The English Longbow

[al Roumi]

Getting hit by a baseball by a major league pitcher hurts. A blow to an unprotected head (if the pitcher was hurling their best stuff) could easily kill you. I would think that your helmet would be knocked back and it would make a nice sound, if it didn't penetrate.

But the point (aha) of an arrow is that the impact surface area is much smaller -hence the importance of different arrow-head types. So whatever impact force a baseball has (given its comparatively large contact area during impact), would equate to a greater impact force by an arrow head.

Different gemoetric profiles will have different penetration/trauma effects depending on the armour material -that much IS verfied by the test Raz provided. In theory, a needle bodkin would have the greatest force per contact area -but that alone is absolutely not enough to say it would have the best penetration, as the armour material (and how it reacts to different load types) is just as important as the arrow-head.

[CBR]

The needle bodkin should be seen as something used for flight arrows. AFAIK uncovered arrow heads of this type have so far been only unhardened iron, therefore as cheap as they come and meant more for quantity and range than penetration or damage.

[Brenus]

“That's why Agincourt turned out that way.” I would not be so sure of this. Azincourt turned out this way because the French Nobility just ignored the Plan.

The 3 main example of the success of the Long Bow are Crecy, Poitiers and Azincourt. Each time the English Kings or Generals turned the geography at their advantage At Crecy, the top of the hill and the ditches that will break the French charge, in Poitiers top of the hills and natural obstacles, in Azincout the bottleneck configuration and the mud, all this combined with a rain of arrows.
The French re-conquest will be to deny this advantage (in building castles), and then turned the Long Bow required tactic against the English by the use of artillery.
To be efficient, the Archers have to be able to shoot a massive amount of arrows, and they need to be gathered. So they became vulnerable to the slow but long-range canons. If they spread or are unprepared, they become easy picking for the French Cavalry (as in the battle of Patay, and use of artillery for Formigny, Castillon)…