I didn't even notice that he was sitting in armor! Typical Capwell! Always looking for an opportunity to sneak a little armor into the most casual situations.
I was talking with someone last week who is currently attending university in the Czech Republic (not sure which one), and he told me that the history department considers the Arrows vs Armour series to be a valid source to cite in academic papers. You love to see it!
Why wouldnt it be? Science isnt defined by being done at university, but by being transparent about your sources and giving reasonable conclusions that others can follow and build on. Theres quite a few people on youtube i would quote if I went into those very specific niches, although not as many on an appropiately scientific level as I'd like, even only for entertainment purposes.
@@badluckbrian46academics is very snobby and petty at times, so it’s refreshing to see his department is open thinking enough to accept such a new form of study. I could also see an argument that as it’s not officially; written up, published, or peer reviewed it may not be appropriate for university level work.
Hopefully the Arrows vs Armour and other testing done by Tod and Co gets some traction in the wider community interested in this type of archeology. Its fine if people have their 'what ifs' about certain tests, but for the most part the tests that were done are quite robust and consistent, even if its not meeting people's expectations and that's something a lot of people who don't come from a scientific background struggle with. Sometimes the stats and the experiment results aren't going to replicate a fault or incident. But why I appreciate this series of tests was that prior to these actual tests, there was practically nothing when it came to weapons and armour tests. There was some rubbish from mainstream tv channels using blunt swords, tin plate armour and the internet full of weird dudes chopping plastic water bottles and plastic-latex zombie heads with rubbish chinese and indian swords. So however people like/dislike the results or methods, these videos are a real tipping point in displaying actual results as real as you can practically get.
The best thing science can do is eliminate the false data more than confirm the positive data. In these tests I think showing plate can stop an arrow, do we know the exact numbers? no, but we do know the false idea that a plate cutter can gut a knight through his breastplate is truly dead false information. We still need to know at what level CAN an arrow penetrate plate to a degree able to harm the knight, the arm damage is a great clue and it hints that it is certainly possible for good arrows to penetrate thin armour at some point, but no breast plate is ever going to be that thin without some kind of serious compromise that essentially negates it as armour anyways. Removing these false data points is wildly valuable for then removing yet more data points later, as science goes this is a remarkable first step towards refining our answers to these questions truthfully and in a way that the general public can grasp easily and with great familiarity.
There are a number of "us" that do similar tests with experimental archeology. I presume many were inspired by Tod like myself. I have a small TH-cam channel that conducts tests with lighter Warbows 75-105lbs against lighter types of armor and shields as well as chrono tests to determine the energy these bows produce with authentic medieval arrows. www.youtube.com/@thefatefulforce8887/videos
I still love how Joe showed he could immediately kill a knight with his first arrow perfectly slipping under the plate and into the mail. Then he was like "okay, I'll play your game now". What an absolute beast.
A single (lucky) shot could kill you. Just imagine being in the front rank and being hit by 5 of them every second. If we assume that the longbow was really a skirmish type weapon, then all you need to do is disrupt the front rank advance and that would cause the whole formation to fragment. It would be complete chaos.
hopefully some graduate student somewhere saw this and thought, 'well Todd may not be interested in a doctoral thesis, but I'm doing one anyway; maybe I'll just film it for these folks...'
There is a difference between a go pro & a series of slow motion cameras on trolleys that professional studios didn't bring, or the difference between a tape measure & the nifty impact direction, duration & force sensors that a professional laboratory again didn't bring. (A difference I don't begrudge them one bit - I'm thankful that they are videoing and taking notes at all while they have their fun) For what it is, and it's funding level, it's unbelievably good. (both for the video presentation, and the scientific rigor)
So happy to been a contributor to avsa2 but frankly just as happy to see Tod rather go play with his trebuchet than doing an avsa3! 🥰 But wait...hang on... Why not: Trebuchet vs armour?!!! 😁
@@tods_workshop You're so welcome! After avsa you guys were so contagiously exited so we all just couldn't help ourselves from chipping in! 🥰😀👍 I hear you when you expressing the labour that went with the project though so I totally understand that avsa3 wont be happening any time soon...😉 That said: I really looking forward to you and/or the other guys coming up with new content, in whatever form that may be! 💪 Best wishes from Sweden! //☀️😊🇸🇪
People often think of a weapon as needing to kill an opponent to be effective but never think of a weapon's ability to disable the opponent's ability to fight. If an arrow causes an opponent to back out because of fear, injury, or binding armor joints then the arrow has as good as killed that opponent. This likely has just as much psychological effect on the opponent's allies as if he had also been killed. There are accounts of armies routing not because of deaths but because people doing things that aren't expected or interpreted wrongly. Such as if a commander rides from one formation to another to gives orders is interpreted as fleeing because of cowardice then a whole formation can quickly crumble. For when a few start to flee then so do the many.
I'd like to add that the arrows hitting the arms may not have been disabling, but would have impeded range of motion. That alone might have discouraged advancing. Also, the thighs of most knights would have been less all-around protected due to riding. Napoleon said, "In war, the moral is to the physical as ten to one." (morale?)
@@brianj.841 Glad you touched on that of which I left out. Even if the arrows don't kill anybody, but rather only restrict movements, that is an army of soldiers who cannot fight at 100% efficiency. But to a degree this can also be classified under being disabled since they are not completely able bodied despite still choosing to fight at a disadvantage.
@@AndrewTheFrank Add on to that note. The effect of forcing a formation to move, to lower their visors and start heating up, making them possibly move faster or slower than their commander wants, make them hold their shields up wearing them down that tiny bit more before the fight, even something as simple as forcing the knights to fall back for water instead of having water boys come to them... that is more walking, less fighting, more energy spent doing something useless to the goal of advancing the flag. An extra 20 minutes of your men moving while mine don't have to is 20 minutes more energy my men have in advantage now.
@@littlekong7685 For sure. Not to mention, if many soldiers don't have back plates, that means once the harassing arrows start to fly soldiers can't turn their backs to the enemy. Everything from that point on has to be done looking one direction. Likely why it forced attacks. It must have gotten tiring real fast to have to stay faced a certain direction for protection.
Wait, was that Drachinifel asking the 2nd to last question? Felt like a very familiar voice from the UK historical TH-cam circle. Great job with the panel everyone and I hope that I'll be able to make it to the festival myself next year as it seems like a blast for history nerds.
12:54 The first thing I did while watching the original Arrows vs Armour 2 video was put myself in the place of that guy, and man... those guys must have had balls of steel to march forward into that, as well as a tremendous amount of faith in God, I would wager.
They did a tremendous job on this, which gave us some things we expected to be the case, and disproved others. Unsurprisingly, armour works. It worked really, really well, but that's not to say a knight was invulnerable. Massed volley fire increases the chance that an arrow will find a soft spot, and that must have been terrifying. To have arrows skipping off your chest and head, splintering around you, when all the time you're just waiting for one to miss the plate and hit the mail or find some gap will have had a pretty big psychological effect even before a knight reaches melee range to start fighting. To make it worse, arrows that deflect off your own guys might end up coming your way from awkward angles. We saw a number of arrows skip off the armour with quite a lot of momentum left in them, but now with shredded tips of splinters. Yeah, just a thoroughly fine job all round.
Add in the fact that the march in was just as important as the charge to melee. A disciplined march conserves energy, maintains shield lines so there is no one racing to refill a gap, and keeps units in cohesive blocks that avoid weak gaps between them. But a hail of arrows raining down has to make a soldier sweat, maybe walk a little faster, maybe start the charge a little further back, maybe start the charge a little later because they want that shield up a little bit longer. All of these can have knock on effects in the larger fight and mean that one unit is now broken where it might have remained strong before, that one gap can be exploited, that one soldier gives up the fight that much sooner, etc.
@@littlekong7685 Absolutely. Even when it's not killing or wounding men, a constant arrow barrage must have put enormous pressure on an advancing force. Even with a raised shield, that thing is going to have arrows sticking in it very quickly. I don't know if you've seen it, but Tod did some testing with his crossbow against a heater shield. Not only did the arrows easily stick in it, several went through, and even through the mail on the other side. In no time at all that shield becomes pretty useless for melee combat, so by the time you get to the enemy lines, your armour's damaged, your shield is clumsy, you may be injured, guys around you will definitely have been injured, and your heart's beating our of your chest.
Are you guys going to be at any other events over the summer? Gutted to have missed this. Would love to hear more from all of you guys! Please keep on making these really great films!
I'm so sorry I couldn't make it to the festival and very glad you managed to record it all. As a bonus the introductory clip is now a great way for me to spread your work!
I think the big question has to be how confident would Joe be, with a few similar skilled and armed mates, to take out a fully armoured knight marching with intent towards them? They would of course get a big payout if they could.
As much as I love watching Joe Gibbs shoot a bow what are the chances of getting a “Bolts vs Armour”? I’d love to see how a heavy poundage crossbow goes against plate.
Tod you just reminded me of at least three Jousters at renaissance festivals that were injured when their opponents lance shattered and a piece came through the eye slit lodging in the brain. No one died but it seems that the eye slits can "carve" down a arrow shaft or splinter of a lance in such a way that it can hit the human inside.
Well that is unfixable problem with helmets, until armored glass became a thing. Even bullets and early tank visors (similar to those on helmets) suffered same way.
@@alexturnbackthearmy1907 Yep I was more pointing out the way the arrow stuck into the helmet eye slit was similar to what was happening in modern times with lance fragments. I am guessing it is the design of the eye slits that is doing it. The more times change.....
Half the questions seemed to basically be "Why couldn't you have made this 10 times more difficult and expensive to do?" I would be interested in a comparison of composite (Mongel) bow vs the armor it faced.
Apart from few technicalities composite bow should perform just the same. My point is, bow just shoots arrows and real issue is what arrows, what distance, what poundage of the bow, what are you shooting. That is why Todd used crossbow to test certain things, because type of bow used by people of the past is rather a techno-cultural strive to get strong/good shooting device. At the end of the day all bows are pretty identical in how they propel the arrow. Main difference is the construction, not effect.
A mongol bow and arrows would perform basically the same. I would be more interested in Manchu archery kit, as their bows store about 40% more energy for a given draw weight compared to any other historical bow that I'm aware of, and their arrows had a long tang with rayskin reinforcement which may prevent them from breaking when hitting plate armor. Since the breakage absorbing energy is what is preventing penetration in these tests (as demonstrated in the lockdown longbow brigandine video, they can go through similar plate thickness if the armor is more flexible), that may be enough to penetrate. It wouldn't surprise me, as they kept using their bows alongside firearms long after pretty much everyone else with firearms had stopped using archery in warfare.
Mongols faced lamella & mail mostly, plus unarmoured too. The European knights they defeated with ease in the 1220-40s were easily baited into traps where they'd get surrounded & shot to pieces. Mongol bows would be very similar in draw weights to HYW English longbows, most would be at least as skilled shooters having shot bows starting at age 3(!!!!), practiced most days, competed with mates & family plus reguylarly used their skills to hunt, protect herds fom wild animals, bandits & enemies. All from horseback, having learnt to ride from age 2. So expert horsemen as well. Mongols also made sure they carried loads of arrows plus plenty in the baggage train too.
@@2bingtim Mongol bows were probably lower in draw weight, since they fought mounted. Even places where many archers often used 150# or more on foot typically used more like 80-120# on horseback.
@@alexanderflack566 Not entirely sure how accurate it is now, but I recall that the mongol bows were comparable to european warbows due to stone rings on their thumbs taking some of the force of drawing the bow on horseback.
The last question is one of my favorite put to the panel. I have to say seeing swords routinely piercing steel plate armor (yes, Game of Throne I am looking at you) bothers me on a core level SO much that it takes me out of the moment completely. AvA2 is such a tremendous piece of archeology I am so very proud to have been able to donate to it and would GLADLY do so again! The work that you are doing has and continues to elevate our understanding of history.
Since this is supposed to be a recreation of sorts of the Battle of Agincourt it will be necessary to bear in mind what actually happened there. 1st: the French did attempt a cavalry action initially but the very muddy nature of the ground bogged it down and their horses did receive a lot of wounds. So they dismounted and went on foot. 2nd: the first wave of French knights reached the English lines and the English held their ground until the second wave of French pushed into the back of their first and weight of numbers began to move the English out of their prepared defensive position. 3rd: this is the most important fact. The French were defeated when the longbowmen put down their bows and engaged them in melee combat from the flanks. This is the most important fact because it shows that it wasn't the arrows that defeated the French knights but being enveloped on the flanks in hand to hand combat. This also shows that the arrows couldn't have been that effective against the armor, which is what Tod et. al. showed in their video. That is why Henry V praised the valor of his archers, something he wouldn't have done if they had defeated the enemy with arrows. This last fact is something that many don't understand about the battle of Agincourt. We always hear the longbowmen were the ones that won the battle and assume that it must have been their archery that did it when in fact it wasn't. The longbowmen were indeed responsible for the victory but it wasn't the bow itself.
Archers winning battle in melee is far more cooler then winning it with arrows, even if their archery still was incredible. Its straight up downplaying.
I think where this falls flat is that if a weapon isn't effective you simply wouldn't use it, let alone equip the majority of the Army with it. The video showed it would go through mail and thinner parts of plate (like the arms). Also, not everyone would be wearing the top plate armour. So certain individuals would be a lot more vulnerable.
@@Subtleknife12367 It doesn't fall flat. it is the actual course of events that took place. It isn't a supposition on my part but what occurred. The most cursory study of the battle will show you these facts. Do a bit of research before posting what you believe may have happened when it goes against what really happened.
Mike is amazing and massively talented across so many disciplines and luckily is involved in both my channel and the plotting and thinking for all the AvA films. An unsung hero
54:00 - a review of a film by history specialists and a stuntman with it taking an hour for one minute of the film's screen time? That's my kind of scale! :D Definitely a must watch.
@@tods_workshop Oh, thanks! Missed it somehow. Still think that longer formats for detailed reviews (sidetracks and ramblings included :D) are quite acceptable. Personally I have no problems with youtube videos which have couple hours runtime.
I’ve done the javelin with the string before, you get greater distance if you hold it with your hand and do the throwing with the string, great video!!
The tests did their job. Nobody was trying to paint the whole picture, but you did "zoom'n'enhance" a few finer points quite nicely. My fav was when y'all had that "Aha!" moment about the breastplate fiddly bits protecting the neck and eyes. Excellent work gentlemen.
Very entertaining and informative. One area I would like explored would be the actual state of some of the armour. Would Knights and men at arms be wearing freshly made armour of would they be years old and repaired. Would metal fatigue be a contributing factor to defeating it.
I'm fairly sure a lot of it would have been handed down and probably even recovered from previous battles, no point leaving a perfectly good bit of armour to go rusty in a field just because its previous owner didn't put it to good use. As for the repaired damage affecting the structural characteristics it would depend on the quality of the repair I guess (ie. was the dent just pushed out or was it properly reshaped and heat treated?). If it was just pushed out there would definitely be thinner and softer spots. I've done some amateur panel beating on fenders and they're noticeably weaker where the crease or dent was
The armies will have standards of course, no soldier is going to be allowed up with holes in his plate, but how good those holes were filled is probably a good question.
The answer is ultimately “it depends”. If you’re a knights, you’d normally also have the money to buy your own harness. A man-at-arms might not have that luxury.
Many good questions and honest answers here. So glad to see this Band of 5 Brothers facing the shots of the audience, and so good to see the result: an obvious win - win 😊
I feel it notable that even with the scrunching up of chain mail at the armpits caused when you draw your arms as close as you can to the body, which knights were known to do when under arrow fire, they still developed the rondel as an armpit defense.
I kinda wish someone like the Discovery channel would show some interest in this and commision a series so you could test a lot more types of armour vs weapons from different periods. Even have more archers to test things like volleys and so on. Maybe not the History channel as they would probably end up throwing Hitler and Aliens into the mix.
29:34 a time period which would be very interesting to test on, which from my understanding really hasn't been really touched on much. Is the ancient/antiquity period, bronze, laminar, etc vs period arrows and ranged weapons, be it ancient Greek, Roman, Germanic, Celtic, Egyptian or whatever. Of course shields where very important in these periods especially for protection from ranged weapons, but would still be interested to test the body armor in the event an arrow or other ranged weapon missed the shield and hit the warrior. Or perhaps an other test would be also very interesting is going into various types of shields vs period ranged weapons and see how they fared.
I noticed his golden crutch too. Quite a look. But seriously, it is simply that it is designed for standing or sitting upright, not lying back in a lounge chair
I imagine there is a mental and physical preparedness , a certain mindset to compete in a joust .... which isn't a game of ping pong by the way . So for Toby to answer questions right before a jousting session is quite unusual.
Rare to see Dr. Capwell in such old fashioned armor. Most pictures of him in armor I’ve seen are a century or two newer in style. I’d still love to see (Hussite) Handgonne vs. Armor someday. Hussite Wars were not that long after Agincourt, and the armor penetration ability of early gonnes is just as, if not more, mythical. I know Jason Kingsley had a pair of users on his channel a few time.
The channel cap and ball has a good video on black powder guns vs lamellar armor. It's a bit more localized to the firearms and armor encounters seen in central and eastern Europe but it's great to watch.
I'd love to see a future arrows vs armour involving the longer range arrows mentioned towards the end, i think it would be interesting to shine some light on the skirmishing, pre-battle phases of medieval warfare.
38:50 About the shown lack of efficacy it should be mentioned that one of the shots went through the eye slit of the knight. There is quite a good chance that such shot would deadly and if not deadly it would debilitating. Even lesser shots could cause splinter hitting the eyes reducing the knights ability to fight effectively.
And don't forget those hitting the arms, even the non-penetrating ones can lock up or stiffen the joints. All those things reduce effectivenes giving your frontline an easyer job.
The most important part is that not everyone had full armor. Your knights and men-at-arms may be able to walk through arrows relatively unscathed, but generally speaking, 80% of your army is going to be less armored.
Personally I love how you have recreated the best you can, and come to conclusions, and clearly state 'this is what we think based off these tests (amongst other evidence)', no mention of stating fact, which to me is something vital with a lot of historical discovery. The same way that dinosaurs could have had bright pink skin, or just because Homer wrote it, does not mean it was ever true. So I absolutely applaud all your efforts in this regard, this kind of open research is precious. While you were answering the demanding questions of your audience and volume of arrows was brought up, it got me thinking could that be where the phrase 'luck of the draw' originates, though I did a quick Google search which said it came from card games in America. After seeing the damage to the armours, to me, it is not beyond the realms of possibility the phrase could have older origins (from both an archer and knights perspective). Obviously this is just me 'drawing' my own conclusion though! Looking forward to Arrows Vs Armour III with the fleet of armoured horsemen and many, many rows of archers 🤣
One thing I've been curious about for a while that sadly wasn't addressed. We've seen that an arrow from a heavy warbow can punch through mail and gambeson with lethal force. Knowing this, the next question to answer is: How light could a bow be while still posing a credible threat to a knight? Would a 50#-60# hunting bow be able to penetrate mail with a lucky shot at close range? I've played around a bit with my homemade 1.6mm fully flattened round-riveted mild steel mail and my 47# longbow, but until I can forge bodkin arrowheads to a standard worth fitting to my good arrow shafts, I'm stuck with field points. So far, I've managed to bend individual links but not penetrate my mail, so I wouldn't be surprised if a 60# longbow with proper heads would go through.
A very interesting question and one we partially addressed in one of the foundation films for AvA2. Basically the plate will be pretty much invulnerable to lower poundage bows, but the mail will remain vulnerable and I have put arrows through fairly decent mail from a 70lbs
@@tods_workshop would it not contradict the conclusion of the films which is: "Plate is most of the times invulnerable to arrows"? Please show me where I am getting it wrong.
@russellnesbitt7139 The issue here is the arrowhead. For chainmail and gambeson, there is particulary one very effective arrowhead. Bodkin - Needle type. They are very vulnerable to this type of arrowhead, and I would guess, very little force is needed. I would guess 60lbs wound be enough to pierce gambeson and chainmail , with needle bodkin
@@warrax111 Tod did a video on the arrow head types vs flexible armor; *mail* is vulnerable to the needle bodkin, but gambesons actually resist it significantly. A flesh-cutting head that looks more like it's meant for hunting went through gambeson far more easily than the blunt/"armor "piercing"" or needle bodkin.
@@5peciesunkn0wn Type 16 head and hunting one. Yes, for fiber materials, this head is even more effective than needle bodkin. But when we're speaking about combination of chainmail, and underneath laying gambeson, then my guess is needle will be more effective overall.
With regards to the question regarding horse armour, it will be interesting if we can factor in speed of target and target momentum when firing arrows and see if it makes any difference. It will be great to have something like a moving target which we typically use in military firing range to simulate enemies running and walking to test the difference between hitting a walking, running, and charging (on horseback) target.
If you consider that the armoured Knights were the first tanks, even in the comparatively recent Gulf wars, tanks were killed by a single hit in the right place. So it doesn't matter how thick or heavy the armour is, something will come along that can penetrate it.
Well good luck lol. The French knights and heavy Infantry still made it to the English lines. It was English knights and heavy Infantry that stopped them.
Given how the arrows exploded and did not pass much energy thru the plate, I'd guess very specific and dense bullets might do anything. Lead bullets would deform, most stones would shatter, the rock fragments might get into the eyes, etc but there would be far fewer severely disabling mortal hits as all the weak points the arrows penetrated (vistor, maile, thinner arms) would be less succeptible to sling bullets.
I love that you mentioned the jupon again in the starter film, a favourite piece of equipment of mine. I find it very interesting because that fine dust and fragmentation from arrow impacts must have been irritating or in some cases even debilitating to a man at arms under fire from arrows, a sort of medieval suppressive fire analogous to that of modern machine guns. As shown in your films the jupon contains that spalling from impacts, minimizing debris that would have been scattered. I imagine it acting sort of like a medieval flak jacket, only meant to protect from smaller fragmentation. I wonder how much effect the leather/wool outer lining on a large plate brigandine would have on incoming arrows that were deflected by the underlying plate. Thanks for taking us along for the ride the last few years Tod, its been an intriguing journey so far.
Toby sat there in a chair not designed for that style of dress, some good questions including from a TH-camr I know takes part in all sorts of armoured stuff, but a LOT heavier (Hi Drach). I would love to see more on the theme as I love the practical archaeology you and the guys do Tod. The films were superbly put together, genuinely eye opening and a great piece of practical research.
Appreciate the panel discussion, most of the questions were decent as well. My biggest question for any 3rd project is related to the volume of arrows- not just the accuracy of a single archer but shooting as a group vs a moving target, even if the target is moving relatively slowly such as an infantry block walking forward. Joe said he had a roughly 1 in 3 at worse chance of hitting a man-size target at 100 yards. VS a static target situation I completely take him at his word. If a competent archer could hit 30% of the time and then roughly 1/5 arrows do 'some' type of damage to areas of maile or from lucky hits in gaps or particularly weak sections of plate such as on the arms, that would give a best case scenario at 100 yards being for every 1,000 arrows, 60 would do some damage. Considering there could be a five thousand archers within 100 yards of an infantry line of 6,400 men that is spread over an area of 1,600 yards by 800 yards. Then 5,000 archers loosing 1 arrow every 10 seconds have a volume of arrows of 150,000 over 5 minutes with roughly 9,000 'hits' in the best case scenario at 100 yards (unmoving target, no stress of battle). 9,000 hits is a very large number, even if we say archers were 1/10th as effective as the 'best' case scenario in a real battle with moving men and stress, if it takes an advancing line of infantry to cross 500 yards at 90 yards a minute walking speed roughly 6 minutes and worst case is 180 hits per minute at 100 yards, then the real question is how much does an archer's effective hit rate increase as the range decreases? If the effective hit rate goes up by 10% per 20 yards, that would be approx 828 casualties of varying severity to close within 20 yards where the men-at-arms would be taking over the fight for the most part unless it was a setup where the archers had enfilade and could keep loosing arrows into the rear ranks. 828+ wounds of varying severity on 6,400 men in 6 minutes is devastating despite archers being unable to pierce plate armor at almost any range without an extremely lucky visor hit or vs some very weak section of poorly made plate. Then if only half those 'hits' were fully disabling, that leaves about 6,000 stressed, more tired than normal (having to keep visor closed on the advance) French men-at-arms with some bearing minor wounds to face 800 or so English men-at-arms supported by a couple thousand archers acting as light infantry in a vicious melee. Considering the English were careful to ensure the length of their line was short, if only 1,200 of the remaining 6,000 French men-at-arms could face the 800 English at any given time + some hundred archers in support as light infantry, it basically reduces a high percentage win for the more numerous advancing infantry to something closer to parity. Still requires the English to hold the line and the French morale to collapse but such things do happen against the apparent odds in many historical battles. Where the English archers suffered severe defeats they were run-down by cavalry who caught them on the march or unable to setup on top of a muddy ridge or place any ditches/trenches/stakes to slow the enemy infantry advance. That suggests time and volume of arrows were essential to the success of English tactics hence the increasing proportion of archers in English armies and the adoption of smaller armies and fortified positions to lure a more numerous enemy to attack what seems to be a vulnerable target. When the French learned not to attack directly, spent more time maneuvering, and ensured more coordinated command struture, the English armies began to lose more battles and field fewer archers.
As with swords Im sure armour was of varied quality and susceptible to wear and tear given how it was stored and used. The rash of arrows would be similar I suppose in the use of muskets which were use in volley fire to increase their effect.
And there was a lot of low quality armor with fake markings from renowned armor makers around at the time (similar to the fake Ulfberht swords of the Viking age)
@@Segalmed Doesn't matter what time period, always gonna be knock-offs marketed as the real thing lol. Imagine how mad some french knight would be when he discovers the plate armor made by Monsuire Armorua Smithaue he bought for "a great deal" was actually low quality trash made by the guy who sold it to him from the next door blacksmith's "to be melted down and reforged" bin.
These films are so uniquely special. It's fantastic watching experts in different fields collaborate. This Q+A felt like a great way to wrap up the series. Can't wait to see what projects come next!
Regarding long-range archery, any thoughts on the battle of Towton (1461), where one side's archers had a significant range advantage as they were shooting downwind?
shields are a lot more effective at longer range too , because the angle of incidence for the entire army is within the coverage of the shield. At closer range, the shield user can't cover against the entire army because the shield isn't going to be wide enough to do so.
Testing against horse armour would be different in one aspect: the range of the shots. The existing Arrows vs. Armour tests were shot in a direct fire role. If one imagines French knights riding against the English archers at Crecy, I imagine the archers using long-range indirect fire. This changes several things: the geometry (angles), and the energy of the arrow on impact.
Suggestion: Arrows vs Armour 3 might not be about arrows. We have a lot of history of lances piercing armour and the arms-race between lance technology and the armour between the two of them. Would it be possible to test lances against the chest armour of different time period? We've seen: Single and double maille vs what was essentially a longer spear, with or without the Arrette de Lance rondel. The "hanging of a steel plate" on top of your maille The stiffly padded/quilted gambeson on top of one or two layers of maille to act more as a breastplate than the Jupon did later We've seen coats of plates with lung-plates Banded coats of plates Coats of plates reinforced with an extra steel plate on top The segmented globose breastplates such as the Churburg S18 And eventually the single-piece and placcart cuirasses, alongside brigandines (And the accounts of knights arguing about wether a brigandine is good enough to take a lance). Then there are the lances that followed along in all of this, the long spear, the long spear with the arrette rondel, the small tree (very big spear) and eventually all the way up to the heavy lance with the lance rest, the rondel at the back etc. and STILL supposedly being able to punch through cuirasses. What stuff is actually proof against a lance of its time, how much is "good enough" and generally, what does it actually look like as a cuirass or layers of maille gets run through by a lance?
Have you thought about the behind armour blunt trauma? With modern armour stopping the round is not only thing to worry about, there has to be a way of dissipating the energy before it interacts with the body. This can be measured using a certain grade of plastercine which show how far the plate moves into the target, however this is not the whole story as it is the acceleration of the plate not just the distance.
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50:18 Well that is a familiar voice :) Thank you for uploading this.
There was a fantastic film on armour, armour piercing projectiles in the Seventies. For Open University, I think. From bows and bodkins right up to, then modern tank weapons.
I love how people ask a dude that is due for jousting if arrows knock you off saddle only for Toby to calmy explain that it may not. O always enjoy his atititude towards teaching.
I'm not hugely knowledgeable on my history (other than to wind up a couple of French friends lol) but I found the entire series of videos really interesting and, although it could never have said "this definitely happened", I felt it managed to put many of the myths and legends to bed. Thank you for all the videos and I hope there will be future similar videos.
Concerning arrow types, ranges and other equipment questions. I've read that the Mongol horse archers during the incursion of the Golden Horde typically each carried at least 2 bows, often 3 with each having a specific purpose. Likewise they carried different types of arrows. They had "flight arrows" and bows for distance, these were used for mass formations to harass or deny the enemy, they had their famous short composite bow with war arrows, and finally they had hunting arrows (and sometimes hunting bows) for sustaining themselves on the move. I would ask, why wouldn't the European armies have something similar? I'm sure there were flight arrows and hunting arrows among the English armies roaming France foraging off the land.
Please have a look into the fx outdoors chronograph. Would really like to see the speed of arrow you shoot at different ranges. Plus it will give you more data.
I absolutely appreciate the work time and finances that went into these films. An experience into the past for certain even if just a small portion) not just the sights but the sounds also (even that grim feeling of the arrows heading straight for the visor cam) . What you have presented to us all is what I hope to be the beginning of maybe a more accurate representation and depiction of war in the realm of modern cinema especially films pertaining to historical events. Thank you . Subscriber earned.
it'd be interesting aswell to put some shockwatches under the armor just to find out how much force is going through. For anything with projectiles a labradar would be a serious upgrade to get data. the widespread used fps meters only do starting velocity while the labradar shows you the speed from start to impact. might be cheaper in the long run since you stand next to it rather then shoot through it.
I'd be interested to see crossbows vs arrows vs armour. Comparing the difference between crossbows and arrows as part of it. I've always wanted a fuller explanation as to why England opted for bows when everyone else seemed to favour crossbows. Presumably the extreme training demands on Joe is part of it, but I've never known why bows might be better to warrant that type of large societal change.
Composite crossbows in particular are going to be pretty expensive, and troublesome in damp climate. While some passable bow from wytch elm or yew is going to be cheap weapon, so if one wanted pool of archers' from lower classes practices regularly, it was probably more realistic. Then again, we have sources about very large contingents of plebeian crossbowmen in continental armies, but it doesn't seem like those were particularly effective most of the time. Proffesionals, like Genoese, were paid very well, which is probably one of the reasons, why French nobility was greatly angered when they completely failed at Crecy, whatever was the reason.
This was great to listen to, especially about the history of different aspects of armies, their composition and the individual kit that each soldier may have had.. Good questions asked by the audience as well.
I love how Tobi Capwell is just sitting there in armor like he's not sitting there in armor.
He is very much sitting like he is in armour :D he is moving like the batman of burton, like we are all in armour, economy of energy
I didn't even notice that he was sitting in armor! Typical Capwell! Always looking for an opportunity to sneak a little armor into the most casual situations.
Man's gotta do what man's gotta do 😅
Literally a time clash as when we finished he had to be sitting on a horse . Looked cool though as ever
He’s the king of cool!
Wait Tod's last name isn't Workshop 😂
Almost like he doesn't start every video by telling you his name and last name 😂
Properly paranoid - do we know each other? Yes Tod is just a nick name, but one that everyone bar my mother has called me since 13
@@tods_workshop wait you're not even Tod? Everything is a lie!
😂😂
I legit thought it was Cutler. Oh this is Tod Cutler for Tod's Workshop
I was talking with someone last week who is currently attending university in the Czech Republic (not sure which one), and he told me that the history department considers the Arrows vs Armour series to be a valid source to cite in academic papers. You love to see it!
British shed engineering wins yet again
Why wouldnt it be? Science isnt defined by being done at university, but by being transparent about your sources and giving reasonable conclusions that others can follow and build on. Theres quite a few people on youtube i would quote if I went into those very specific niches, although not as many on an appropiately scientific level as I'd like, even only for entertainment purposes.
I did think that people participated in this project is already having enough material to write an essay on their own
@@badluckbrian46academics is very snobby and petty at times, so it’s refreshing to see his department is open thinking enough to accept such a new form of study. I could also see an argument that as it’s not officially; written up, published, or peer reviewed it may not be appropriate for university level work.
Hopefully the Arrows vs Armour and other testing done by Tod and Co gets some traction in the wider community interested in this type of archeology. Its fine if people have their 'what ifs' about certain tests, but for the most part the tests that were done are quite robust and consistent, even if its not meeting people's expectations and that's something a lot of people who don't come from a scientific background struggle with. Sometimes the stats and the experiment results aren't going to replicate a fault or incident.
But why I appreciate this series of tests was that prior to these actual tests, there was practically nothing when it came to weapons and armour tests. There was some rubbish from mainstream tv channels using blunt swords, tin plate armour and the internet full of weird dudes chopping plastic water bottles and plastic-latex zombie heads with rubbish chinese and indian swords. So however people like/dislike the results or methods, these videos are a real tipping point in displaying actual results as real as you can practically get.
Thank you and yes it has been noticed by some people and now forms part of the teaching curriculum on some college courses which is very gratifying
@@tods_workshop Having you videos in college courses is quite the feather in your cap, congratulations.
Well said 👍👍
The best thing science can do is eliminate the false data more than confirm the positive data. In these tests I think showing plate can stop an arrow, do we know the exact numbers? no, but we do know the false idea that a plate cutter can gut a knight through his breastplate is truly dead false information. We still need to know at what level CAN an arrow penetrate plate to a degree able to harm the knight, the arm damage is a great clue and it hints that it is certainly possible for good arrows to penetrate thin armour at some point, but no breast plate is ever going to be that thin without some kind of serious compromise that essentially negates it as armour anyways.
Removing these false data points is wildly valuable for then removing yet more data points later, as science goes this is a remarkable first step towards refining our answers to these questions truthfully and in a way that the general public can grasp easily and with great familiarity.
There are a number of "us" that do similar tests with experimental archeology. I presume many were inspired by Tod like myself.
I have a small TH-cam channel that conducts tests with lighter Warbows 75-105lbs against lighter types of armor and shields as well as chrono tests to determine the energy these bows produce with authentic medieval arrows.
www.youtube.com/@thefatefulforce8887/videos
The real question post-event is -- how did Tobi do in the joust?!
we need to see a video of it :D
Zx c z c😮😅
Dv'7😢xx😢Z z z
He died.
I still love how Joe showed he could immediately kill a knight with his first arrow perfectly slipping under the plate and into the mail. Then he was like "okay, I'll play your game now". What an absolute beast.
A single (lucky) shot could kill you. Just imagine being in the front rank and being hit by 5 of them every second.
If we assume that the longbow was really a skirmish type weapon, then all you need to do is disrupt the front rank advance and that would cause the whole formation to fragment. It would be complete chaos.
@@he1ar1 'Skirmish type weapon' or backbone of the English medieval army...
@@capturedflame Literally don't understand what you are trying to say. Try punctuation maybe
Having a few thousand guys like Joe Gibbs shooting at you makes you regretting choises you made. Plate mail or not.
Joe is amazing with that bow.
hopefully some graduate student somewhere saw this and thought, 'well Todd may not be interested in a doctoral thesis, but I'm doing one anyway; maybe I'll just film it for these folks...'
Absolutely Loved this Tod, you and everyone worked so hard on this and did a fantastic job
Thanks so much
This is absolute pro level quality, start to finish.
There is a difference between a go pro & a series of slow motion cameras on trolleys that professional studios didn't bring, or the difference between a tape measure & the nifty impact direction, duration & force sensors that a professional laboratory again didn't bring. (A difference I don't begrudge them one bit - I'm thankful that they are videoing and taking notes at all while they have their fun)
For what it is, and it's funding level, it's unbelievably good. (both for the video presentation, and the scientific rigor)
So happy to been a contributor to avsa2 but frankly just as happy to see Tod rather go play with his trebuchet than doing an avsa3! 🥰 But wait...hang on... Why not: Trebuchet vs armour?!!! 😁
Thank you- we were just in awe of peoples support
Well first you would have to hit the armour with a trebuchet!
@@tods_workshop You're so welcome! After avsa you guys were so contagiously exited so we all just couldn't help ourselves from chipping in! 🥰😀👍 I hear you when you expressing the labour that went with the project though so I totally understand that avsa3 wont be happening any time soon...😉 That said: I really looking forward to you and/or the other guys coming up with new content, in whatever form that may be! 💪 Best wishes from Sweden! //☀️😊🇸🇪
Brilliant idea!!!
People often think of a weapon as needing to kill an opponent to be effective but never think of a weapon's ability to disable the opponent's ability to fight. If an arrow causes an opponent to back out because of fear, injury, or binding armor joints then the arrow has as good as killed that opponent. This likely has just as much psychological effect on the opponent's allies as if he had also been killed.
There are accounts of armies routing not because of deaths but because people doing things that aren't expected or interpreted wrongly. Such as if a commander rides from one formation to another to gives orders is interpreted as fleeing because of cowardice then a whole formation can quickly crumble. For when a few start to flee then so do the many.
I'd like to add that the arrows hitting the arms may not have been disabling, but would have impeded range of motion. That alone might have discouraged advancing. Also, the thighs of most knights would have been less all-around protected due to riding.
Napoleon said, "In war, the moral is to the physical as ten to one." (morale?)
@@brianj.841 Glad you touched on that of which I left out. Even if the arrows don't kill anybody, but rather only restrict movements, that is an army of soldiers who cannot fight at 100% efficiency. But to a degree this can also be classified under being disabled since they are not completely able bodied despite still choosing to fight at a disadvantage.
@@AndrewTheFrank Add on to that note. The effect of forcing a formation to move, to lower their visors and start heating up, making them possibly move faster or slower than their commander wants, make them hold their shields up wearing them down that tiny bit more before the fight, even something as simple as forcing the knights to fall back for water instead of having water boys come to them... that is more walking, less fighting, more energy spent doing something useless to the goal of advancing the flag. An extra 20 minutes of your men moving while mine don't have to is 20 minutes more energy my men have in advantage now.
@@littlekong7685 For sure. Not to mention, if many soldiers don't have back plates, that means once the harassing arrows start to fly soldiers can't turn their backs to the enemy. Everything from that point on has to be done looking one direction. Likely why it forced attacks. It must have gotten tiring real fast to have to stay faced a certain direction for protection.
I used to be a French warrior until I took an arrow to the knee.
Wait, was that Drachinifel asking the 2nd to last question? Felt like a very familiar voice from the UK historical TH-cam circle.
Great job with the panel everyone and I hope that I'll be able to make it to the festival myself next year as it seems like a blast for history nerds.
Yes it was Drach and in fact he came down for the three filming days and was a massive sponsor of the films - thanks Drach!
Yeah... I was like... HEYYYY I know that Voice... That's DRACH
you could also see Drach in one of the films in the backround helping to set something up :)
i thought a different youtube video started playing for a sec.
Drach just appears where he is needed. It just happens.
"You are still, as a man in armor, aware of every time you are hit,".... says the guy actually in armor who has been jousting :)
12:54 The first thing I did while watching the original Arrows vs Armour 2 video was put myself in the place of that guy, and man... those guys must have had balls of steel to march forward into that, as well as a tremendous amount of faith in God, I would wager.
love how at 50:05 I could recognize Drachinifel just by his voice
Ditto!
Hearing Drachinifel at 50:05 was a pleasant surprise. I guess his historical interests extend beyond naval matters
Thank you! I knew I recognized the voice but couldn't remember who it actually was.
I can't wait to see the leather bound shield in action.
They did a tremendous job on this, which gave us some things we expected to be the case, and disproved others.
Unsurprisingly, armour works. It worked really, really well, but that's not to say a knight was invulnerable.
Massed volley fire increases the chance that an arrow will find a soft spot, and that must have been terrifying. To have arrows skipping off your chest and head, splintering around you, when all the time you're just waiting for one to miss the plate and hit the mail or find some gap will have had a pretty big psychological effect even before a knight reaches melee range to start fighting. To make it worse, arrows that deflect off your own guys might end up coming your way from awkward angles. We saw a number of arrows skip off the armour with quite a lot of momentum left in them, but now with shredded tips of splinters.
Yeah, just a thoroughly fine job all round.
Add in the fact that the march in was just as important as the charge to melee. A disciplined march conserves energy, maintains shield lines so there is no one racing to refill a gap, and keeps units in cohesive blocks that avoid weak gaps between them. But a hail of arrows raining down has to make a soldier sweat, maybe walk a little faster, maybe start the charge a little further back, maybe start the charge a little later because they want that shield up a little bit longer. All of these can have knock on effects in the larger fight and mean that one unit is now broken where it might have remained strong before, that one gap can be exploited, that one soldier gives up the fight that much sooner, etc.
@@littlekong7685 Absolutely. Even when it's not killing or wounding men, a constant arrow barrage must have put enormous pressure on an advancing force. Even with a raised shield, that thing is going to have arrows sticking in it very quickly. I don't know if you've seen it, but Tod did some testing with his crossbow against a heater shield. Not only did the arrows easily stick in it, several went through, and even through the mail on the other side.
In no time at all that shield becomes pretty useless for melee combat, so by the time you get to the enemy lines, your armour's damaged, your shield is clumsy, you may be injured, guys around you will definitely have been injured, and your heart's beating our of your chest.
Are you guys going to be at any other events over the summer? Gutted to have missed this. Would love to hear more from all of you guys! Please keep on making these really great films!
Sadly not as a group, but individually we are generally doing something
@@tods_workshop any chance next time you give us a shoutout in the channel Tod? I missed it as well :(
@@30035XD I am sure he did. It was mailing/video/shorts ... I cant remember and dont have time to look now.
I'm so sorry I couldn't make it to the festival and very glad you managed to record it all. As a bonus the introductory clip is now a great way for me to spread your work!
I think the big question has to be how confident would Joe be, with a few similar skilled and armed mates, to take out a fully armoured knight marching with intent towards them? They would of course get a big payout if they could.
That would have been a great question
As much as I love watching Joe Gibbs shoot a bow what are the chances of getting a “Bolts vs Armour”? I’d love to see how a heavy poundage crossbow goes against plate.
If all of the films were packaged together on a DVD, I would buy it.
My god, Toby's blinged out.
Tod you just reminded me of at least three Jousters at renaissance festivals that were injured when their opponents lance shattered and a piece came through the eye slit lodging in the brain. No one died but it seems that the eye slits can "carve" down a arrow shaft or splinter of a lance in such a way that it can hit the human inside.
Well that is unfixable problem with helmets, until armored glass became a thing. Even bullets and early tank visors (similar to those on helmets) suffered same way.
@@alexturnbackthearmy1907 Yep I was more pointing out the way the arrow stuck into the helmet eye slit was similar to what was happening in modern times with lance fragments. I am guessing it is the design of the eye slits that is doing it. The more times change.....
Half the questions seemed to basically be "Why couldn't you have made this 10 times more difficult and expensive to do?" I would be interested in a comparison of composite (Mongel) bow vs the armor it faced.
Apart from few technicalities composite bow should perform just the same. My point is, bow just shoots arrows and real issue is what arrows, what distance, what poundage of the bow, what are you shooting. That is why Todd used crossbow to test certain things, because type of bow used by people of the past is rather a techno-cultural strive to get strong/good shooting device. At the end of the day all bows are pretty identical in how they propel the arrow. Main difference is the construction, not effect.
A mongol bow and arrows would perform basically the same. I would be more interested in Manchu archery kit, as their bows store about 40% more energy for a given draw weight compared to any other historical bow that I'm aware of, and their arrows had a long tang with rayskin reinforcement which may prevent them from breaking when hitting plate armor. Since the breakage absorbing energy is what is preventing penetration in these tests (as demonstrated in the lockdown longbow brigandine video, they can go through similar plate thickness if the armor is more flexible), that may be enough to penetrate. It wouldn't surprise me, as they kept using their bows alongside firearms long after pretty much everyone else with firearms had stopped using archery in warfare.
Mongols faced lamella & mail mostly, plus unarmoured too. The European knights they defeated with ease in the 1220-40s were easily baited into traps where they'd get surrounded & shot to pieces. Mongol bows would be very similar in draw weights to HYW English longbows, most would be at least as skilled shooters having shot bows starting at age 3(!!!!), practiced most days, competed with mates & family plus reguylarly used their skills to hunt, protect herds fom wild animals, bandits & enemies. All from horseback, having learnt to ride from age 2. So expert horsemen as well. Mongols also made sure they carried loads of arrows plus plenty in the baggage train too.
@@2bingtim Mongol bows were probably lower in draw weight, since they fought mounted. Even places where many archers often used 150# or more on foot typically used more like 80-120# on horseback.
@@alexanderflack566 Not entirely sure how accurate it is now, but I recall that the mongol bows were comparable to european warbows due to stone rings on their thumbs taking some of the force of drawing the bow on horseback.
The last question is one of my favorite put to the panel. I have to say seeing swords routinely piercing steel plate armor (yes, Game of Throne I am looking at you) bothers me on a core level SO much that it takes me out of the moment completely. AvA2 is such a tremendous piece of archeology I am so very proud to have been able to donate to it and would GLADLY do so again! The work that you are doing has and continues to elevate our understanding of history.
Thank you lads! Wonderful research.
You guys are bascially the Top Gear crew of medieval arms , armour and history. And my god I dig it!.
Since this is supposed to be a recreation of sorts of the Battle of Agincourt it will be necessary to bear in mind what actually happened there. 1st: the French did attempt a cavalry action initially but the very muddy nature of the ground bogged it down and their horses did receive a lot of wounds. So they dismounted and went on foot. 2nd: the first wave of French knights reached the English lines and the English held their ground until the second wave of French pushed into the back of their first and weight of numbers began to move the English out of their prepared defensive position. 3rd: this is the most important fact. The French were defeated when the longbowmen put down their bows and engaged them in melee combat from the flanks. This is the most important fact because it shows that it wasn't the arrows that defeated the French knights but being enveloped on the flanks in hand to hand combat. This also shows that the arrows couldn't have been that effective against the armor, which is what Tod et. al. showed in their video. That is why Henry V praised the valor of his archers, something he wouldn't have done if they had defeated the enemy with arrows.
This last fact is something that many don't understand about the battle of Agincourt. We always hear the longbowmen were the ones that won the battle and assume that it must have been their archery that did it when in fact it wasn't. The longbowmen were indeed responsible for the victory but it wasn't the bow itself.
Excellent points!
Archers winning battle in melee is far more cooler then winning it with arrows, even if their archery still was incredible. Its straight up downplaying.
I think where this falls flat is that if a weapon isn't effective you simply wouldn't use it, let alone equip the majority of the Army with it.
The video showed it would go through mail and thinner parts of plate (like the arms).
Also, not everyone would be wearing the top plate armour. So certain individuals would be a lot more vulnerable.
@@Subtleknife12367 It doesn't fall flat. it is the actual course of events that took place. It isn't a supposition on my part but what occurred. The most cursory study of the battle will show you these facts. Do a bit of research before posting what you believe may have happened when it goes against what really happened.
I am a simple man and I came here to praise Mike.
Mike is amazing and massively talented across so many disciplines and luckily is involved in both my channel and the plotting and thinking for all the AvA films. An unsung hero
Thanks 😅
54:00 - a review of a film by history specialists and a stuntman with it taking an hour for one minute of the film's screen time? That's my kind of scale! :D Definitely a must watch.
We ended up cutting the whole thing down to around 20 mins and you can find it on the channel about 18 months ago
@@tods_workshop Oh, thanks! Missed it somehow. Still think that longer formats for detailed reviews (sidetracks and ramblings included :D) are quite acceptable. Personally I have no problems with youtube videos which have couple hours runtime.
When sailing into unknown waters, even general directions can be extremely helpful.
I’ve done the javelin with the string before, you get greater distance if you hold it with your hand and do the throwing with the string, great video!!
The tests did their job. Nobody was trying to paint the whole picture, but you did "zoom'n'enhance" a few finer points quite nicely. My fav was when y'all had that "Aha!" moment about the breastplate fiddly bits protecting the neck and eyes. Excellent work gentlemen.
Very entertaining and informative. One area I would like explored would be the actual state of some of the armour. Would Knights and men at arms be wearing freshly made armour of would they be years old and repaired. Would metal fatigue be a contributing factor to defeating it.
I would like to imagine that a lot of the armour were hand-me-downs since it is quite expensive and that only the rich had new armour made
I'm fairly sure a lot of it would have been handed down and probably even recovered from previous battles, no point leaving a perfectly good bit of armour to go rusty in a field just because its previous owner didn't put it to good use. As for the repaired damage affecting the structural characteristics it would depend on the quality of the repair I guess (ie. was the dent just pushed out or was it properly reshaped and heat treated?). If it was just pushed out there would definitely be thinner and softer spots. I've done some amateur panel beating on fenders and they're noticeably weaker where the crease or dent was
The armies will have standards of course, no soldier is going to be allowed up with holes in his plate, but how good those holes were filled is probably a good question.
The answer is ultimately “it depends”. If you’re a knights, you’d normally also have the money to buy your own harness. A man-at-arms might not have that luxury.
Many good questions and honest answers here. So glad to see this Band of 5 Brothers facing the shots of the audience, and so good to see the result: an obvious win - win 😊
I feel it notable that even with the scrunching up of chain mail at the armpits caused when you draw your arms as close as you can to the body, which knights were known to do when under arrow fire, they still developed the rondel as an armpit defense.
I kinda wish someone like the Discovery channel would show some interest in this and commision a series so you could test a lot more types of armour vs weapons from different periods. Even have more archers to test things like volleys and so on.
Maybe not the History channel as they would probably end up throwing Hitler and Aliens into the mix.
Quite
@tods_workshop Alien Arrows vs Hitler in Armour anyone?
@@lovablesnowman Obviously it should be Alien Arrows vs MechaHitler.
Is that Drac at 50:13 hmmm? Thought I was in drydock for a second..
I get so excited every time I see a video from you in my sub list. I hope you keep on making these for as long as you can.
I love how he says it's not an absolute on anything because they where not there.
29:34 a time period which would be very interesting to test on, which from my understanding really hasn't been really touched on much. Is the ancient/antiquity period, bronze, laminar, etc vs period arrows and ranged weapons, be it ancient Greek, Roman, Germanic, Celtic, Egyptian or whatever. Of course shields where very important in these periods especially for protection from ranged weapons, but would still be interested to test the body armor in the event an arrow or other ranged weapon missed the shield and hit the warrior. Or perhaps an other test would be also very interesting is going into various types of shields vs period ranged weapons and see how they fared.
Absolutely love this type of experiment!! Great job all! Do more!
Toby looks so uncomfortable in his armor 😂 stunning, but uncomfortable.
I'm sure sitting down in a normal chair in a breastplate isn't super comfortable. :) helps your posture though!
The golden chainmail crutch is epic... :D
I noticed his golden crutch too. Quite a look. But seriously, it is simply that it is designed for standing or sitting upright, not lying back in a lounge chair
@@tods_workshop Hard not to notice a shiny golden crutch. But I am happy to know his crown jewels are well protected...
I imagine there is a mental and physical preparedness , a certain mindset to compete in a joust .... which isn't a game of ping pong by the way . So for Toby to answer questions right before a jousting session is quite unusual.
A group of passionate professionals fielding questions and sharing their knowledge and experience. Great watch, thank you for sharing!
Rare to see Dr. Capwell in such old fashioned armor. Most pictures of him in armor I’ve seen are a century or two newer in style.
I’d still love to see (Hussite) Handgonne vs. Armor someday. Hussite Wars were not that long after Agincourt, and the armor penetration ability of early gonnes is just as, if not more, mythical. I know Jason Kingsley had a pair of users on his channel a few time.
The channel cap and ball has a good video on black powder guns vs lamellar armor. It's a bit more localized to the firearms and armor encounters seen in central and eastern Europe but it's great to watch.
@@Kazuhiroaka Lamellar armor is some of the coolest looking armor imo.
I'd love to see a future arrows vs armour involving the longer range arrows mentioned towards the end, i think it would be interesting to shine some light on the skirmishing, pre-battle phases of medieval warfare.
You guys are fantastic. Well done for what you do.
Amazing! Thank you ALL!
Loved the work you guys have done on this project.
It's been very interesting to see the different results 😊
Glad you enjoyed it
30:45 I think asking joe to shoot at armor while at castle wall height? Possibility replicating a castle under seige senario?
stopped by your stall at the Tewksbury festival. Loved the blades you had on display :P
38:50 About the shown lack of efficacy it should be mentioned that one of the shots went through the eye slit of the knight. There is quite a good chance that such shot would deadly and if not deadly it would debilitating. Even lesser shots could cause splinter hitting the eyes reducing the knights ability to fight effectively.
And don't forget those hitting the arms, even the non-penetrating ones can lock up or stiffen the joints. All those things reduce effectivenes giving your frontline an easyer job.
The most important part is that not everyone had full armor. Your knights and men-at-arms may be able to walk through arrows relatively unscathed, but generally speaking, 80% of your army is going to be less armored.
@@treseniethe majority of casualties inflicted at agicourte were indeed inflicted by the men at arms.
2 minutes into this and I am so looking forward to wacthing it all... thanks!
Personally I love how you have recreated the best you can, and come to conclusions, and clearly state 'this is what we think based off these tests (amongst other evidence)', no mention of stating fact, which to me is something vital with a lot of historical discovery. The same way that dinosaurs could have had bright pink skin, or just because Homer wrote it, does not mean it was ever true. So I absolutely applaud all your efforts in this regard, this kind of open research is precious.
While you were answering the demanding questions of your audience and volume of arrows was brought up, it got me thinking could that be where the phrase 'luck of the draw' originates, though I did a quick Google search which said it came from card games in America. After seeing the damage to the armours, to me, it is not beyond the realms of possibility the phrase could have older origins (from both an archer and knights perspective). Obviously this is just me 'drawing' my own conclusion though!
Looking forward to Arrows Vs Armour III with the fleet of armoured horsemen and many, many rows of archers 🤣
Legendary work as always.
Please keep making high quality content like this!
When you love your work it isn't work anymore. Really enjoying yr vids and realism.😊
Great job guys. Love the channel.
One thing I've been curious about for a while that sadly wasn't addressed. We've seen that an arrow from a heavy warbow can punch through mail and gambeson with lethal force. Knowing this, the next question to answer is: How light could a bow be while still posing a credible threat to a knight? Would a 50#-60# hunting bow be able to penetrate mail with a lucky shot at close range? I've played around a bit with my homemade 1.6mm fully flattened round-riveted mild steel mail and my 47# longbow, but until I can forge bodkin arrowheads to a standard worth fitting to my good arrow shafts, I'm stuck with field points. So far, I've managed to bend individual links but not penetrate my mail, so I wouldn't be surprised if a 60# longbow with proper heads would go through.
A very interesting question and one we partially addressed in one of the foundation films for AvA2. Basically the plate will be pretty much invulnerable to lower poundage bows, but the mail will remain vulnerable and I have put arrows through fairly decent mail from a 70lbs
@@tods_workshop would it not contradict the conclusion of the films which is: "Plate is most of the times invulnerable to arrows"? Please show me where I am getting it wrong.
@russellnesbitt7139
The issue here is the arrowhead. For chainmail and gambeson, there is particulary one very effective arrowhead. Bodkin - Needle type. They are very vulnerable to this type of arrowhead, and I would guess, very little force is needed. I would guess 60lbs wound be enough to pierce gambeson and chainmail , with needle bodkin
@@warrax111 Tod did a video on the arrow head types vs flexible armor; *mail* is vulnerable to the needle bodkin, but gambesons actually resist it significantly. A flesh-cutting head that looks more like it's meant for hunting went through gambeson far more easily than the blunt/"armor "piercing"" or needle bodkin.
@@5peciesunkn0wn Type 16 head and hunting one. Yes, for fiber materials, this head is even more effective than needle bodkin.
But when we're speaking about combination of chainmail, and underneath laying gambeson, then my guess is needle will be more effective overall.
I could tell that was Mr Drach from the " Hello " alone.. 😊
Great questions and informative discussion, thank you.
Brilliant Q&A
With regards to the question regarding horse armour, it will be interesting if we can factor in speed of target and target momentum when firing arrows and see if it makes any difference. It will be great to have something like a moving target which we typically use in military firing range to simulate enemies running and walking to test the difference between hitting a walking, running, and charging (on horseback) target.
Well.... I was going to cut the grass this morning but oh look.. a new Tod, Toby and gang video!
If you consider that the armoured Knights were the first tanks, even in the comparatively recent Gulf wars, tanks were killed by a single hit in the right place. So it doesn't matter how thick or heavy the armour is, something will come along that can penetrate it.
Well good luck lol. The French knights and heavy Infantry still made it to the English lines. It was English knights and heavy Infantry that stopped them.
I’d love to see this series expanded to show Balearic slings as well. Wonder what a baseball sized stone does to the armored knight
Given how the arrows exploded and did not pass much energy thru the plate, I'd guess very specific and dense bullets might do anything. Lead bullets would deform, most stones would shatter, the rock fragments might get into the eyes, etc but there would be far fewer severely disabling mortal hits as all the weak points the arrows penetrated (vistor, maile, thinner arms) would be less succeptible to sling bullets.
I love that you mentioned the jupon again in the starter film, a favourite piece of equipment of mine. I find it very interesting because that fine dust and fragmentation from arrow impacts must have been irritating or in some cases even debilitating to a man at arms under fire from arrows, a sort of medieval suppressive fire analogous to that of modern machine guns. As shown in your films the jupon contains that spalling from impacts, minimizing debris that would have been scattered. I imagine it acting sort of like a medieval flak jacket, only meant to protect from smaller fragmentation.
I wonder how much effect the leather/wool outer lining on a large plate brigandine would have on incoming arrows that were deflected by the underlying plate.
Thanks for taking us along for the ride the last few years Tod, its been an intriguing journey so far.
this was fantastic thank you guys so much....great work
Toby sat there in a chair not designed for that style of dress, some good questions including from a TH-camr I know takes part in all sorts of armoured stuff, but a LOT heavier (Hi Drach). I would love to see more on the theme as I love the practical archaeology you and the guys do Tod.
The films were superbly put together, genuinely eye opening and a great piece of practical research.
A very good series, very interesting to watch. Thank you !
Appreciate the panel discussion, most of the questions were decent as well. My biggest question for any 3rd project is related to the volume of arrows- not just the accuracy of a single archer but shooting as a group vs a moving target, even if the target is moving relatively slowly such as an infantry block walking forward.
Joe said he had a roughly 1 in 3 at worse chance of hitting a man-size target at 100 yards. VS a static target situation I completely take him at his word. If a competent archer could hit 30% of the time and then roughly 1/5 arrows do 'some' type of damage to areas of maile or from lucky hits in gaps or particularly weak sections of plate such as on the arms, that would give a best case scenario at 100 yards being for every 1,000 arrows, 60 would do some damage. Considering there could be a five thousand archers within 100 yards of an infantry line of 6,400 men that is spread over an area of 1,600 yards by 800 yards.
Then 5,000 archers loosing 1 arrow every 10 seconds have a volume of arrows of 150,000 over 5 minutes with roughly 9,000 'hits' in the best case scenario at 100 yards (unmoving target, no stress of battle).
9,000 hits is a very large number, even if we say archers were 1/10th as effective as the 'best' case scenario in a real battle with moving men and stress, if it takes an advancing line of infantry to cross 500 yards at 90 yards a minute walking speed roughly 6 minutes and worst case is 180 hits per minute at 100 yards, then the real question is how much does an archer's effective hit rate increase as the range decreases?
If the effective hit rate goes up by 10% per 20 yards, that would be approx 828 casualties of varying severity to close within 20 yards where the men-at-arms would be taking over the fight for the most part unless it was a setup where the archers had enfilade and could keep loosing arrows into the rear ranks.
828+ wounds of varying severity on 6,400 men in 6 minutes is devastating despite archers being unable to pierce plate armor at almost any range without an extremely lucky visor hit or vs some very weak section of poorly made plate. Then if only half those 'hits' were fully disabling, that leaves about 6,000 stressed, more tired than normal (having to keep visor closed on the advance) French men-at-arms with some bearing minor wounds to face 800 or so English men-at-arms supported by a couple thousand archers acting as light infantry in a vicious melee.
Considering the English were careful to ensure the length of their line was short, if only 1,200 of the remaining 6,000 French men-at-arms could face the 800 English at any given time + some hundred archers in support as light infantry, it basically reduces a high percentage win for the more numerous advancing infantry to something closer to parity. Still requires the English to hold the line and the French morale to collapse but such things do happen against the apparent odds in many historical battles.
Where the English archers suffered severe defeats they were run-down by cavalry who caught them on the march or unable to setup on top of a muddy ridge or place any ditches/trenches/stakes to slow the enemy infantry advance. That suggests time and volume of arrows were essential to the success of English tactics hence the increasing proportion of archers in English armies and the adoption of smaller armies and fortified positions to lure a more numerous enemy to attack what seems to be a vulnerable target.
When the French learned not to attack directly, spent more time maneuvering, and ensured more coordinated command struture, the English armies began to lose more battles and field fewer archers.
Such a great wrap up of all these videos and films. Thank you gentlemen!
As with swords Im sure armour was of varied quality and susceptible to wear and tear given how it was stored and used. The rash of arrows would be similar I suppose in the use of muskets which were use in volley fire to increase their effect.
And there was a lot of low quality armor with fake markings from renowned armor makers around at the time (similar to the fake Ulfberht swords of the Viking age)
@@Segalmed Doesn't matter what time period, always gonna be knock-offs marketed as the real thing lol. Imagine how mad some french knight would be when he discovers the plate armor made by Monsuire Armorua Smithaue he bought for "a great deal" was actually low quality trash made by the guy who sold it to him from the next door blacksmith's "to be melted down and reforged" bin.
These films are so uniquely special. It's fantastic watching experts in different fields collaborate. This Q+A felt like a great way to wrap up the series. Can't wait to see what projects come next!
WOW... Loved it brother... Great job..
Regarding long-range archery, any thoughts on the battle of Towton (1461), where one side's archers had a significant range advantage as they were shooting downwind?
Yes - I made a film about about 18 months ago - check it out./. Quite surprising
shields are a lot more effective at longer range too , because the angle of incidence for the entire army is within the coverage of the shield. At closer range, the shield user can't cover against the entire army because the shield isn't going to be wide enough to do so.
Tobias flexing that gilded mail haubergeon hahaha
Testing against horse armour would be different in one aspect: the range of the shots. The existing Arrows vs. Armour tests were shot in a direct fire role. If one imagines French knights riding against the English archers at Crecy, I imagine the archers using long-range indirect fire. This changes several things: the geometry (angles), and the energy of the arrow on impact.
Thanks for sharing! This is great.
Is that Drach at the end? Awesome content as usual guys. Thanks.
Joe can just sit there and wallow in glory, after that first shot killing the king in longbow Vs trebuchet. Jobs a guddun
It looked like he was going to talk at one point but got cut off 19:58
@@russellfisher1303 unfortunately, it only looked like that. :D He probably only stretched to something (maybe fly or bug) on the leg or sandal. :)
@@russellfisher1303 but here! 25:20 you have some talk :)
@@warrax111 I was only speaking as an archer 😁
Suggestion: Arrows vs Armour 3 might not be about arrows.
We have a lot of history of lances piercing armour and the arms-race between lance technology and the armour between the two of them.
Would it be possible to test lances against the chest armour of different time period?
We've seen:
Single and double maille vs what was essentially a longer spear, with or without the Arrette de Lance rondel.
The "hanging of a steel plate" on top of your maille
The stiffly padded/quilted gambeson on top of one or two layers of maille to act more as a breastplate than the Jupon did later
We've seen coats of plates with lung-plates
Banded coats of plates
Coats of plates reinforced with an extra steel plate on top
The segmented globose breastplates such as the Churburg S18
And eventually the single-piece and placcart cuirasses, alongside brigandines (And the accounts of knights arguing about wether a brigandine is good enough to take a lance).
Then there are the lances that followed along in all of this, the long spear, the long spear with the arrette rondel, the small tree (very big spear) and eventually all the way up to the heavy lance with the lance rest, the rondel at the back etc. and STILL supposedly being able to punch through cuirasses.
What stuff is actually proof against a lance of its time, how much is "good enough" and generally, what does it actually look like as a cuirass or layers of maille gets run through by a lance?
OMG! Youv got the whole tribe out there
Have you thought about the behind armour blunt trauma? With modern armour stopping the round is not only thing to worry about, there has to be a way of dissipating the energy before it interacts with the body. This can be measured using a certain grade of plastercine which show how far the plate moves into the target, however this is not the whole story as it is the acceleration of the plate not just the distance.
50:18 Well that is a familiar voice :) Thank you for uploading this.
There was a fantastic film on armour, armour piercing projectiles in the Seventies. For Open University, I think. From bows and bodkins right up to, then modern tank weapons.
To the whole arrows and Armour team,Well done!
At 50:05 is that Drachinifel asking the question?
Sounds like it indeed!
Certainly was and a massive sponsor to the AvA2 films - Go Drach!
I love how people ask a dude that is due for jousting if arrows knock you off saddle only for Toby to calmy explain that it may not. O always enjoy his atititude towards teaching.
I'm not hugely knowledgeable on my history (other than to wind up a couple of French friends lol) but I found the entire series of videos really interesting and, although it could never have said "this definitely happened", I felt it managed to put many of the myths and legends to bed.
Thank you for all the videos and I hope there will be future similar videos.
Concerning arrow types, ranges and other equipment questions. I've read that the Mongol horse archers during the incursion of the Golden Horde typically each carried at least 2 bows, often 3 with each having a specific purpose. Likewise they carried different types of arrows. They had "flight arrows" and bows for distance, these were used for mass formations to harass or deny the enemy, they had their famous short composite bow with war arrows, and finally they had hunting arrows (and sometimes hunting bows) for sustaining themselves on the move. I would ask, why wouldn't the European armies have something similar? I'm sure there were flight arrows and hunting arrows among the English armies roaming France foraging off the land.
Please have a look into the fx outdoors chronograph. Would really like to see the speed of arrow you shoot at different ranges. Plus it will give you more data.
I absolutely appreciate the work time and finances that went into these films. An experience into the past for certain even if just a small portion) not just the sights but the sounds also (even that grim feeling of the arrows heading straight for the visor cam) . What you have presented to us all is what I hope to be the beginning of maybe a more accurate representation and depiction of war in the realm of modern cinema especially films pertaining to historical events. Thank you . Subscriber earned.
it'd be interesting aswell to put some shockwatches under the armor just to find out how much force is going through.
For anything with projectiles a labradar would be a serious upgrade to get data. the widespread used fps meters only do starting velocity while the labradar shows you the speed from start to impact. might be cheaper in the long run since you stand next to it rather then shoot through it.
Was that @Drachinifel at 50:00 minute mark?
I'd be interested to see crossbows vs arrows vs armour. Comparing the difference between crossbows and arrows as part of it. I've always wanted a fuller explanation as to why England opted for bows when everyone else seemed to favour crossbows. Presumably the extreme training demands on Joe is part of it, but I've never known why bows might be better to warrant that type of large societal change.
Composite crossbows in particular are going to be pretty expensive, and troublesome in damp climate. While some passable bow from wytch elm or yew is going to be cheap weapon, so if one wanted pool of archers' from lower classes practices regularly, it was probably more realistic.
Then again, we have sources about very large contingents of plebeian crossbowmen in continental armies, but it doesn't seem like those were particularly effective most of the time.
Proffesionals, like Genoese, were paid very well, which is probably one of the reasons, why French nobility was greatly angered when they completely failed at Crecy, whatever was the reason.
Rate of fire is a huge factor. Tod has a video where he goes through the different x-bow loading techniques. They are sloooooow compared to a longbow.
This was great to listen to, especially about the history of different aspects of armies, their composition and the individual kit that each soldier may have had.. Good questions asked by the audience as well.
Great work you all and laying the basis for further testing and experimentation on those topics!