have thought that being unable to pull out after penetration can land you into serious trouble?
talk to the kids of any Catholic parents who practiced the Withdrawal Method of birth control....
🤣🤣
you should ask some knotted dogs about that
I guess it depends on the context?
@@adamroodog1718this sounds like an early Tom Green Show interview.
"Lets talk about the problems with penetration"
This is exactly the type of content I subscribe for. ;)
It's always nice to learn how to protect yourself while penetrating mails
My thoughts exactly.
Has Matt made a video on the shafting of pole arms yet? That would seem to be right up his alley.
The problem with deep penetration is that it can be hard to pull out.
You can also check out LockPickingLawyer's April Fools videos for more of that. He gives Matt a run for his money.
The thing, that really poked out while talking about the pollaxe having no spike, was the 30cm spike for thrusting right next to matt's head.
It may be less of an issue like he mentioned with the swords; they are easier to remove because the spike is not at a 90 degree angle.
@@typorad And if not, you can push away to get out of immediate danger.
True, a spike is pretty much the only thing that makes sense to put on the top. And if you do that, you at least have that damage type covered. But I have to stress that a thrusting spike and a chopping spike are entirely different features on a weapon.
I mean, it is a spike, but for the purposes of this conversation you might as well think of it as a spearpoint.
I know this is not technically accurate, but what is a pollaxe if not a winged spear with funny wings?
To piggyback on Pystro and J A, the main focus of this video as stated in the beginning was "right-angled, projection weapons." So, and I'm just assuming based on context clues, I believe he meant "spike" in a narrow sense of " projecting 90°/crosswise from the handle" (as opposed to, say, a "point," which may be defined as "projecting in line with the handle").
This is why I use a shark as a weapon. If it gets its tooth stuck, it can just shed it and it gets replaced with a new one.
have you tried the new chainshark?
Sharks are good weapons. But if I’m out and about, my EDC is a piranha.
@@rhabdob3895 yeah you're right.. you can conceal carry a piranha but a shark has to be open carry...
I
@@SonsOfLorgar I find the chainshark a bit heavy on fuel... Have you considered a chainbarracuda?
@@rhabdob3895 Take care not to carry it in your pants pockets or you risk losing some vital bits.
"Let's talk about the problems with penetration..."
Inuendo delivered in a deadpan style worthy of the finest Carry On film - well done, sir!
☝️😎
..."You have to kind of wiggle it to get it out again..." Yes, as soon as you are trapped in that innuendo, you can't ignore it.
Ooh Matron!
As ive mentioned b4 in your comments section im roughly half native & those are one of the types my tribe used. Its true it will get stuck, though those were mostly thrown & when they were used in hand it helps if you use it more in a slashing manner in an up close & personal way or aim for the head so it stops em cold. Which it would only be one of the many weapons carried by a warrior. The bow is the main weapon. The tomahawk in dominant hand & the off hand dagger are secondary. At least within the tribal cultures I descend from.
"A decapitated enemy will not be able to see you clearly enough to hit you back." -- Sun Tzu
@@johnsmithe4656 "What he said."
- Confucius
@@pilgrim42 "Nah bro, just chillax." -Laozi
@@Intranetusa I pretty sure I read that in the Tao Te Ching.
@@pilgrim42 "Broski, I wrote the Tao Te Ching while high on shrooms." -Laozi
"If any weapon only had advantages, everyone would use it."
Halberd: "I'm standing *right here!*"
Best war weapon ever made before the firearm age
The disadvantage would be the weight, but that’s not a real issue for the battle itself and using it, just hauling it around between fighting.
You gonna strap a halberd to your side to go to the pub? You're gonna opt to fight without a shield when the only armor you have is an extra tunic and a helmet you found?
Spear: You wot mate?
Not ideal in confined spaces and carrying around.
This video was a good discussion starter. I tested and experienced exceptions to this. It’s covered in a video that only a true tomahawk enthusiast would enjoy. There are several spike and tomahawk chopping blade geometries that entirely eliminate extraction issues-they bury to the handle and pop right out just as quickly. These shapes are historic to examples seen in North America, and I have tested these designs against fabric, flesh, and bone and customers have demo’d these on pig heads, etc. Gets nasty but with the right shape, even for a spontoon tomahawk, you will have zero extraction issues. I filmed this in a family friendly video titled “Tomahawks: Penetration and Extraction on Pumpkins” - but pumpkins are much stiffer than people and tend to exaggerate extraction issues vs. flesh and bone targets.
An axe with a spike, so you can choose slashing or piercing damage. Gotta work that metagame. 😎
Or bludgeoning if you use the side…
My mom told me to avoid hookers. Now I see why.
Piercing, interestingly, is almost never desirable in D&D either. It's the one you are STUCK with if you use a bow, but it's pretty much never the one you WANT. Skeletons need bludgeon, zombies need slashing, what needs piercing?
There are other games besides DnD.
@@michaelblacktree Yes, ones which mostly took their piercing/slashing/blunt damage systems straight from D&D
Experience chopping firewood would suggest a weapon stuck in your opponent gives you a really good handle for controlling them; you can use a hatchet to pick up and move wood, so perhaps you could yank them of balance or even off their feet?
Thats a really good point. If you yank inmediately after penetration, the opponent is gonna have a hard time hitting you or anything
@@steelcladCompliant viking reenactors I’ve seen have used it as a way of controlling an opponents shield as well.
The human body is really really heavy though, and especially if they're using muscles to resist. If it takes you 2-3 seconds to maneuver their body off balance, that's enough time for them to strike back at you.
@@Blaisem Also, if there are more than 1 guy, it's game over.
I remember my grandfather talking about bayonetting in WW2, saying if you stab into the gut, the muscles contract around it as the person doubles over, so getting it out again was a bit of a problem and they basically had to stand on the enemy to pull it out. Not exactly ideal when there are lots of other enemy around.
A friend of mine used to work as a bouncer in a strip club, and tells a similar story. He got stabbed twice. Once was in the thigh. The knife got stuck there, and it took several hospital staff to hold his leg down and pull on it until it came out.
Great food for thought presentation, Matt.
But a few points for further consideration.
1st - if you make a solid strike with any mass weapon there's a lot of energy deposited into your foe.
2nd - people who get hit hard - MOVE & quite often Fall. This means that your extraction would Not remain a 180° reciprocation of the initial striking angle. Sliding a hand up the haft (primary or support hand) and wrenching away as your opponent's body weight pulled away or fell would facilitate a lot of the needed extraction force.
3rd - axe or hammer blows are to break through an enemy's defense whereas the spike was most often reserved for finishing blows or prying past & into armor, often once both opponents had grappled to the ground.
4th - a lot of straight or hook spike work was done using 2 hands on the weapon's haft to direct the spike's point into the vulnerable or critical target areas once the foe's Defenses had been pushed past. Such as wedging plate away so a Rondel or other dagger could be inserted. ...And not all armor was top quality, perfectly fitted or metallurgically sound.
Your observations on double-kill combos are valid but look to your own training & competition experience.
You don't make a hit & then stand there waiting to see if your opponent will oblige you by dying instantly.
You hit & keep moving, defensively or setting your next attack into motion & respond to what your opponent does (or if the judges or buzzers sound off).
The dynamics of the fight don't end just because a single good hit has been achieved, whether using blades or firearms.
You keep attacking, striking, stabbing, shooting, etc - until ZERO THREAT remains.
Several of your other respondents have also observed that the force you would exert into a foe's body in attempting to extract even a stuck blade, would move an opponent around like a puppet on a stick - not fun for either person I'm sure but that would also mean that your weapon would continue causing further damage & trauma as you sought to dislodge it or until you decided to resort to a secondary or back up weapon.
A lot of dynamics going on there - That's my context. 😁👍👌🖖🤺
I use a spike end tomahawk as a pickaroon when cutting/splitting firewood. Just reach out and snag a round out of the pile without having to bend over and pick it up. Works pretty well, but CAN be a chore to unstick sometimes. I use the blade end for trimming a trunk of branches, thereby saving gas, noise, and/or electricity (been using a cordless saw lately as I get older and more decrepit). For limbing, the hawk has a longer reach than a hatchet, and lighter than an ax. Nice intermediate tool, actually, for this work. Use a sword cane to get around with, or when I don't know how long I may have to stand in a line.
Thanks for your channel.
I also imagine a Long spike on a poll weapon would be much more likely to sort of glance off of plate armor as opposed to a hammer end
On that note would edge alignment with a spike be harder or easier?
Ikr. I personally can't think of any advantages to having a beak as opposed to a hammer on a pollaxe. A hammer face would presumably be more effective against plate. And if you're fighting an unamored opponent, just use the axe end lol, or the top spike
Added the word 'top' for more clarity
Hard to say ive seen several manuscripts and in one of the swiss ones they do show men in formation having halberds with their spiked end in the front to deliver strong downward blows against their fully harnessed opponents. Iirc some of the skulls from the towton massacre also have such wounds. Other reports also seem to indicate that it was indeed possible to blow through armour. I think that rather the axe blade is something more rare at least when i look at tallhoffer and other manuscripts.
@@logiii6854 most soldiers would have been equipped with first gambeson, than later maille and or brigandine. A spike would be good against standard infantrymen.
Usually the spikes aren't actually sharp, like on the French Crow's Beak (Bec du Corbin). The whole point (lol) is that the spike penetrates due to the weight of the head and narrow shape of the beak, rather than the sharpness of the point.
I did knife fighting as a part of a hand to hand combat fighting course in the military. It was mostly focused on being sure your knife ends up in the other guy, regardless of what happens to you, IE thrusts. They didn't say this but I am pretty sure the doctrine was developed with the idea that if you're fighting hand to hand, you fucked up, you're already dead, and whatever damage you can inflict is a plus.
I had done some kali escrima, told the instructor (marginally competent, he was a tae kwon do guy) he was wrong. He got marks across his eyes, both sides of the throat and I was sawing at the tendons of his right shoulder when he figured he won the bout clean because he stuck me in the kidney with the arm I was busy removing.
Shitty course, don't recommend it.
Having tried Kali, how do you feel about the idea that hatchets and such were to be used with a knife? A tomohawk would be good for hooking a guard out of the way or pulling someone onto a stab.
I don't know if your conclusion need apply necessarily, because even just only going on what he said in the video, you're still of course better off having DEFINITELY hit the other guy even if there's a CHANCE he hits you back, even in the worst of the set of options presented. So it still makes sense to prioritize hitting the other guy. It could be the case that in modern loadouts, it more just isn't worth the weight to carry around a freaking shield or whatever, and isn't worth the time and resources spent training for it, due to rarity of application? "yeah it'd be nice to have a shield right in that moment and know how to use it. But assuming you don't, and you can't run away, what's best? Hitting the other guy as a priority, yeah?"
@@gavinjenkins899 I agree with you there. Hand to hand combat is simply not a priority, and many soldiers will seek out better instruction on their own time. Its a skill that takes years to get actually good at, not weeks or months. The course itself was bad when judged against actually learning a skill properly, but in terms of giving a mass group of untrained people a good chance of tactical success it's about as good as it could be.
My main martial arts are judo and wrestling, been at it continuously since I was 6, dabbled with a few others like Muay Thai, kali and HEMA, but really I just enjoy beating up arrogant TKD guys that think a belt means something special.
@@canadianeh4792 having learned some TKD while deployed in korea, i agree. TKD itself has been ritualized and turned into an all out competitive sport rather than an actually useful combat art. sure, there are bits and pieces that have a practical application, but it's not really anything any actual combat art wouldent know to teach.
i found actual combatives training to be far more useful. it was a much better use of time training to turn almost any strike at me into some sort of joint lock for the purpose of breaking a limb than it was to memorize a sequence of punches and kicks from specific stances.
A thrust with a knife or sword or spear can be easily extracted from a body by reversing the thrust on the same plane using your body weight.
This discussion reminds me of a rule in the tabletop game GURPS. Picks (or generally, swung weapons with an impaling or piercing point) can get stuck in a target, making them unusable for attacks or parries until removed. I don't recall how realistic the rules are (I think there's a Strength roll involved to retrieve the weapon) but it's cool that they tried to include that sort of detail. In most tabletop games, the difference between "longsword" and "warhammer" is maybe a single point of damage, and a damage type which rarely comes into play, with no consideration for how they interact with armor or flesh.
Those considerations aren't an oversight, but rather they've been removed from the largest system for sake of simplicity. In chainmail, the combat system for the original iteration of D&D, there was a weapon vs armor table, showing the benefits of using a given weapon against a given armor, pretty self explanatory.
Memorizing such a table wasn't practical, and must have been something players didn't like checking, so it was removed. In the age of digital tabletops, it may be possible to create these systems again.
Edit: if I were DMing 5e and a player said "I thrust the point of my halberd to counter my enemy's mail" (ofc they'd probably phrase that more naturally) I'd at least give them Inspiration or a bonus to attack
@@relzyn5545 AD&D 1 had that table, and it was horrible and never used. GURPS has a simple rule, not a table, and it's the tradeoff for being able to do devastating internal damage--as Matt notes.
@@thekaxmax GURPS goes horribly overboard with trying to have rules for everything. I much prefer to have the difference in weapons narratively and not mechanically.
I've been having a lot of similar conversations about this topic recently, but basically, both sides of the conversation are perfectly good, it just comes down to a sliding scale between "combat simulation" VS "combat abstraction."
GURPS and Chainmail are at the simulation end of the scale and D&D 5e is doing a great job as a combat abstraction, and there's plenty of space for everything in between! cheers
GURPS is nice. You can make custom polearms using whichever heads you want. Facing armor? Might want the hammer head. Favor disabling foes by hacking at arms and legs? Go for the axe head. Prefer to deal gruesome damage to the torso? A pick head is perfect.
I don't know what I love the most: the fact that he does this joke every single time or the casual and subtle way in which he does it, almost as if he's not doing it at all.
An alternate thought: If your right-angle penetration weapon is stuck in your foe, you have a control handle to use against them.
To control their movements to a degree, perhaps to drag them closer for the off-hand knife, or to use them as a shield against another combatant.
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Just a thought I had, that's all.
i was thinking the same, borrowing olympic wrestling ideas on leverage, you could potentially pull them forward, or even down to one knee with said control handle.
of course, if one must absolutely abort, that's why you always carry a dagger or some other side arm. spears and weapons with wooden parts broke mid battle often enough, that's usually when people switched to using swords in battlefields.
i agree, kinda had the same thoughts
While it's probably possible I wouldn't really count on it. Like the thing won't be stuck indefinitely and the person you hit is probably trying to get away/pull it out. trying to use it as a handle might just dislodge it.
@@zwenkwiel816 Then you have the weapon back, ready to use again?
Part of the reason why pistols (revolver days) used by officers (at least in the US) became higher caliber was to increase stopping power because officers fighting at close range would shoot an enemy in CQC and the shot enemy would still get run through with a bayonet.
Part of the reason why pistols were carried by officers (at least in the USSR) was to execute conscripts who tried to retreat/disobey orders
@@TortillaChip521 that's definitely a factor every where I think. Or at least give the threat.
The .45acp 1911 semi-auto pistol was actually invented, by John Moses Browning, in response to US soldiers being cut down with swords by drug fueled Moro warriors in the Philippines, even after emptying their small-caliber revolvers into them.
Of course, the weapon that eventually made the biggest difference, in that conflict, turned out to be the pump-action shotgun (also invented by Browning). Both weapons went on to be extremely effective in the trenches of WWI.
@@randlebrowne2048 .45 ACP... God's calibre!
I guess, a straightforward question with another long answer, but assuming the point is intended as a disposable oneshot, what about drawing a secondary weapon to defend, or using this as a specialized and disposable weapon. I have heard the same concerns about the bayonet, I think infamously in All Quiet on the Western Front, the bayonet was disparaged versus the spade for many reasons, but this was one of them. If you drive your rifle deeply into a target, you have to pull it out of them. Whereas with a spade you could continue chopping. I wonder too about the hammer blade, which would effect a glancing motion after impact versus a spike which would remain stuck. Especially those rectangular cross section crows beaks, I would imagine they would drive quite deeply, even into plate. Bone is another problem. Imagine getting a spike stick between ribs or clavicle. I think the spike is unquestionably more lethal, however.
Why do you think cross and scalloped triangle cross section bayonets were so common before the far shorter modern knife style bayonet?
To make a wound that doesn't grip the bayonet as much!
That said, even with a modern knife bayonet mounted on a modern rifle, I'd definitely carry a couple of backup blades in case the opponent grabs the rifle in a way that forces my bayonet out of line and/or tries to pull the rifle away.
As the opponent tries to pull it away from me, they will find the rifle has a three part one and a half sling system with either the one or the half clipped into my webbing vest, just in time for a face full of backup gladius carried across the small of my back for a semi-concealed easy draw.
Note that the style of warfare had changed by Western front. Bayonets were, in some regards, an evolution of pike-and-shot warfare. The world wars were fought in trenches rather than armies on a field.
Well in All Quiet on the Western Front was specifically referring to the German saw-bayonet. Which due to its serrations for cutting wood would often get stuck in people. The German soldiers disliked it because their weapon would be stuck and the Allies disliked it because they thought it was deliberately cruel. German soldiers captured with them would often be beaten or killed in "retaliation".
I nearly had a problem with the spike on the back of my battle axe. Its called nearly tripping over a boot when you're putting the bloody thing away after you have cleaned it.
I saw the spike, and thought you were going to say it was used to exert force on the enemy after hitting them. If you embed the spike in the first three layers of their gambeson, maybe you get a pinprick through to the skin. But you've got a grip that's basically nailed to them. You can pull if the weapon is being wielded one-handed, and if it's a two-hander you have the choice of whether to pull or to push sideways, whichever direction you think will throw your enemy off-balance so that you can make your next blow count.
I've always assumed that in knightly bludgeoning weapons' like pollexes/polehammers/becdecorbin/etc... the bludgeoning portion was for engaging in combat against other armored opponents, while the spike would likely be reserved for dispatching a foe who had already been knocked on their ass and unable to retaliate effectively, or against unarmored opponents for whom you'd have little defensive concerns as a man in plate armor anyway. Thoughts?
Along with the minuses involved in having your weapon stuck in the enemy, it DOES give you a nifty handle with which to leverage and lever your enemy about.
It seems like a "no-brainer" in terms of designing a weapon (increased leverage for your Scream-style stabbies), but it also seems like a weapon who's weaknesses come out with testing/training. Maybe they had a more specific purpose, at least in medieval times: I'd imagine the spike would have been very useful for "cleaning up" after a battle. It would be a quick way to execute a downed opponent without getting too close (presumably you don't want someone slashing at your ankles with a dagger). This way, you could preserve your edged weapons, or get around the fact that they may be extremely dull after a battle. You probably wouldn't even have to remove the guy's helmet. Plus, in that context, you would be surrounded only by allies. Furthermore, in my opinion, many of the spike wounds in medieval skulls appear to have been carried out "execution style" against someone kneeling or lying down. It also makes sense that the spike would be "mounted" on your primary weapon (so convenient). It could be readily deployed during lulls in the battle as well. When used on a defenseless & immobilized person, the spike makes sense. Maybe there was a component of honor as well (e.g. I'll give you a quick death, if you'd do the same for me). I'm just speculating (I don't know anything lol).
I think you are correct ; after action slaughter of severely wounded is rarely talked about ,but probably took place often . It's a gruesome reality . When the s**t is going down a fighter would be wise to abandon that weapon if it's function or retrieval became problematic .
Polearms, are meant for fighting in formation with two lines of men going against each other, one is pretty safe and covered by everyone else in the line, the goal of the combatants is to hook the enemy by the axe part (some of them have specific uneven shape just for that) and drag them out of their formation, and therefore out of cover, where they will get stabbed to death by the pointy spear bit, or their head crushed by the hammer bit once they're on the ground, another perpendicular spike could be an option, but definitely not a necessity as it indeed can get stuck and one needs to recuperate quickly after a kill so they can be efficient element of the line, covering others again I imagine.
Dear ballistics gelatin manufacturers, please provide professor Easton with testing medium!!!!! This needs testing. I believe the spontoon hawk will pull out...... easier than a traditional tomahawk. Awesome content!
I know of a firearms TH-cam channel (Paul Harrell) who uses a bag of oranges wrapped in pork ribs and pork chops and a few layers of clothing.
@@tcschenks the old meat target. Paul is amazing.
When I was a kid and was first misinformed about the purpose of a fuller, it was for a similar reason. I think it was my Dad, and he told me it was called a “blood groove”- because according to him, when you stuck a blade into someone, it would be locked in there due to suction, and the blood groove allowed a channel for air to get into the wound (and the blood to run out) and release said suction. Wow. I’m so glad that I read a lot even back then, and found out for myself what the purpose actually was! No offense to my Dad (RIP), as he was a voracious reader as well, but I’m sure that one of his uncles was to blame for that particular old wives tale. My Dad was more a reader of modern (WWII-current era) historical fiction than he was of nonfiction historical arms and armour. Anyway, thanks for the great video 👍🏻
Edit: I do wonder, though, if there’s any truth behind that reasoning? Having never personally run a sword through a person, I don’t know if suction could possibly play any part? Doubtful, but if anyone knows, please let me know!
I was once told in Chinese Jian forms to thrust the sword slightly downwards after it enters the body, to make it easier to pull out. I've no idea if this is true for the same reason.
All weapons have this problem, swords have a tendency to get stuck if you cut too far down on the blade. Thus it's recommended to cut with the last 2-4 inches of the blade 'so that the blade may free itself'. Consider where the center of percussion is for most blades and think if the blade will free itself if you cut there.
Hawk and Dagger...by the time you embed your Hawk in someone's head/body you are stepping in with your dagger. Timidity is not allowed when using two short ranged weapons. Also watch yourself wiggle that Hawk 'as you try to remove it' and imagine what that is doing to the person.
Lastly when you have a spike imbedded in a body, you now have a ton of leverage you can apply. Think of how a hook works on Plate armor, you can now manipulate the person with that spike sticking in them.
"Let's talk about the problems with penetration." WOW! Totally caught me off guard! Great video!
I imagine getting a spike out would involve a bit of fulcrum action, or perhaps a solid twist to wrench it out. Either way, it would make the wound even messier. Just guessing, though.
“They can stab you back”. This is why, I’m rapier, we put a toooonnnnnnn of emphasis on striking with control over your opponent’s sword. As you thrust, you capture their blade on your hilt, deflecting their point out of presence and also controlling it enough to prevent a cut. This makes you safe while close, but you also need to get out safely maintaining control of the opponent’s sword with your hilt. So often, folks stop the action when a hit is landed, but we should really not stop the action until you are safely out of measure.
Rapier and dagger is actually more dangerous. A rapier is long, so if I stab you and have a foot of sword out your back (really my simulator is extremely bent, your point is behind me - as long as I guard against a cut, I’m safe. If you have a dagger though, you still have an offensive weapon that I have to contend against with my dagger. That’s the best case. If I have sloppy form and don’t have control of your sword, you have two offensive weapons for me to counter with just my dagger.
Miyamoto Musashi in his book The Five Rings makes it clear that no matter what weapon you are using the aim is to strike your enemy in such a way that he is not in a position to strike you back. Not through sheer strength but through control. You do not look for that opening - you create it.
One of musashi’s other commandments is to never favour one weapon over another (because to have a preference leads to weaknesses with all weapons) but he makes it clear that the sword is the most versatile of all weapons - the ‘not too long, not too short’ sword, that is. The longer katana Musashi says invites weakness in technique. Musashi’s other dictum is ALWAYS use a sword and the ‘companion sword’ ie the short sword in the off-hand.
This is why I'm blunderbuss.
How much would the "getting stuck" disadvantage matter for a horseman's pick? Was it effective because it was used when the enemy was fleeing, and therefore you didn't have to worry about a counterattack? Was it harder to extract because the horse helped you drive it in? Easier because the horse helps you pull it out?
plusses and minuses across the board. They are anti-armour, so they would have been left behind if they got stuck because you can't take the time to remove it if you're riding past. Possibly the best way would be to have a spare on your saddle.
For a horseman using a 'pick' you would want to 'stick' it in to manipulate the person. Imagine hooking the armor then spurring your horse on, dragging the guy off his horse.
Gets stuck, but you could use it as a dagger to finish by hand, not quite for striking when you don't want it getting stuck, but not bad if you don't have a dagger. If you use an axe with a long spike in the back that is. 😅
Short spikes deliver more force on a single point and thus getting more force to the bone behind the armor, because the force of the swing is concentrated on the sturdy tip of the small spike, where a hammer spreads the force on impact more. 🙂
Correct me if I'm wrong 🙃
In late period medieval warfare, fully armored combatants were so well protected that you would literally have to immobilize them, and then either get them to submit or strip their armor away and slide daggers into their exposed area.
Having a spike stuck your oponent's arm would indeed allow you to immobilze that limb. It was also a good tool for executing an immobilized/captured foe as we see from numerous forensic archeological studies of graves found during this period.
1:24 Spike on top: What am I chopped liver?
It should also be noted that points are much more likely to glance, especially when used against plate armor (which is incidentally designed to do exactly that). All the force being focused on a small point is devastating with a flush hit, but if it glances all of that force is lost (essentially). With a hammer face, flanged mace, or otherwise larger surface area on a weapon, more of the force of even a glancing blow will be imparted (I'd imagine this would be why the beaked warhammer didn't eclipse the flanged mace, nor the Bec de Corbin the hammer faced pollaxe).
Interesting points.
I've heard Bec de Corbin which sometimes had small side spikes as well were used by heavily armoured men at arms in pike/bill formations with the purpose of getting tangled up in reigns of mounted opponents to topple or at the very least make armoured riders vulnerable.
@@Adam_okaay I wouldn't be surprised. Given that our lives don't depend on these weapons anymore I'd imagine that some practical uses would escape us.
What you're talking about is the difference between trying to pierce something via making greater efficiency of the inertia by using a fine point, vs. penetrating with a focused but still relatively blunt point or edge and increasing the inertia. As noted above, the flanged mace is a good example. Another good example of something designed for exactly that, is the spike on the special forces style tomahawk. The spike is a diamond profile, but the tip is rather blunt. Some do sharpen it, though it wasn't meant for that. The idea is to crush through the target so that the hole it makes is not nice and neat, allowing for faster recovery of the point. Like a hammer that has been focused to deliver its impact to a much smaller area, rather than a pick or spike.
@@richard6133 While I'm not disagreeing with what you're saying, that's not to what I'm referring too. I think you may be missing my point.
Spiked impact weapons are made to this very day, for the purposes of modern combat. I own a tomahawk by RMJ Tactical of Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA, and it has a traditional tomahawk/axe blade on one end, combined with a ferociously sharp, reinforced spike on the opposite end. Tomahawks with heads such as this have been used as weapons here in the US since about the mid-1600s.
Which model do you own? A high quality tool for sure.
@@wingardwearables , I have their "Kestrel" model.
About the spiked axe and warhammer, wouldn't it make sense to fight with the axe or hammer side until you got you opponent into a position where they can't fight back and then using the spike to take them out?
Awesome the pole axe with the spike and hammer seem amazing especially for versitility. Question! Did they have smaller pole axes like a hatchet to the axe or were they all very large like a spear?
Does HEMA have any mention of techniques for after contact?..such as if you drive the spike in and then follow through with a pulling/dragging them as of sorts...or when your thrust is in deep leveraging the blade in directions of advantage..ie rib/spine or between pelvics/femars?
Thanks for another video
One thing about a spike one one of them is disabling. If you don't have a weapons or skill to use the weapon to get in-between plates of armor then the spike can focus force at those joints and damage them and even deform them to make them less functional like they cat caught on other pieces or simply cause damage to the wearer and not want to make movements.
As far as tomahawks, they were known to be thrown in quick movements and followed up with a knife. Normally the shock of the thrown axe that might not kill but can break into bone which would be a lot of pain and trauma including ribs into the lungs or heart. Allows them time to run up and finish off with the knife and they can easily wrap their hand around the connection point of the handle to the head and pull it out and keep moving. Ambush type warfare like that is why that shape of a Spontoon Tomahawks effective. At the time the armor was coats of leather and maybe fabric clothing so there was not much to stop it.
If your weapon embeds in the opponent, you also got a handle on him. He's not an unmoving, rooted treestump. You can pull or push him with your weapon, unbalance him or even bring him to fall. All of which can be used to make his attack go wide.
9:58 "... with the hammerblade ..." ;-D .... I suggest, singing "ohhohooohooo can't smack this". Now I want you to make a video about the hammerblade.
Treatises do seem to show predominantly bec de corbin style heads, but I do not have all of the sources available and didn't actually count the bec heads, so I may well be wrong.
... I am still amazed at the unfailingly deadpan delivery of the at this point, I'd say regular innuendo. You do not even bat an eye or twitch a muscle. Impressive. You should get another job as the PR guy for crazy ppl. Like, film stars, politicians or other indecently rich ppl.
Though a challenge to forge it needs a 3 or 4 face curved tapered piecing point that flares out to a hammer head face maybe even with raised lip or points
so that the taper doesn't bind when driven home.
Good point :)
On a somewhat related note, do you think a broader bladed axe (maybe 6 inches or more cutting edge) would have any appreciable effect on a heavily armored target? My instinct is that it would at least have similar percussion to a mace, but I'd like to hear your thoughts on the matter.
This applies in unarmed combat too, I've been asked more than once why when I've won a match I always complete the movement, throwing or pinning or disengaging.
It's because having been caught in a real fight I'm more conscious of the fact that a solid strike or throw isn't necessarily going to stop "anybody", I don't know how an opponent will react so I "complete the movement" to make sure I'm safe
100% there is a story of a security or police officer who had trained himself to disarm someone threatening with a pistol so he could do it fast enough to not get shot without telegraphing.
When he faced such a situation while on duty, he was shot dead.
The disarmament technique worked flawlessly, but.
When he trained, he had gotten complacent and seemlessly transitioned to reinserting the mag and handing the pistol back to his sparring partner, grip first.
Thus, when he disarmed the gunman in the live situation, he completed the trained routine in full, handed the pistol back to the gunman,who promptly just grabbed the grip and fired before the officer had even realized what he had just done.
Just as you do, in offense or defense, martial arts for civilian self defence or military combat, at sea, on land or in the air always train as you want to do if forced to do it with someone trying to kill you.
@@SonsOfLorgar nasty, poor bloke 😔
When it comes to firearms I've been taught to do it, my teacher always said you never go for the weapon just disable the person and stay out of its way. But thank Christ I've never been in that situation the adrenaline would kill any kind of co-ordination
after watching this video I gotta say my gut feeling on your new tomahawk axe is that it's made to be ideal for throwing perhaps? As a melee weapon, the difficulty of getting the axe out of the target means you're more likely to let go of it once it's in the target anyway, as you explained, + also this same factor might make it more effective as a throwing weapon as the opponent now is the one who has to worry about the axe being stuck in him and not you - both pointing towards ranged and not melee as being ideal for that design
I would love to see this tested with a ballistic gel+bone dummy or perhaps a pig carcass. It would be interesting to see this in action and not intuited.
Remarque described the same problem with bayonets in his book. There it's the advise to go for the belly for not to get stuck between the ribs. So that's not a demonstration, but at least another source.
One way too look at certain spike weapons is as part of a group action, not duelling.
The large heavy spike is driven in and left, the user pulling back while others cover.
Especially true of hunting parties against dangerous animals with tough hide.
The hooking ability of the hammer or spike is useful, obviously.
I think the axe and spike makes it a better utility tool for most things outside of battle. Because the battle portion is fairly rare. But there is a lot of camping work and utility work the spike is great for.
I keep a tomahawk in my car's emergency kit that is axe and spike. If I come upon an automobile accident, the spike is a better tool for getting people out of a vehicle.
In Afghanistan and Irag, several personnel liked the axe and spike tomahawk for opening doors. The spike could break a padlock and axe could open a standard door lock.
Where I look at those big front loaded spikes on a hand weapon as the kind of thing to drive into a leaping or charging animal and let go of.
I know people who have dealt with wild boars. One tactic was deliver a fatal injury and climb a tree until it died.
Lots of people mentioned using the embedded point to control the opponent, but what about this - there's some expectation that an opponent will have a shield, and embedding a lever right into the enemy's shield with the point on your weapon could give you a *massive* advantage in controlling the shield so you can land a proper attack with your off-hand or your buddy fighting in the front line right beside you can take advantage of the guy who can't defend.
Thoughts?
I do think you have a very good point and I mostly agree with you, if you weapon get stuck is a big deal. But, I think you can have a big advantage: if after a good hit and your weapon get kind of stuck you may move back pulling the weapon and your opponent backward, with decent speed and reaction you likely (in my opinion, I haven't ever test it) could pull your opponent out of balance and knocked him down,or to the very list get your weapon back or get the opponent to follow your movent, giving you the advange.
It very could be that it's more complicated than I describe or imagine, but even if the odd off success is 1 to 10 (just a throw numbers), it's a helpfil option.
Swords and battle axes can both get stuck but axes have leverage to aid the removal and maybe that's the fun part
It could be that that type of tomahawk, once it’s point was embedded in an opponent, could be used by the wielder to push/pull, and more or less control their opponent’s movement. In some cases, you would be able to control your opponent through crippling pain by pushing and pulling.
Other martial arts that use hook-like weapons are often paired with an offhand weapon, in the case of a tomahawk perhaps a large knife, allowing the wielder to pull the opponent into a knife stab.
Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if the native Americans who used these types of tomahawks employed a kind of teep-kick which would help loosen the axe and provide distance from similarly-armed opponents.
Hi Matt,
Hitting with the point of sword or knife and hitting with a spike of a mounted weapon is really different.
If you hit you opponent in a not immediately incapacitating point with a mounted wapon you bring him down or move it around using the leverage you get from the tool. The torque you get will help liberating the spike, once down or turned you dislodge and hit, it is not like hummering a nail. Also by moving and dragging the opponent you can actually make it harder for him to counter. For example by moving on his blind spot and making for him impossible to turn. At that point you are actually in grappling but the contact is via a chunk of metal stuck in the body of the oppenent connected to you via an handle that has a 90°of leverage.
I reply to myself 😅.
Is similar to strangling someone. If like in the movies you put the hand on the neck and squeeze, you will be in range for him to hit you back, so you usually shake him and unbalance him and then mount on top. You don't stay still in range you bring him down take him off balance and finish him.
You missed an important point. Even if the point is stuck in the opponent, it would allow you to push and pull them about, causing immense pain and to a certain extent allow you to control them, making it difficult for them to strike back, even if they weren't in shock. I would think it would be easier to force them onto the ground and then you would have time to pull out a secondary weapon and dispatch them easily.
Bowie for the dispatching chop/stab/slash...
@Igor Hartmann It is but in a fight to the death BOTH would be 7nder an adrenaline rush.
@@spektr540hemi Sure, although against an armoured opponent I would prefer something slimmer, such as a bollock knife to slip into the gaps in the plate and pierce the chainmail.
On the other hand, if the weapon's point gets stuck in a shield or gets stuck in someone's armor without causing significant damage, then you could easily lose that weapon.
@@Intranetusa That was his point. But, like I said, it gives you control over the opponent and at worse, you push him away or down and draw a backup. Then your opponent has your weapon stuck in him impeding his ability to fight.
This video ties in with the one you did on the use of Tomahawks in N America. The literature repeatedly mentioned the preferred strike was to the head, which is more likely to be the instant "off switch" needed to keep from being struck back.
I would assume that our Medieval European ancestors reached a similar conclusion with their spikey tools, and strikes to the face/head were preferred/recommended.
Thanks again for all the well though out content.
Per Lynn Thompson: If you’re fighting with a tomahawk, at a minimum you should have a 18-24” sharp stick in your off hand. If you don’t have a sharp stick, make one, you have a tomahawk.
Regarding the pollaxe, I'd argue that, with a two-handed shaft (aka pole) weapon, putting your weight behind a thrust is much more effective than with smaller weapons (your hands can be further apart, offering more control and stability, which results in a more precise and better aligned thrust).
In addition, switching the spike with one of the side heads (hammer or axe) would make the hammer or axe head ineffective as it would only be usable with thrusting motions. Having a spike on top also allows it to be longer while remaining easy to pull out of an opponent, as you explained with sword thrusts. The added weight of having 3 heads is also less detrimental on a two-handed weapon, so this is the best configuration to have all three options.
Interesting point! How much do you see getting stuck as a problem regarding spears?
3:03 "t'is but a scratch" 😉 I would think that the Ponoontomahawk you have could be easier to get out again than the axe you had. Because of the form of the blade. Wiggeling means that the points at the end of the axeblade could find things to get caught in. While this tomahawks blade meand that the part that has penetrated is narrower than what is still outside. ( in the longitudinal direction)
Great explanation! And this Tomahawk even has barbs behind the spike... once it's embedded, you'll never get that one out of a body while in the fight.
Steve Jackson also made the sticking point, with things like picks and axes, in GURPS (the Generic Universal Roleplaying System) back in the 1980’s. It was a part of the game mechanics and I’m sure still remains so. You did a great job-thank you.
That is a really nice poleaxe. Who is the maker? I've been looking around for a good one, but can't seem to find one with recessed langets (which this one doesn't have). But if it has Matt's stamp of approval, it must be a solid piece.
Is the spike not originally more for a tool use like a hook a roon, or a pew, or a logger spike? As far as the curved hooked boarding style hatchets? I would definitely direct people to the tools i mentioned if you think no tools have a wicked spike or hook I used a pew for logs and salmon fishing for 35 years, Also as a logger and sawmill worker, hook-a-roons and pikes and types of pew’s were always used, also I would suggest that the spike if not coming from a labor tool then perhaps a butchers killing spike, to be used in the situation of completely taking life with no “fuss” to the killer or killed?
I feel like a short weapon that's prone to getting stuck in your opponent lends itself to a very aggressive, close-in style. You know, yank them around by the weapon that's stuck in them and push/kick/grapple to get it out again.
Me too, pull them off balance and stab them.
I bet it'd hurt like hell if you got one of these spikes embedded in you and then they just start wiggling it. If it's a beak with a sharper edge oooh, the wound's getting turned into shredded paper
One thing you can do when the spike is stuck, in addition to blocking with a shield or trying to pull the spike out, is to push or pull the target with the spike. Maybe it can disrupt the target a bit or cause more damage.
I was thinking along the same line too when I wrote my novel. Thank you for the discussion.
I use a poleax in SCA combat, weighted and balanced close to museum examples, and have had it used against me a good bit too, and I find that the shock of getting hit with the head end tends to put people off being able to swing back in any way. You get so much momentum going even with relatively light blows that is throws all but the heaviest people off balance, so unless it really is a simultaneous hit there isn't a follow up. I imagine that for any pole arm with a heavy head (poleax, halberd, war pick, whatever) the momentum transfer after a swing is the biggest protection from "oh hell, the weapon is stuck and now he is going to hit me before he dies." Doesn't help much on the thrust probably, but then all thrusty things have that problem.
A spike will often get stuck in plate armor if it penitrates deep enough. As for mail & gambison over a body it doesn't stick very much. A straight spike on a hammer into a unarmored person doesn't take much effort or time to remove unless it is a thinner spike & it hits large bones. The spike on that war hammer is thick enough that it shouldn't get stuck in anything on the battlefield besides plate armor and possibly a shield. As with any hand held weapon you are most vulnerable during your attack, it doesn't matter if you are going for a penitrateive, slicing or impact attack.
If you whacked someone wearing mail with that axe spike or tomahawk, would it actually penetrate to the point where it can’t be withdrawn though? Wouldn’t the mail hold and actually prevent a tight penetration, which would allow you to freely remove the point. Also, against plate armour, the spike is not necessary to penetrate but also perhaps to damage or degrade the armour.
I think the Nuclear option would be more beneficial .
One very small thought: If, in your defensive dodge at 8:49, you maintained a firm grip on the tomahawk, the result would be a twisting motion of the spike in the wound. This would impart greater wounding/pain and help free the spike.
Could the purpose of the spiked point on the back of the hammer/axe be to strike the flat side of other weapons and perhaps break them? Is it possible for large swords or axe heads to crack or shatter if struck directly? The other thing i thought of was injury to the arm behind a shield. Cool channel!
I think others have said it in some fashion or another. Weapons are a part of an overall kit that should be taken in the context of their use. I often wonder how fighting/martial arts are affected when your marching in a formation for example. For example, Is a spike being stuck in someone as big of a deal when your shoulder to shoulder with your buddies with shields, and you have a sword to draw?
Fighting style absolutely matters!
300 isn't exactly a historically accurate film, but the phalanx made spear and shield extremely powerful.
If you're in midevil Europe, the pole axe is better, because horses are coming at you.
Today, of course, I would choose a gun... but military chooses a smaller knife, for convenience of carry as a secondary weapon. No longer a sword or pole arm.
@@zuhalter0071 from my limited understanding, the poleaxe was not a particularly common weapon for the peasantry. Rather, lines of pikemen would be used. In these scenarios, it was a test of whether pikemen would break rank upon seeing a charging horse. If they cab stand their ground, calvalry becomes ineffectual.
I notice the spontoon tomahawk has sharpened edges, like a very short, broad dagger. How sharp are the edges? Could they be used for (admittedly weak) draw/push cuts?
As a guy who has spent decades on the BJJ mats, I have to say that arguments about what can be done against multiple attackers are almost always spurious. I literally can’t count the number of guys who have showed up at the gym talking about how taekwondo, or Okinawa Karate, or kung fu, or whatever is more effective against multiple attackers than jiu jitsu. Nearly all of them proceed to get tapped out by every white belt in the building. To be fair, this is much less common now than it was 20 years ago because so many more people are aware of the effectiveness of clinching and ground fighting. There is likely truth to the concept of a wounded opponent lashing out and striking his killer who’s weapon is embedded in him. But, all other things being equal, if we are about to wrestle and flail at each other until one of us is dead… I would much prefer that you already have a spontoon hawk embedded in your head or torso. Also, if we are going to go full-on armchair ninja about it: having a spike, beak, or spontoon hawk sunk deep into your opponent’s chest or shoulder should give you insurmountable leverage and control over their position. It would be mighty difficult to throw an effective strike while being dragged around by a tomahawk handle welded to your chest via a mortal wound.
Something I notice about the Raven Forge tomahawk that might mitigate the issue you bring up - that of being unable to withdraw the spike from armor, or even a human body - is that it has a rounded hammer on the opposite end. Using that, one would be able to deal equal concussive force without needing to take time withdrawing the weapon from the armor. If someone is wearing mail armor, a hit with the rounded hammer will do as much as a cut with the same force, assuming ideal mail armor
I think the spikes might have been used more as a way to control an enemy, by hooking their shield or armor. I think it's more likely that they were used to drag an opponent around or unhorse them, rather than as a means to inflict injury. I believe that if the spike did manage to do some damage then that would have been seen as a bonus, but I don't think that inflicting injury was the primary purpose of the back spike.
But I don't know how extant the historical evidence is for the spikes being used intentionally as a weapon to injure opponents, so I could be wrong. For all I know, killing enemies with a back spike might have been the thing that all the cool kids were doing in the late 15th century.
P.S. I'm not talking about the spontoon tomahawk in this video, on that weapon the blade-point was obviously intended to be the primary means to inflict injury.
I wonder if that weapon design was originally intended for the new world market, and if it was, was it a European copy of a native design? Sometimes that was done for trading purposes. The original native weapon might have had an obsidian blade then, and the spontoon tomahawk was just copying the style. I'm really just guessing on that one, based on pictures of trade tomahawks that I saw in a book thirty five years ago.
I'm sorry that the people who could have told us with authority how to properly use these weapons have been dead for hundreds of years. I appreciate the efforts of modern historians who work hard to rediscover the secrets of the lost martial arts. I'm secretly hoping that renaissance era greatsword dueling will one day become the new Crossfit.
Hey Matt thanks for all the great content! I have a question. what is the best way to get into longsword training without access to a hema club?
any advice is much appreciated.
Matt can you also talks about spear's disadvantages in fully armoured combat, either battlefield and one on one? I feel like most times when people talks about "Spears outranks swords/everything" tests, they seems to be talking about it in more of a armourless manner, with a one-hit judging system that people die when being stabbed only once, but never considered the situation when the opponent wearing armour, giving them better chance to close-in when spear can't penetrate the armour and stopping them from minor damage it gives.
I think the spontoon might actually have less of an issue with this give the back of the axe is tapered from the widest point on. The blade is also relatively wide so there should be some stopping power.
The spike adds balance and weight so you can still hit harder and it would also have basic utility outside of combat
And even if you can’t go through plate armor you can still stab in the gaps much more effectively than with the axe as its a smaller more dagger like point,
All in all its better than just a battle axe with no spike
Edit: also you can have the spike bladed so it can cut its way free and not get stuck also making it do more damage and causing worse injuries so the enemy would bleed out much faster
Great vid as usual, absolutely - weapons sticking in the opponent is a very real scenario...(could you share any first hand accounts that you've read?).
Anybody who's chopped wood with an axe compared to a splitting maul knows that too sharp / fine a blade causes sticking instead of splitting issues.
Also, If you've butchered large animals you'll know that fresh bone will grab onto a blade too, thats why old butchering cleavers are so huge - the weight makes all the difference.
I imagine whacking a tomahawk into the large bones of some poor unfortunate enemy really will make that weapon stick.
I've not really thought about it before - very enlightening. Thanks.
and if you've ever seen a butchering cleaver.... Huge, weighty, and have a hook on the end so you can use leverage and your body mass. One of the Witcher fights has a guy in the back carrying one. Same shape, size, and hook as a clog knife, by the way, and for the same reason.
If you search Matt's earlier videos, he made a couple detailing first-hand accounts; most of which are taken from Swordsmen of the British Empire, by DA Kingsley.
My limited experience with a tomahawk that has an axe and a spike is this. When using the axe the spike is always pointed in the general direction of your neck and head. Close in to grapple and the spike could wind up in you. Don't know if this is a legitimate concern but it always crosses my mind.
Do you think the spontoon hawk would be used to target the head the same way you talked about in your video about period accounts of tomahawk fighting? I'd imagine the spike on any axe being used to target the body more because it's less likely to get stuck or glance off.
Somewhere in the castle armoury in Bohemia, I saw an interesting warhammer with a short stout spike in the centre of the hammerhead. I didn´t know at that time what it was for but now I think you enlightened me. Thanks.
I think the trade-off isn't get stuck or not, but is it better to stick in armor/flesh or not get into it in the first place? A mace trades that for frequently a bit more weight, and a slower "rate of fire" as it were. I've thought the point of the beak was to debt and warp or cut sharp edges into plates not punch through deep into a body.
Do those little curls on the tomahawk help with getting it out? At first I thought it was just decorative or to keep the blade from going too deep but after seeing you faff about with it it looks like they could help with levering the blade out. Kinda like a morbid bottle opener
Don’t bayonet a man in the rib cage for many of the same reasons. As they fall and twist it binds the blade… and if it’s come down to bayonets, you may want to be able to use yours again without delay.
Suspect the spike is more useful when _choked up_ and in close as an ersatz knife, with the handle flush the under-forearm. Would the axe be viable parrying with that grip higher up, blade as the 'hand guard', handle presented more or less vertical to incoming strikes to parry/pass guard (or high in the icepick grip)?
On a little testing with a spike hawk, pick goes in coconut better than bladed bit.
Pick is also a handy digging tool.
"This Poleaxe has no spike" *Giant spike sticking right out of the top*
Yeah, that bugged me too!
Of course Matt meant "no spike at a right angle", but that was a bit rattling :)
Based on my vast experience, the spike would likely be flipped to finish off an armored guy that was stunned or compromised otherwise on the ground.
This is why I prefer the Pollaxe with an axe blade, hammer head, and spear point. Like you said with the sword point, thrusting with a spear point lets you put your whole body into pulling back and freeing your point if it gets stuck. And you get a bludgeoning, slashing, and piercing option.
I've read up on research suggesting that the hammer end was used to attack and not the spike. The spike portion was only used to finish up the job once the opportunity arose.
With the polearm, you have much less of a problem with retrieving a spike I feel! Since you can wrench it free easier compared to a singlehanded weapon, with both of your hands moving opposite directions to get the spike out!
Or twisting the shaft as an axle, wrenching the spike out sideways
We can see same issue with early Slavic (and Hungarian fokosz) axes, with long thin and narrow axeheads with very shirt blade, like kind of pickaxe which can penetrate very easily into shields and so on, so very often those axes have thick and short spike on the opposite side, for hitting without deep penetration...
Even worse, imagine your 90 degree pointy stick gets stuck in the opponent's shield? Now your weapon is useless (for a time) and the other guy isn't wounded.
And they possibly now have your weapon!
You have great taste in wristwatches too, I have that model and it's one of my fun favourite pieces.
I recall in one of Tod's videos, he was hitting a gambeson (or gambeson with mail on top) with a warhammer, and he found it interesting that that paticular one didn't penetrate the gambeson - but that the focused impact pushed a big indent into the gambeson. Like the beak side was also blunt impact, only more concentrated on a point.
Meanwhile, the spike on your axe looks like it could break a chain link and penetrate through a gambeson into the flesh. (And your spontoon tomahawk against unarmoured targets could get deep)
Perhaps even these nuanced differences within "the same weapon" - e.g. similar sized warhammers with broad vs. narrow beaks - could have drastically different results and therefore different implications for how to use them.