Warbow FPS?

[Joec123able]

Squirrelslinger there's no freakin way any arrow is going to knock any one down in fact even the heaviest of warbow arrows from the heaviest bow wouldn't even nudge an average man now of course if you shot an unarmoured man with a blunt heavy arrow it would shatter bones that's for sure but wouldn't move him at all.

[Heffalump]

Squirrelslinger there's no freakin way any arrow is going to knock any one down in fact even the heaviest of warbow arrows from the heaviest bow wouldn't even nudge an average man now of course if you shot an unarmoured man with a blunt heavy arrow it would shatter bones that's for sure but wouldn't move him at all.

....so by your reckoning Joe, if we were to take a guy in full armour, he wouldn't even notice a series of 1/2" shafted rubber tipped blunts shot at him, they'd be like flies buzzing around outside his steel suit?........

http://youtu.be/_pxHnntyduw

Really? Have you ever even handled a half-inch hardwood shafted 32" long war arrow and considered the associated point loading if shot from a heavy bow? Kinetic energy anyone?!  LoL

[WillS]

There's also that brilliant 2 hour special from Mike Loades on medieval life, and he ropes in EWBS Joe Gibbs and mark Stretton to shoot warbows at a force meter which is covered with linen, chain and padding and the force punched into the meter is clearly enormous and easily enough to stagger an oncoming man, and quite probably drive him onto the floor if he wasn't bracing deliberately.

Plus the old Conquest videos on YouTube of the host wearing FULL plate harness being shot at by light Victorian bows and 3/8" arrows and he's not exactly walking through them like rain. 

You have to bear in mind that these bows were designed for one single purpose : to destroy a human being and punch through any armour available at the time.  They weren't designed to get close, or annoy (although the Bearing arrows were probably harrassing arrows rather than plate cutters) they were created to kill.

If you take a lump of wood (and half inch of solid wood with a whacking 40gram 4inch plate cutter on the end is BIG) and throw it out of a bow with a draw weight of 150lbs straight into somebody's chest, they're going to not only feel it, but it will be like pounding them on the chest with a baseball bat. 

[Atlatlista]

The idea isn't to stagger the guy though, that's counter-productive.  The idea is to penetrate the target clean through and leave a gaping wound channel behind.  Staggering someone is a result of the force being transmitted, not to the cutting of the wound channel, but to the surrounding body/armor.  This is energy lost for the purpose of the shot to begin with.  So, an ideal archery shot doesn't stagger anybody.  It treats the body like a viscous fluid, the arrow passes clean through and the target has a moment of reflection as he realizes that there are holes where his insides used to be, and that this is problematic for him.  Of course, given the constraints of medieval weapons and armor, there is going to be a significant amount of energy lost, resulting in that sort of baseball bat-like punch, but the punch is secondary to the cut.

[WillS]

Ah, ideal worlds 

I dunno, I can't imagine blacksmiths (no matter how skilled!) imagining that their plate cutters are actually going to pass clean through?  It must have been a more realistic expectation to assume the arrow only gets as far as going in a few inches, breaking off and leaving festering diseased wounds, while simultaneously dropping the guys backwards so they're not a problem anymore.

Still, ideals apart, the fact remains that if you get hit by a war arrow going full bananas and you're wearing protective armour, you're going to be moved by the force.  The statement "the heaviest of warbow arrows from the heaviest bow wouldn't even nudge an average man" was a bit....  Yeah.

[Joec123able]

Squirrelslinger there's no freakin way any arrow is going to knock any one down in fact even the heaviest of warbow arrows from the heaviest bow wouldn't even nudge an average man now of course if you shot an unarmoured man with a blunt heavy arrow it would shatter bones that's for sure but wouldn't move him at all.

....so by your reckoning Joe, if we were to take a guy in full armour, he wouldn't even notice a series of 1/2" shafted rubber tipped blunts shot at him, they'd be like flies buzzing around outside his steel suit?........

http://youtu.be/_pxHnntyduw

Really? Have you ever even handled a half-inch hardwood shafted 32" long war arrow and considered the associated point loading if shot from a heavy bow? Kinetic energy anyone?!  LoL

Are you serious man ?? I didn't say nothing like that but it surely isn't going to be pushing a guy to the ground haha

[WillS]

Apologies for the language version, you'll have to buy the DVD if you want it in English!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlgM_aYgIMw

Skip to 29 minutes in.  Watch Joe and Mark shoot half inchers into the force meter from 120lb bows.  Not even full power warbows being used here.

If your Spanish isn't great, he gets a reading of 115lbs off target, and then 300lbs dead on the meter.  That's 300lbs of force going straight into you, at 170 feet per second.  If you don't think that would knock you on your arse you're crazy!

He goes on to say "you've got a value of 10 newton seconds, which is actually about the mid range of a 44 magnum bullet"

I'm fairly certain (having never been shot before) that a normal bloke walking up hill towards some archers getting hit at that force would fall over.  Just my opinion.

(Any warbow fans need to get this DVD by the way.  Lots of great archery stuff, and lots of good cameos from EWBS members )

[llkinak]

If your Spanish isn't great, he gets a reading of 115lbs off target, and then 300lbs dead on the meter.  That's 300lbs of force going straight into you, at 170 feet per second.  If you don't think that would knock you on your arse you're crazy

Hi, Will
I think you're misinterpreting this a bit.  It's not 300 lbs moving at 170fps, it's not even 300 foot pounds of energy.  At best a warbow arrow can transmit 100-120 foot pounds into a target, and that's if it sticks into it and doesn't waste some of that energy bouncing off, bending or breaking the arrow, denting the armor, etc, etc, etc.  That's a little more than a .25 ACP pistol will do, and those don't knock anybody back when they're shot into a guy wearing a vest.  High caliber rifle bullets don't even "knock you on your arse" and they are far, far more powerful than warbow arrows.  If the arrow doesn't penetrate the armor and cut some major cables it's not going to be effective, and it won't knock you back unless you're pretty off balance to begin with. 

[WillS]

Ah ok, I'm with you on the numbers (it's not my thing!)  I was quoting the video clip where the guy said it was the same as a 44 mag bullet.

However, surely a bullet is far smaller than an arrow? So even with the same force and speed behind it, a bullet is more likely to make a clean hole straight through, while an arrow has more surface area so will deliver a harder punch?  I am terrible with physics, but if the arrow doesn't penetrate, isn't that more likely to deliver blunt force to the target?  All the energy that should be used to punch through the armour is being spent/wasted on the area around it, like a great meaty fist thumping into the chest?

Or have I got that totally wrong?

[Del the cat]

Yeah... but bullets and even a shotgun blast won't throw you over... that's just Hollywood bull .

If you look at real war footage, people just drop where they stand when shot.

If you make a few comparisons with cricket or tennis balls, they don't knock people over.
Or consider a golf ball (about 1.6 oz) people hit with one of those travelling at a heck of a speed get hurt but not lifted off their feet.
Say a 1/4 pound arrow is doing 130mph and if all the momentum is maintained (which of course it isn't as most of the energy would be dissipated in armour,tissue etc.) and it hits a body weighing 12stone... ( that's 168pounds).
That's going to leave the combined weight travelling at approx 130/16.258 or about 0.77mph which isn't much.
If someone was off ballance they may get toppled, but certainly not thrown over by the impact.

Back to the shotgun. If you shoot one, you need to lean into it a bit, and it would topple you if you were off balance and really didn't know what you were doing. The shot can't possibly hit you with any more force that the recoil of the gun (according to that nice Mr Newton)

Del

[llkinak]

Ah ok, I'm with you on the numbers (it's not my thing!)  I was quoting the video clip where the guy said it was the same as a 44 mag bullet.

However, surely a bullet is far smaller than an arrow? So even with the same force and speed behind it, a bullet is more likely to make a clean hole straight through, while an arrow has more surface area so will deliver a harder punch?  I am terrible with physics, but if the arrow doesn't penetrate, isn't that more likely to deliver blunt force to the target?  All the energy that should be used to punch through the armour is being spent/wasted on the area around it, like a great meaty fist thumping into the chest?

Or have I got that totally wrong?

Well, there a couple of thing about your statement that are not quite accurate.  They apparently used a .44 magnum as a comparison, so let's use that. 
1.  Comparing a .44 mag to any arrow is the epitome of apples to oranges.  The .44 is a far more powerful projectile since it is traveling much, much faster, well over 1,000 fps faster.  Now, it is lighter, but you can increase a projectile's energy more by speeding it up than by making it heavier, and a projectile's energy is what defines it's ability to do work.
2.  In terms of diameter, a .44 mag, which is .429 caliber, is actually closer to an arrow than you might think.  .429 is about 11mm, so slightly larger than 3/8 inch, not too far from warbow arrow diameter.  However, a .44 mag typically has a flat fronted projectile, rather than a point as on a bodkin.  This doesn't matter all that much for our purposes, since we're talking about non-penetrating rounds, but it is interesting.
3.  .44 magnum rounds produce between 900-1300 foot pounds of energy depending on the loading.  (Some exceptions, but that's the general area.)  Warbow arrows produce about 10% of that depending on various factors, but any bow putting out 130 foot pounds would be an extremely powerful bow.
4.  Given that a man wearing body armor who is struck by a .44 mag, or, as I said, even high velocity rifle rounds like a .308, isn't knocked back, why would a warbow arrow, which only has a fraction of the power, be able to accomplish this?  The answer is, it can't.  True, either projectile will impart energy into it's target, and in doing so will effect that target, but a man walking forward won't be knocked off his feet by either one.

[WillS]

Well, I can't argue with that! Thanks for the detailed reply!

I guess it's another case of TV shows really trying to push the "scare factor" of medieval weapons, when really they're not that effective! I suppose if they were that effective, we wouldn't need gunpowder...!

Still, I can't help thinking that a normal man getting hit full on with a half inch war arrow from a true warbow is gonna feel a kick like a horse, and whether stumbling or actually forced backwards by the impact is irrelevant if the weapon does what it's meant to do!

[llkinak]

I think arrows can be very effective...if they penetrate into the body.  If they don't then they're pretty much completely ineffective.  Interesting you mention being kicked by a horse.  Now there's something which will move a guy around a bit. 

[mullet]

This discussion has been long and very interesting. One thing I can add to this is you guys know your warbows but across the pond we know our firearms . I hunt hogs with my .44 Mag with 300 grain bullets and I've seen them flip a pig on his arse, and I don't care how much armor you want to put on, you don't want to get hit in the chest with my .300 WinMag or for that matter, my 50 caliber flintlock. But, I also have know doubt a half inch arrow to the chest with armor on, not expecting it, would put my little arse on the ground, also.

[WillS]

I also reckon that if you caught somebody off centre you'd see far more movement from their body.  Imagine a war arrow whacking into a shoulder or hip.  That's gonna spin you round no matter what!