Wow armor can fail? Sounds like it would be better not to wear any at all… Hey Shad is there a video on the topic of wearing no armor due to the fact it has minor setbacks?
This subject even in the modern context is a complex issue. The FBI and other groups have done extensive testing on modern body armor against fire arms with various calibers, projectiles, projectile speeds, barrel lengths, etc. The sheer amount of testing done has given us a good idea of the limits of modern body armor. And yet there is still a massive amount of misconceptions about the topic. I can only imagine how much worse this is in a medieval context since there is no reason (other than historical curiosity) to conduct tests similar in size and scope of the ones done for modern armor. I for one think this is an interesting pursuit of scientific and historical inquiry.
I am “in” the tank community and there are still problems despite the same amount of testing. This is because the world isn’t a video game where you get perfect results, no one makes the perfect armor that is in the same condition as other armor. There might be a chance where a 75mm round is able to pierce the 100mm steel plate due to what kind of rain it was yesterday.
@@Ermanariks_til_Aujm Agreed, of course players would hate how a end game piece of armor is beaten by a mid game armor due to RNG but there’s a way to actually make it be implemented without it being annoying.
I really do dislike paper mache armor in fiction and video games. I don't care how "skilled" you are you can't shove your dagger through my chest plate.
@@Adam_okaay you need to know that Polish Hussars used plate armor in battle of Vienna in 1683 and kept doing so untill 11 april 1775 when formation was terminated. So there were blacksmiths with this sort of abilities as close as 200 years ago.
@@MegaBIGJOE64 it is significantly easer to recover knowledge from more modern times. Paper don't ussualy survive centuries so writeings, letters and books degrade and rot. Handwriteings of elite blacksmith or his teachings might be still recoverable after 200 years and in 18th century its much more plausable that said blacksmith had education required to write down his knowledge to pass it onto another generations. Yes, that dates don't change anything in regards to meeting blacksimth in person, but change alot in regards to recovering his knowledge.
I love, in games, where there is grading associated with a piece of armor. I really like it as well when there is "type" of physical damage too - piercing, blunt, etc. It actually well-justifies going "you know what? I'm gonna learn magic."
Some of them also have Quality grades that act like a multiplier for the base properties of the given piece of armor, so a freshly-fitted suit with 100 quality would provide better protection than a rusty salvaged suit from a damp cave that has something like 45 quality left.
I don't know about Medieval armor, though I assume that keeping it maintained and oiled would be a task for the squires and servants. But ease of manufacture and maintenance is supposedly why the Romans never completely dropped the lorica hamata, since it was essentially self-cleaning from wear (roll it in a barrel of sand for more thorough cleaning), and repairing would just involve hooking a few rings together and a couple of new rivets. Compare that to the lorica segmentata, which needed to be tailored to some degree, repairs were relatively more complicated (metal strips and leather or fabric attachment points as opposed to small iron rings), and maintenance required more effort and time.
@@eldorados_lost_searcher That assumes you have servents though, keep in mind that a decent portion of the dudes in a medieval army were random dudes that got drafted. If you were of the "free man" rank (or something comperable) in a lot of regions you were required to own some sort of weapon and serve in your local lord's forces in the event you got called upon. These guys were usually farmers or trademen of some sort, so they weren't neccesarily wealthy enough to have their own servents and would have to do maintence themselves (or draft a family member to do it for them I guess.) They'd also be limited to the more affordable armor options like gambeson, which wouldn't have the same maintence needs. (How do you repair gameson anyway? Try to stitch up the tears and hope no one cuts through the thread? Stick a patch on it? Take it apart and replace the damaged layers? Just buy a new one? I don't actually know, it's something I've been meaning to look up for a while now...)
@@Amy_the_Lizard Those are all good points. I wouldn't discount the baggage train that would follow the army having someone there who could stitch up gambesons, or relying on fellow levies for help with looking after each other's equipment. It's tough to make blanket statements, though. The time period and geographic area covered are pretty vast.
It always makes me laugh when in movies the hero just cuts down hundreds of mooks left and right, yet the mooks are clad head to toe in full armour. They somehow just slash and stab right through it and kill them in one hit. The mooks may as well be naked. Really hard to remember a movie where someone struggled due to the armour actually protecting the enemy, (that didn't just end up in them stabbing right through it again 2 sec later).
Game of Thrones was decent about remembering that armor exists. They still slip up from time to time, but since most of the time it was focused on individual fights, they kept armor in mind
Lord of the Rings was one of those comedically bad ones when it came to people and orcs in full plate instantly dying after a sword slash. At that point, with how much long distance running or riding was occasionally involved, they might've just been better off without any. Not like their paper armor did anything anyway. At least then they'd preserve their own and their mounts' stamina a bit more.
I'm going to get skewered for this, but The Duel had some really good scenes demonstrating the effectiveness of armor, and the effort and specific weaknesses that needed to be exploited in order to defeat it. Hell, there's a scene where Matt Damon is in a force caught in an ambush, and he sees his allies pull back from the arrows being shot at them, and he turns and asks them why they're running, while the arrows deflect off his armor. And another one where he half-swords in a melee, gets disarmed, grabs another weapon off the ground, and eventually beats a guy to death with a mail coif that he wrapped around his fist.
I had the same thought, watching the recent Dune adaptation. Everyone has those shields, that supposedly stop high-speed objects from striking the wearer with deadly force. Then we see the Harkonnen footsoldiers wearing what looks like full-body armour. Which should make them effectively invulnerable, right? The shields stop high-speed, high impact attacks that could defeat their armour. While the armour itself should stop the slow strikes that fighters are taught to employ to defeat shields. But then the Harkonnens get shredded as if their armour is made of paper. By Atreides soldiers wearing no armour whatsoever. Including soldiers fighting with spears, which should be almost totally worthless against shields, because they are mainly dependent on thrusting force that would be nullified by shields.
@@apollohateshisdayjob9606 Jorah Mormont vs Dothraki Champion fight is a good example. The dothraki slashes Jorah with a Sickle blade, doing minimal damage, Jorah then kills him with a straight sword.
Muskets penetrating armour is exceedingly rare. It’s a common misconception that armour wasn’t effective against period guns, and even the more “modern” muskets of the 1800’s cannot penetrate plate mail in tests.
@@virtuallyreal5849 Some of those tests are badly flawed. I have seen sub caliber shot with extra wadding for a good gas seal get higher velocities and thus better penetration.
There is a superb book "The knight and the blast furnace" by Alan Williams. Author gives some excellent tables on how much force you need to penetrate different armor types.
Isn't that the really controversial one? I believe it isn't valid for a whole host of reasons- that started all this debate 20 years ago. It was universally agreed someone at some point should do it for real, but that came into the debate pulling a bow over 100 lbs is physically impossible. Then The Great Warbow: From Hastings to the Mary Rose came out a few years later that claimed the longbows were as much as 187 lbs. Which was of course considered ludicrous and started a trend of a few warbow pioneers who trained heavier and heavier up to in more recent years demonstrating 200lbs, showing it was more than possible, and one by one those voices shut up. Essentially the research in that book is extremely outdated and flawed on just about every level, but it started all of this.
@@mandowarrior123 er I’m not sure I understand. The book predicted or covered the usage of high poundage bows, which people thought was impossible, but was eventually shown to have basis and be possible, so therefore the research is flawed?
@@Goji-Moji no, it was very flawed as force can't be used to measure armour penetration, velocity does. Also the armour was incorrect, as were the 'arrow heads' its a long story but it is inaccurate in almost every way.
@@mandowarrior123 “force can’t be used to measure armor penetration” sounds like a patently absurd statement in general, as it’s entirely possible to punch through metal with out any kind of speed at all, with high force, and this principle is used to punch out mass produced steel parts in general. Deformation of a material, any material, under any circumstances is done with force. If there’s no force exerted there’s no work done. This is such a bizarrely wrong basic physics thing to say, it’s difficult to imagine you actually know what you’re talking about here. Measuring force and impulse with any kind of reliability is a separate challenge, but to say “force can’t be used to determine penetration” is blatantly wrong. If anything the mass and kinetic energy of projectile are what are informing us of the kinds of forces that will be seen on impact. Furthermore it’s wrong in the context of the paper itself; the calculations referenced don’t use force, they use kinetic energy. So, what exactly are you talking about? By all means, give me the long story. EDIT: If by “force” you mean bow poundage then you’re running into the fabulously obvious issue that the force of the bow, along with the distance over which that force is exerted, along with the *mass and density of the arrow, which is extremely important as well, not just it’s velocity* determines said arrow velocity. I’ve read the paper, it doesn’t suggest anything as asinine as “200 pound bows are better than 100 pound bows no matter what” and ignore draw distance or force curves over tension ranges or anything like that, so I’d again want to know what exactly you’re talking about.
I just went back to watch an older video from 2020 and even in those two years it is surprising how much you have slimmed down, you are looking good, good on you mate!
I found that every day I am looking for a new Shad video especially with the Shadlands update and I am thinking C'mon Shad I want another video, and I am excited to watch another one. But I realized that it is amazing that you upload as often as you do and I am awed by your creativity and work ethic as many RUclipsrs have said it can take hours to make a video if not days. So I shall reel, reign in my anticipation / impatience and be grateful for all of your future videos. 😁
I've never seen a modern test where any arrow has pierced decent plate armor. And still, I would NOT want to be under an arrow storm even if wearing the best armor ever made. Its a really old argument... weapons are too powerful for any armor; no, armor is too powerful for any weapon. As for me, I would have worn armor for IF I got hit, not so that I COULD take hits without worry.
The idea of an arrow storm was 'fire enough and some will hit'. So I can't agree more. Wear it in case of getting hit rather than to make yourself invincible
@@DarthAxolotl It´s a moot point. Armor clad knights were a rarity. At best, they would represent 5% to 10% of the fighting force. Therefore debating wether arrows would penetrate them is a non issue, because the point was not to down the knights, but rather to down the men around them. The debate about arrows vs. common man-at-arms armor is much more prevalent and interesting. One thing we know for sure, is that they were not idiots. If the bow was a common weapon on the battlefield, then we must assume that they worked, and weren´t carried just for giggles. Therefore, we must arrive at the conclusion that they DID penetrate the average armor, otherwise they would have faded from use. To put into perspective: Rifles don´t pen a tank, yet they haven´t faded from use either, because: a) they work for the number 1 threat a soldier faces, which is other soldiers., and b) tanks aren´t that numerous in a battlefield, to warrant arming every soldier with something else to counter them. Likewise, bows were not abandoned, because they were still an excellent weapon against 90% of the threats they faced. The remaining 10% would be dealt with by spears, swords, and halberds, wielded by other knights. If you down the knight´s men (knights were often lords, that commanded their own men), chances are you get the knight to surrender, and you can ransom him for a hefty ammount, to pay for your campaign. Therefore, actually defeating a knight might even not have been their intended purpose. So why arm yourself for it?
@@Biden_is_demented Some armies were comprised of almost entirely plated soldiers. For example, in the battle of a Agincourt, almost every French infantrymen was a lord wearing plate. In the early 1500s some armies were comprised completely of men at arms, or mercenaires clad in plate maille. Many medieval depictions also support this.
@@virtuallyreal5849 That´s a Hollywood myth. The rank and file of any army was lucky to get a mail shirt, a gambeson and a helm. Only nobility could field a full plate suit. The rest were armoured in a hotchpotch mix of mail, gambeson, and leather. Remember that kings and lords were footing the bill, and had to arm the men who were mostly farmers and poor artisans. The cost of arming every man-at-arms in plate was just untenable. And a full suit of plate took months, even a year to make, and cost a fortune. The idea of giving every man-at-arms such a thing is ludicrous.
They should try a volley test: get as many people with appropriate bows as you can and send a single volley at several set up suits of armor to average the chances of hitting a weak spot.
@@TheLoachman variance between shooters primarily. But mostly just the visual of what it would look like for an armored group of knights to get hit with a volley.
@@kongilian I'd definitely enjoy the spectacularity of that (and who would not?). It would be far, far more entertaining than repetitive shots even if both achieve the same overall result. I don't think, from what I've seen so far, that there would be any change in the "the chances of hitting a weak spot", though. But, yes, I'm all in favour, now.
All the examples shad gave on how different weapons/arrowheads effected armor differently were good and i was paying close attention to see if he would mention waxing the arrowheads. unfortunately he didn't cause i think that was the most revealing thing to me when todd tested that. blew my mind on how much it increased the effectiveness against textile armor.
I know I'm far from the only one, but it really is a giant pet peeve of mine that practically no movie or show ever that features armour ever shows that armour actually being effective - even LOTR that shows Frodo's mail saving him has several other armours that seem to be made of paper.
The problem i see with arrows, as that they were usually not aimed. It was just volley fire at range. And at range the arrows are going to lose energy. The testing i saw in this video was basically point blank.
there is some controversy if they were used short ranged and flat shooting. though i can definitely find a whole bunch of accounts of long range shooting, where the archers retreated before a attack could be mounted, or where one side was out of range and the other in raaange (like towton) but also sniping carpenters trying to rebuild a bridge in campaigns by charles the bold are mentioned (there is an account quoted in richard vaughns works on the dukes of burgundy) the test todd did was stacked against the armour, so best possible aaarrow shot with medium weight armour protection, but representative... if thaat doesn't penetrate, then breastplates are frontally pretty proof. Stacking it to one side of the spectrum makes sense in that it shows that it is pretty impossible.
"Usually not aimed but just volley fire at range and arrows would loose energy over distance." Now think about that for a second. If you would be in command of archers in medieval battle, would you want your guys to shoot all their arrows at range, where it is least likely to hit someone and on top of that would deal the least amount of energy? English arrow bags held 24 arrows, and an archer was expected to be able to shoot 12 arrows per minute (can be done faster tough, even Shad shot 18 per minute) that is average of 2 minutes and your archers are out of arrows. How long did battles last? I don't know, but a whole lot more than 2 minutes. I would choose careful when to order my archers to shoot and when not, if I would be the one in command. I would try to make sure that as many of the arrows actually hit someone as possible and thet they would do as much damage to said someone as possible. But the purpose of arrows varied according time and place, from beeing the most important factor dealing enemies casualties to being only harassment and making enemies ability to fight and execute tactical manoeuvres more difficult.
@@jkre at Towton the one side shot most of their arrows out of range (not being able to see the fall of shot due to the blizzard) and those were shot back by the opposite side who was in range. so we have a bunch of examples where extreme range is really evident. area interdiction is a big deal, in fact on several occasions the chroniclers say that the arrow shot simply forced the opposite side to start their attack, so this is a common use, where you make them not want to stay where they are. even a modest movement of the target unit can greatly reduce the number of hits the arrows make even on very large bodies of men Of volleys of thousands of arrows you can have instances where but about a few dozen arrows actually hit a person, many fall between people in the ranks, even, or just fall short or long of the unit. These often still don't defeat the armour then. conversely, you don't need that many wounded soldiers to make a real impact on morale. if 5 vollies of 4000 arrows are loosed (20k arrows total) and, say, 200 people get hit.. and only 20-40 of those are hurt at all, that would be a significant loss in a short space of time. more modern gunfire doesn't do any better, btw, if you look at the charge of the light brigade, how 'few' people actually get hit before they reach the guns, but there are many instances. The rate of hits of arrows is probably, in my numerical assumption above, much higher than musket fire in most of history, even at 1/3 of the range.
@@jkre Look at actual historical uses or archers. That is more often than not exactly how they were used. They were using mass manufactured arrows, that may or may not be decent quality, and certainly were not set up for each archers individual bow. Different draw weighs and bow sixes optimally use different arrows. Can't do that when you are supplying thousands of arrows for a campaign. So while individual archers probably could hit what they aimed at at close range with hand made arrows suited to the bow they were using, two problems with that. Those aren't the arrows they will be using in combat. And you don't want your archers getting overrun by calvary or infantry. You lose a lot of archers that way.
@@jeromethiel4323 your theory is based on assumption that they cannot shoot accurate with mis match arrows, but that is wrong. The accuracy difference between mis match and matching arrows is so minor, that it doesn't have make any difference in the context of war archery or hunting. Arrow tuning is a modern thing made for target archery, where you are after one inch bull's eye, in war, your bull's eye is as big as the person you are aiming at. You don't need as high level of accuracy for that as you need for modern target shooting. I make bows and arrows, and for my personal use, i don't even care about arrow tuning, I shoot so many different types and poundages of bows with multiple different shooting styles, that would take for ever to make perfectly matching arrows for every bow and shooting style and the accuracy gain is so minor that it doesn't make any difference to me, since i don't shoot in competitions. So I just use same arrows for everything, I have multiple different spine, length and weight arrows and I even use them mixed, cus I no longer have proper set of any arrow cus I have broken most of my arrows. And the number one reason why my arrows break, is that they are hitting each others in the target, without accuracy, that wouldn't happen so often. So to think that medieval archers wouldn't shoot accurately cus they couldn't because of mass produced arrows, is just wrong. They very much could and did shoot accurately. Humans would have ditched bows a long time ago if they wouldn't have been accurate, at least in hunting, where accuracy is more important than in warfare.
16:55 This is a principle still used in armor. The rifle plates in modern body armor have a plastic coating that keeps you from getting shot in the neck by exploding bullet fragments.
I made a comment on the Longbow vs Armour test in that during the test the first shot went low and completely transfixed the target. Therefore, the probabilities are against the approaching soldier, in that say 1% of arrows find a 'chink' in the armour and that you are approaching 5,000 archers shooting, on average, 12 arrows a minute. That is 60,000 arrows or about 600 casualties a minute. As for what is considered a Traditional English Longbow, many of these are really Welsh, in that English Warbows (shown in contemporary images) had a recurve, this follows lessons learned during the crusades
Man, Tod has so many projects these days that I need to see more of. Lockdown longbow, arrows vs armour, not to mention the trebuchet... Shad I really recommend that you check out HistorySquad's series on Medieval Archery and Agincourt.
I've been enjoying it, and the channel is still small enough to reliably get replies if you have any good points, information, or questions. Always nice.
One I noticed about when testing bows against armor is they always fire bows directly at the armor. but if you look at images and even texts the archers weren't firing directly they fired up using gravity and terminal velocity so the arrows would not be coming head on but from above. Thus the arrows would be more likely to hit along the collar area of the armor and so if that wasn't as heavily protected that could do so serious damage.
I've always wanted to see more comprehensive tests done using historical things. Yes, weapons and armor, but also things like camping equipment, horses, formations in battle and other things we don't really use anymore. As an example, we all know formations were intrinsic to warfare for thousands of years, but at least I've never heard a firsthand account of what it was like to be in those formations, knowing you could be killed if it failed. I'm from the USA and I've read letters from various US conflicts about war, but those were after hot weapons became standard on the battlefield. What was it like for those few thousand Greeks to be facing down the Persian army? And how did they eat, camp, store their weapons before the battle? How did religion play into their actions? Not in a "Who did they pray to?" kind of way, but did their religion demand certain rituals and did those rituals have any impact on their performance during the fight? How about their rations and the way they conducted themselves? I only use the Greeks because the Battle of Thermopylae is very well known in history, not because I'm exclusively curious about them. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'd love to see almost mockumentaries about living in those times. Both in and out of battle. Maybe if the Shadlands ever get finished then you could make them. Historically accurate representations of the life of different class soldiers, peasant, freeman, landowners, knights, minor lords, and great lords.
These are all excellent suggestions! Aside from a latent curiosity about these things, they would be immensely helpful details for the books I'm working on. There will be several battle scenes, but the bulk of the story will revolve around traveling adventurers. Even in a fantasy world, it's important to have realistic elements!
Thermopylae is a choke point. The fact is, the Greek did not really out perform the Persians in battle, there is quite a few victories on both sides, with similar numbers. Plus, the first Greco-Persian war, had the Persian achieve their goals, which technically makes it a Persian victory, not a Greek victory, like is depicted today. Thermopylae is in the secind Greco-Persian war though. Note that the Persian army was not exactly Persian. It was multi cultural, levied from all over the largest empire of Antiquity (The Persian Empire under Darius dwarf Rome at its height, under Trajan, in both land size and % of the world population, which is often estimated to be 44%, the higest of any empire by far). The Elamites were rebowned for their archers, the Persians and Medes for their cavalry, the Assyrians for their heavy infantry, Indians had elephants, etc.. Those are all people the empire levied and there was soooo many more. The Achaemenid Emoire stretched from Makedon or Thrace, depending on the source, to the Indus valley from West to East and from Crimea to Egypt fron North to South. This is just before the population of China and the Gange exploded, back when Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley and Egypt were the most populous regions of the world and the Empire held all 3 of them.
@@nathanc939 Okay, to start I'd like to say sorry for troubling you by getting my facts messed up. I was writing quickly and couldn't remember the names correctly. Not that I get battle names correct even when I take my time. 😅 Even still, what you told me were outcomes and numbers. While they tell us a lot, it leaves out so much detail. And those details matter, at least I believe that they do. What I was trying to say was that I wanted to know more about what individuals would have experienced from a practical point-of-view. How long did it take to put on their armor? Did they sleep partially armored if it took long? If soldiers knew they were facing death in the morning, how did it change their behavior? What would it look like to walk into the campsite? What were people doing and saying? Where did they sleep? What kind of bushcraft was used, or did they bring everything? Were there servants or slaves following them like in later armies? How were they treated and what did their lives look like? Honestly I just have so many questions.
@@danieltiffany1793 that would very much depend on the situation. See, the Rajput had major defeats against the Muslims, because they followed a strict code of honour, which meant no surpise attack. In Indian warfare, it worked perfectly fine, as it was followed and thus soldiers did not have to be ready at all time, even with opposing armies right next to each others. Well, the Muslim invaders did not give a shit. It took a few battles for the Rajputs to adapt and prepare for it. There is a reason they were known as the warriors of North India though, they were extremely professional, compared to everyone else. As for medieval Europe, knights would not wear the full set, most of the time. Same with most soldiers actually. It does not make sense, in most cases to be ready at all time, at least not for the whole army. You see, armies often stopped in sight of each others. Mounting a attack takes time and it can be seen, so you can usually just prepare when you chose to attack or see your enemy doing just that. This is why ambush forces were usually smaller and detached from the main armies which is in turn why a small portion of the army was always ready and on guard. This seems to be what applies to most of the world btw. As for what people said and talked about, I do not know.
one thing also is the matter of impact from hits. a sword might not cut through, say mail, but it will still do a nice boink on whatever you are hitting. bruises, internal damage, even breaking bones. with big two-handed sword you may be able to topple a plate covered opponent and overwhelm them with sheer brutality. once they're down, curb stomp 'em.
This entire video is gold for any out of context compilations or YTPs. "...if the opportunity presents itself, then just going hard and penetrating the..." "...thrusts are the easiest way to penetrate..." -Shadiversity, 2022
Tod's done some great work on this topic so far, I certainly am looking forward to the end results of this new set of tests. I intend to help as soon as I can see what my budget for the KS is going to be,
16:43 the more things change the more they stay the same. Modern hard body armor has a coating on it the prevent fragments of the bullet, or in extreme cases the armor itself, from hitting the wearer. After all it would suck to have the jacketing from the bullet your armor just stopped hit you in the jugular.
A comment about the weights of bows: I think that an archers may have more than one bow; possibly a lower weight to let off continuous volleys, & a heavier bow for longer range one off shots.
There is no evidence that supports this. With all my years I have been into historical archery, I have only heard of one army who would carry two bows, and that is recorded as something out of ordinary. The army being Mongols during mongol conquest. Some say the other bow was lighter than the other one, but even that is not verified as a fact by my knowledge. There are many theories why they would have carried two bows. One is that the other one was kept strung and the other one at rest (horn bows can handle long times being strung, but would loose some of the draw weight, but gains it back at rest for some time without the string) and they would change every now and then, so they will always have a bow in their disposal. Second theory is that because the temperature greatly affects the draw weight of the bow, and mongolians would fight also during winter (witch some composite horn bow using people didn't do) they would have one bow for summer and one for winter, so the power of the bow would stay consistent. Third theory (that is in my opinion most unlikely of these 3) is that other bow was stronger to deal with heavy armored opponents and longer ranges, and the other was lighter to shoot faster rate at lighter armored opponents. But yeah, how ever it may have been why mongolians carried two bows, the records lead to believe that they were the exception and not the norm in the amount of bows archers carried. I would imagine tough that there were spare bows in every army including archers, just for the case of bows breaking, but there is no evidence of two bows being in active use by single archer is battle (including the mongolians, even tough they carried two, I don't know any evidence that they actually used them both in same battle).
Sharpness matters a lot against soft armor because it directly affects the amount of pressure placed on the target by the blade. This changes the damage mechanism from trying to stretch the material in half, to actually exceeding the cavity strength of the material locally. In other words, it changes it from delivering energy to a large area of a flexible material (much larger than the sword) to delivering it to a tiny area (the actual contact patch).
first thing on my mind was harden the gambeson with beeswax, i also theorize potential problems. Waxed textiles was a thing mainly used in storage and water protection, so its not far fetched if the gambeson was waxed but more for weather protection
It is theoretically possible that in some scenarios a weaker bow may penetrate better due to differences in angle fired which will alter the angle of the strike.
I'd have to think the cloth over the plate armor is also about protecting the plate. Plate armor is expensive and while arrows might not go through it we did see that those specifically made to be anti-armor, when shot at 160 lb can put a good sized dent in it. Such dents ruin the structural strength of the "dome" and so could lead to actual penetration or just make moving in it very difficult. In other tests though Todd found that arrows made to be anti-armor tended to not be as good against cloth armor, at the lower ends they even bounced off. So, to get the most out of your big investment in plate armor it's only logical to put the cloth armor over it.
2. point (more for shields) that is often left out, an arrow shot straight at the target has a much higher chance of penetrating than if it is shot at an angle. Nearly all tests don't take this into consideration and that leads to people thinking armour is useless
Greetings from Brazil Shad! Here's an idea for a video: the new season of Love, Death and Robots just came out and one of the episodes focuses on a group of european knights. It would be great, as always, to see your perspective and breakdown of it. The Arms & Armor look stunning and the animation is insane, I am sure you will find it interesting. Love your channel and everything you have done to spread knowledge of the medieval period worldwide. You have even inspired some to start similar channels in my home country. I have also read your book and found it to be a great experience. I wish you success and can't wait for the next video!
I have found a considerable number of arrowheads around some German castles and the weight and shapes of the actual arrow/bodkin heads vary greatly. Besides the bow or crossbow poundage the actual shape and weight of the head and hardness of the head are important as it has to be able to deliver the maximum energy without deflecting. Counter intuitive but a pointier arrow isn’t better at armor plate penetration and the majority of arrows are chubby heavy bodkin that are not sharp but are just intended to pierce by mass and velocity.
One thing I would like to see done is having a dummy/target with some rotational freedom. A lot of tests always seem to only give the option for the target to move purely backwards making the armour take all of the force and do all of the work in deflecting the arrow/strike. When in reality if a person gets hit on the left side of their chest, their body is going to twist to left as well as fall backwards, helping to further deflect the force. I'd like to see that if an arrow or bolt does pierce the armour, if adding that rotational freedom like a human has would be enough to then deflect the arrow/bolt.
The idea that at the start of battle you swing a sword and it goes through the gambeson and could fatally cut someone only for minutes later you to swing against someone with potentially worse armor and it does nothing is quite the interesting and in some ways shocking thing to realize.
Brilliant, excellent ideas for what could be looked at by Todd's project, but can I add the fear element of walking forward into a potential haze if constant arrow impact, surely terrifying, cheers jj
what you need is a leveling system for medieval armor, something like body armor has today, and classify diffrent arrowheads and over variations of weapons too.
I would be fascinated at how different metal grades would work in the armor, as in the 20th century we built battleships and tanks from Steel that is face hardened to a certain thickness, then behind it is a layer of soft steel. This being done to acknowledge that hard steel is brittle but also hope to blunt the incoming projectile then have the soft steel absorb the energy.
Understanding armor is about understanding physics. A softer material can not pierce a harder material no mater how much force is applied, all that happens is the softer material deforms. As a materials hardness and thickness go up, so does the amount of force needed to deform it, this is super important because the armor is being worn by a mobile object. With full plate we get to the point where the needed force to deform that armor ends up moving the human instead. This is why full plate wearers where first knocked down / immobilized and then had a dagger shoved through one of the natural openings of the plate. Finally swords were terrible against metal armor, they were strictly personal defense weapons. Instead spears and polearms were the preferred methods, less metal to make sharp / hard, easier weapon construction and easier to train mass numbers of men to effectively use. For the reasons above bows were never good against solid metal plates, ever. It took arrows finding the same openings the dagger was shoved through to disable or kill, and since accuracy isn't that precise you ended up having to fire mass volleys and rely on sheer number of shots. Of course solid metal armor was actually quite rare, most soldiers were conscripts who didn't have the training to effectively fight in metal armor and instead where given cheaply made gambeson. Only the relatively small number of nobles and maybe their personal guards would be wearing metal armor, as they commanded hundreds if not thousands of peasants.
Keep in mind that the weapon itself need not necessarily penetrate the armor. A mace to the head is gonna hurt even if you're wearing a very good helmet because the shock and momentum of the impact penetrates the armor even though the weapon doesn't.
So glad you said that bit about role playing and wanting to understand in order to have a greater grasp of the subtle advantages. So then, here is mine. I am a slinger, and I am amazed at how much attention bows and arrows get without consideration of their sister war weapon, the sling. The arrows is the weapon of precision, the sling is the weapon of destruction; the arrow penetrates, the sling bullet hits with blunt force. Name the armor that can withstand a fist-sized stone hurled at over 100 miles an hour. Plate becomes a liability, mail does nothing, gambeson is the best protection. I believe that slingers are more of a consideration to be reckoned with on the bistorical battlefield. Slingers could inflict structural damage and penetrate defense that arrows could not. They could also fire incendiary rounds and I am finding extensive evidence of explosive ceramic grenades as far back as the 11th century. This seems to give an edge to the slingers vs the archers. Curious about lack of coverage in this historically as well as in gaming, LARPing, film. The sling was a vital weapon and was used from antiquity up to the time where firearms and cannon took over the scene.
Man, that's another bunch of stuff to consider when developing a game with medieval combat . I feel like if someone wants to add in as much realism to a title, the best example to emulate would be Project Zomboid.
Crazy sharp and polished sharp. Both shave, both cut amazing, both slice paper and tissue without ripping it but, the crazy sharp one will clog up and stop cutting textile armor efficiently.
I think that advancements in weapons and armor technology would've been competitive over time. I think if plate armor could be bypassed so easily with melee weaponry and arrows perhaps guns wouldn't have even been invented.
Testing with lower poundage could also be used as a proxy for longer shooting distance, if you figure out approximately how much speed the arrow loses due to air resistance over a certain distance. With a well thought out test and thorough documentation of the results, you could have a great basis for approximating and extrapolating a wide variety of cases with many different variables.
This conversation reminds me of the random videos I see of computer models for sabot tank rounds being shot at different armor types. I would love to see something similar but for getting through medieval armor.
Ever since I was a kid and I was watching medieval films and I noticed that swords and arrows would go straight through the front of plate armour. I always asked myself "What's the point of the armour if it seemingly doesn't do anything?" So hopefully, these tests over the coming months will give some answers to my questions.
A lot of these type of tests have been done pre-internet but are incredibly difficult to find in out of print books. When I was about 10 yrs old,(50+ years ago) my great aunt gave me a book on Medieval Armour (I think limited edition from Cardiff Museum, South Wales UK?) Unfortunately it has disappeared sometime in the last 50+ years. I do remember reading that 'front line' archers used 140~170 lbs bow and were actually paid more for high draw weight? The 'effective range' was also given as 250 yards but I think it meant maximum range? (it was a book with notes you had to look up in the back and references to various historians) Being Welsh 'we' always got taught about the Welsh Bowmen at Agincourt (even during English lessons and we were not even doing Shakespeare's Henry V)
Armor does have its limits and constraints, more so than the chitinous shells of insects. If you wear armor it then it is much more akin to getting a second skeleton rather than a second skin. But it still depends. If you go for mastercrafted maille, then it should be like getting a harder yet still mostly flexible skin. If you wear plate, then having a surcoat over it might seem stupid at first, until you realize that cloth is an insulator. To even keep more cool don't wear a gambeson, just some pretty thin stuff underneath the maille and armor (although it would degrade the armor way faster than if you had a gambeson, also if by any chance you get hit by a mace or a war hammer, the gambeson will function akin to a buffer, so not wearing it would probably lead to a few fractures here and there or a collapsed ribcage and fractured organs).
I'd also like range taken into account for such testing. Plus, I'd love to see throwing spears and javelins added to testing, since bows really didn't play a role in the early medieval period.
Something no one seems to be mentioning is variance (There's a Tod's video that mentions it). The same armour can be 3mm thick on some places and 1mm in other. In medieval times, variance was much higher than in modern times.
More so than modern times, sure, but _that_ much variance would either be deliberate (side armour deliberately being thinner) or poor quality even by the standards of the day.
I have seen a skull belonging to merchant guild landsknecht which was penetrated by a bolt from farmers hunting crossbow, which wasn't military grade and it had penetrate his skull but also his steel helm. This was during farmer revolt on Gotland Sweden and the farmers used basically modified farming and hunting equipment against professional armed mercenaries and knights, they succeeded to kill some men of arms but was really massacred outside Visby. The professionalisms which died was basically zerg rushed or killed by ranged weapons and most farmers/peasants killed was killed by horsemen in close combat.
It's interesting that you mention at 15:53 that linen/cloth worn over armor can catch arrow fragments. This is similar to modern body armor systems, where armor plates are often covered with a rubber layer. A major reason for this is to catch fragments of bullets after they hit the armor (known as spalling).
the 'using different poundage' is valid, but if I remember correctly they went with a high estimation of the average since its still representative to the damage arrows might do, as well as giving a way to approximate a lower draw weight. In the performed tests, not a single 160 lb arrow pierced so with that regard there was no reason to go lower. If tod does it, I still want him to go at it with the 160lb bow first in his tests, and then after seeing what sort of damage it did see it repeated at either 120 or 200lb. 120 is probably the lower average, while 200 is just about the limit, making both of these good measuring points. It's also nice because they are both the same distance from 160. I haven't read tod's stretch goals yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if he has a part like this in mind already.
You can actually swim wearing mail or plate. It is much harder, but doable. Gauntles and sabatons are what actualy has the most impact, in my experience.
@@nathanc939 Hmmm. Chain and some types of half-plate maybe could give you chance to not socialize with fishes. But from my foint of kowledge most armors (french, Gothit and Maximilian on top) will force you for walk, instead of swim. There was actually a photo of diver-knight trying to fight shark with a sword. I am curious if there were some videos from that event... It would be helpfull in our debate... I got him!!! : ruclips.net/video/GL411hkK2vE/видео.html He stands relativly "still", so I think I was right at my point about walking. Proof to your point can be how soldiers in bulletproof wests are going in water. They can try not to drown, so thats something around being a "good" thing. XD
@@mateuszbanaszak4671 The guy is wearing a diving mail under that plate. This is basically double weight armour, if we assume it isn't an over built modern version to start with. While you might have mail with plate, that is only really true for early plates, later, you only have mail in joints, if at all and in this case, diving mail is purposefully heavy. Full plate armour is not heavier than a full mail set. A mail is heavier in proportion of the area covered, quite significantly so. Yes a mail shirt is lighter than a full gothic set, but a large hauberk, covering from your knees to the top of your head is actually heavier than the set of gothic armour.
@@nathanc939 Thanks. This fact about mail can be usefull. Also thats that chain equivalent of full plate is heavier from plate will change a thing that i was working of. And what about gambeson, or how it was called? I mean this cloth weared under armor. Did it "drinked" water? If yes, its weight would be greater than chain-mail.
@@mateuszbanaszak4671 yes the Gambison did obviously drink water. This does not mater though, soaked clothes still float. I am not saying a man in armor floats well, because he does not. It barelly floats, basically, they have to spend energy to keep the head above water, and if they don't, they basically have only the top of their head out, as far as I am aware. This also varies depending on individuals, fat people float really well, meanwhile, I don't float well to start with and swim like a rock, so I would likely drown ifbI were to try for more than 30 seconds.
One thing i’d like to see that never really gets covered in these testing armour vids is field repair on the armour. Everyone always takes out a breastplate thats fresh off the forge, all shiney and not an armour thats moved from battle, to siege to battle to passed down to descendants and has been repaired over and over. How does it effect the thickness of the armour? Did they do spot welds where a different kind of steel was used because its all they had on hand and how does that effect the armours integrity at those points? Or am i just underestimating soldiers in the medival period and everyone could afford several breastplates to swap out between battles while one sets at a proper forge for repairs and not a hastily set up military camp.
I am pretty sure if you have a hole in your plate you either live with it or get someone to make you a new one , which might point to why brigandines were popular since they were made of multiple smaller plates where a hole would be much easier to patch than a solid breastplate
@@pp-wo1sd not even just holes but say just dings and bumps from hammers etc. Did they get banged back into shape or were they just left like that. And if they were straightened out how much of a problem does metal fatigue become etc
@@micheal5973 I think they only hammered out the ones that would be uncomfortable for the wearer (ie poking him or restricting breathing) . Maybe scratches and small dings were viewed as a point of pride , showing you proved yourself in battle
Hey Shad, a question. Have you ever considered doing a video looking over the Byzantines? Since to cut things through a bit. The Byzantines are the descendants of the Roman Empire, and went on to pioneer a fair amount of military systems and tactics in the medieval period. The Stratuscon or something gives great insight to much of this. And I was wondering if doing the Byzantines, the link between the Ancient World, the Dark Ages and the Medieval times. Would be very interesting to look at in terms of tactics, approach and gear used. Just a thought.
I wish I could remember the video but I remember watching one where there was a scholar of medieval warfare discussing Agincourt and he basically said the arrows 'could' pierce the armor, but it was very unlikely, but it was also quite unnecessary. That the concussive force imparted by the warbows even through the armor would be like taking a very hard punch, and there's only so many of those you can take before you have, maybe not life threatening, but debilitating bodily injury that would prevent you from fighting nearly as effectively as you could normally
I disagree with the warbow poundage ranges. Archers back then had been doing archery for their whole lives they were probably some of the strongest people in the military. I feel pretty confident that 160 or so pounds was the common for long bowmen which is what made them so devastating on the battlefield. I think the 200 lb or so was probably the more strong outliers
8:20 i offer a different theory and feel it could be the opposite, in England around the time they were testing for by law all boys trained with a bow atleast every Sunday and would of built up strength and technique over their life times. Its quite possible that 160 lbs was the average and not the higher tier. just because we couldnt field that average now doesnt mean they couldnt of back then. for those that didnt have the build to be able to draw that much no matter how much they trained then they wouldnt of been selected as a bowman in the kings army, and it would be a spear or pole arm for you.
@@jimmybobby4824 why wouldnt most peasants of been selected? The skeletons dug up from that period show massive deformed left arms and other bones from years of regular bow shooting.
@@upursanctumMost average peasants would not have been strong enough. They were smaller and weaker than modern humans, by your theory, most peasants would not have been able to be archers because you randomly think 160lbs is not the average weight. We 140-160lbs is the average weight due to the mary rose bows. A few higher and a lot lower.
@@jimmybobby4824 i see what your saying. "the higher the draw weight the more people are excluded" my point is that a lot of people yourself included seem to think that modern people would be stronger than people from 1200-1500. im suggesting the opposite these men had no sports during this time as they were banned. competitive males only had archery to compete with each other from the ages of 12 to 60. there would of likely been a lot of social standing/importance on their ability with a bow as a result. there are skeletons with visible deformed bones due to this life of war bow conditioning. google (pinch of salt required) states the draw weight of warbows being 160 to 180. so even at that joe is shooting at the lower end. mary rose had 200lbs ++ and i dont think its way out there for archers of that day that have trained all their lifes to shoot a 200lbs bow all day as joe can with a 160. That doesnt mean they didnt shoot 120s or 140s. Im not convinced they were weaker than us i think we a weaker than them. they had hard lives worked everyday, all day and likely had the mussels to show for it. Im suggesting that these days Joe is impressive but back then he would of been average to good "for a young male". take this for an example what percentage of Norway and Denmarks population today are competent rowers compared to 600 -700AD population.
@@jimmybobby4824 even at 200lbs i dont think the bow will penetrate the armour. personally i think the way the bow was used was "volume of shots" and made its name by finding the weak spots eyes, neck, shoulders, elbow, stomach and knees. i think it was Joes first or second shot on todds video where he missed the armour and hit straight below it in the stomach area going through everything. they all went "arh he missed" if that had been for real that chap would of been of the floor clutching the arrow screaming for his mother bleeding out everywhere and all his mates would of had to walk past that. it would of been horrific. Joe didnt miss, that was the bullseye
Shad, I absolutely love how much research and detail you go into on the topics you discuss. I try to do this as well when I'm discussing topics, and I will always let it be known if I don't have much knowledge on the topic. It also helps that I'm interested in a lot of the things that you discuss on your channel. Also, if you want to talk about impenetrable armor, your beard is one of the best. Recently I have been studying fantasy maps, and normal maps in general because I have always found them fun. A bit of context, I'm studying to be a Geologist and it's crazy how much that changes your view on things. Like how when you have mountain ranges on a map, where on one side you have an ocean, and on the other side you have a desert. Most would not think much of that, but the reason the desert is there is because the updraft created by the ocean carries the moist, warm air up high over the mountains, where it then looses it's moisture, due to airs inability to hold water within low pressure areas. The now dry air descends down the other side of the mountain, creating a desert on the other side due to it. These are called Rain Shadow Deserts, and I find it to be really fascinating. But now I question why there are no deserts on the other sides of mountains that meet this criteria. It would be due to the atmospheric circulation zones on the planet we are on in the campaign obviously, but it annoys the hell out of my DM when I bring stuff like this up. I made my D&D character have a background in Geology so I could reasonably ask these kinds of questions. My DM hates me because I bring these things up and question him about it, along with other various things in similar lines of thought.
Medieval armour is often mentioned as being 'defeated' in period texts. Modern tests need a definition of defeated, was the armour bypassed, was it penetrated and if so what is the depth of penetration and effect of the hit. Plate armour might be holed but the penetration might only be 5mm, mail armour might also be penetrated by the same depth (5mm) but the deformation might take the point deeper than the obviously apparent depth.
That's a nice looking "The Name of the Wind" on the background, it's a very well written and fun to read book, it's a shame the bible will get an update before Rothfuss drops book 3
So I’ve been trying to make my own ttrpg with all this kind of information on and off for a few years now. The idea is to address my biggest pet pieces with 5e and Pathfinder 1e. That is bloated numbers (especially hp) and lack of true weapon and armor diversity. Currently using bludgeoning, chopping, piercing, and slashing as damage types with some armor immune or resistant to each damage type, only providing a very small AC to the others, and some (like gambison) fall apart after taking too much damage. Keep up the good work.
Could we have a vid on medieval training material? (What did medieval peoples/knights used to train to combat. Wooden swords? Steel swords? Training armor? Training dummies?)
I LOVE the Elder Scrolls Online cinematics. But I was utterly SEETHING at men in heavy plate dying from being slashed in the chest(the strongest part) by a sword or having throwing knives(THROWING KNIVES?!) penetrate the armor. It was extremely frustrating. I love fantasy, I love movies, I love video games. But DAMN do they disrespect armor.
Exciting, eh? Good on you for supporting Todd’s tests! I love gaining these nuggets of information. I wish I had the resources and setup to do my own tests. So far I’ve been limited to ending a few water bottles, tatami, and sticks with swords and one of Todd’s 🗡 daggers. :)
Another thing I'd love to see tested, is not just square on, at a perfect 90 degree angle. So far most tests I see are always getting the perfect angle for penetration. In real life, you won't always get the perfect angle against a moving target. I'm pretty sure people who went to war with this equipment had a pretty good idea of how it would behave vs different types of weapons, and if they know the bows the enemy has will likely penetrate with square on hits, they would angle their shields appropriately to prevent that type of hit, to force angled hits. So a question I have is at what angle would a arrow and bow type combination that can penetrate a particular type of shield stop penetrating and start deflecting?
I think that the amount of variables is too great...like: what if a strong archer is shooting a 200 pound bow targeting a mounted knight in full high quality armor that is charging towards the archer? Usually archers would focus on the horses, but what if he chose to fire at the knight's chestplate? Would the combined force of a charging war horseman in full armor with a 200 pound war bow be enough to beat the best chestplate money could buy? What if the bow was a 160 pound one, the horseman were fleeing and he were using only mail? You could go forever imagining scenarios
I was thinking twice and feeling nonsensical about putting on my Shadiversity gear on then this video popped. Finally Shad makes a video for what I started to watch him for Medieval Excellence!!!.
I would imagine gamberson to act like modern soft body armour. So the material would rap around the incoming projectile as it hits. Absorbing alot of the kinetic energy the gamderson was hit with.
I'm so happy that we managed to fully fund the Kickstarter, and get the stretch goals too!
Should be a fantastic film!
Oh, I donated £20 but haven't kept track of the progress.
Excellent news
Wow armor can fail? Sounds like it would be better not to wear any at all… Hey Shad is there a video on the topic of wearing no armor due to the fact it has minor setbacks?
Yup, on the fantasy re-armed series, i nthe episode about the fantasy barbarian
Spoiler: if you a nudist warrior, use a shield 🦉
A man of culture I see!
Lololol
I'll admit you had me in the first half until I remembered that beautiful video
@@raixuh whoosh
You taught me a lot about weapons, armor and in general the Medieval Age. I use it on the creation of my manga series. Thank you very much :)
Your manga series?
@@gilgameshkingofheroes5903 yes I'm making one. I got a publisher in my country. Once I get some news, I'll see if I can find a way to be in english
Is it manga if it isn't from Japan though
@@shinobi-no-bueno if it fits the artstyle and is in reverse, yeah
His videos are extremely useful for creative artists tbh. Manga, comics, film, literature, anduch more.
This subject even in the modern context is a complex issue. The FBI and other groups have done extensive testing on modern body armor against fire arms with various calibers, projectiles, projectile speeds, barrel lengths, etc. The sheer amount of testing done has given us a good idea of the limits of modern body armor.
And yet there is still a massive amount of misconceptions about the topic. I can only imagine how much worse this is in a medieval context since there is no reason (other than historical curiosity) to conduct tests similar in size and scope of the ones done for modern armor.
I for one think this is an interesting pursuit of scientific and historical inquiry.
I am “in” the tank community and there are still problems despite the same amount of testing. This is because the world isn’t a video game where you get perfect results, no one makes the perfect armor that is in the same condition as other armor. There might be a chance where a 75mm round is able to pierce the 100mm steel plate due to what kind of rain it was yesterday.
@@Predator20357 Adding a belle curved-randomizer for certain stats would solve this in video-games.
@@Ermanariks_til_Aujm Agreed, of course players would hate how a end game piece of armor is beaten by a mid game armor due to RNG but there’s a way to actually make it be implemented without it being annoying.
10:41 ah yes, the mail-man. The most dedicated and protected delivery man in all of history!
I really do dislike paper mache armor in fiction and video games. I don't care how "skilled" you are you can't shove your dagger through my chest plate.
Actually paper ma`che armour was tested by myth busters and found to be quite good actually.
@@Tree_-wp5zn Skallagrim also tested layered paper armor and also found it to be effective.
@@adambielen8996 Cool! Did he test it in the rain?
@@Tree_-wp5zn I don't believe so. But with how much glue it took to make the thing it would have been fine.
@@adambielen8996 thanks... Glue tends to hold pretty well in rain so that armour would be great here in indiana.
Shad should have the opportunity to have a discussion with a medieval blacksmith on the quality of armor.
wouldn't he need time traveling cabilities? Last I check Medieval blacksmiths have been dead for 400-500 years.
@@Adam_okaay you need to know that Polish Hussars used plate armor in battle of Vienna in 1683 and kept doing so untill 11 april 1775 when formation was terminated.
So there were blacksmiths with this sort of abilities as close as 200 years ago.
@@michagruzewski5592 Making them DEAD anyway, 200, 500 or 900 years is the same.
@@MegaBIGJOE64 it is significantly easer to recover knowledge from more modern times. Paper don't ussualy survive centuries so writeings, letters and books degrade and rot. Handwriteings of elite blacksmith or his teachings might be still recoverable after 200 years and in 18th century its much more plausable that said blacksmith had education required to write down his knowledge to pass it onto another generations.
Yes, that dates don't change anything in regards to meeting blacksimth in person, but change alot in regards to recovering his knowledge.
@@michagruzewski5592 I perfectly know that, so your point is what exactly ? They're dead.
I love, in games, where there is grading associated with a piece of armor. I really like it as well when there is "type" of physical damage too - piercing, blunt, etc.
It actually well-justifies going "you know what? I'm gonna learn magic."
Some of them also have Quality grades that act like a multiplier for the base properties of the given piece of armor, so a freshly-fitted suit with 100 quality would provide better protection than a rusty salvaged suit from a damp cave that has something like 45 quality left.
Something I always been very curious about is how maintenance factors into both armor and weapons. Also long-term feild usage.
My understanding is that armor should be cleaned and maintained/repaired essentially as often as possible such as after every usage
I don't know about Medieval armor, though I assume that keeping it maintained and oiled would be a task for the squires and servants.
But ease of manufacture and maintenance is supposedly why the Romans never completely dropped the lorica hamata, since it was essentially self-cleaning from wear (roll it in a barrel of sand for more thorough cleaning), and repairing would just involve hooking a few rings together and a couple of new rivets.
Compare that to the lorica segmentata, which needed to be tailored to some degree, repairs were relatively more complicated (metal strips and leather or fabric attachment points as opposed to small iron rings), and maintenance required more effort and time.
@@eldorados_lost_searcher That assumes you have servents though, keep in mind that a decent portion of the dudes in a medieval army were random dudes that got drafted. If you were of the "free man" rank (or something comperable) in a lot of regions you were required to own some sort of weapon and serve in your local lord's forces in the event you got called upon. These guys were usually farmers or trademen of some sort, so they weren't neccesarily wealthy enough to have their own servents and would have to do maintence themselves (or draft a family member to do it for them I guess.) They'd also be limited to the more affordable armor options like gambeson, which wouldn't have the same maintence needs. (How do you repair gameson anyway? Try to stitch up the tears and hope no one cuts through the thread? Stick a patch on it? Take it apart and replace the damaged layers? Just buy a new one? I don't actually know, it's something I've been meaning to look up for a while now...)
@@Amy_the_Lizard
Those are all good points.
I wouldn't discount the baggage train that would follow the army having someone there who could stitch up gambesons, or relying on fellow levies for help with looking after each other's equipment.
It's tough to make blanket statements, though. The time period and geographic area covered are pretty vast.
It always makes me laugh when in movies the hero just cuts down hundreds of mooks left and right, yet the mooks are clad head to toe in full armour. They somehow just slash and stab right through it and kill them in one hit. The mooks may as well be naked.
Really hard to remember a movie where someone struggled due to the armour actually protecting the enemy, (that didn't just end up in them stabbing right through it again 2 sec later).
Game of Thrones was decent about remembering that armor exists. They still slip up from time to time, but since most of the time it was focused on individual fights, they kept armor in mind
Lord of the Rings was one of those comedically bad ones when it came to people and orcs in full plate instantly dying after a sword slash. At that point, with how much long distance running or riding was occasionally involved, they might've just been better off without any. Not like their paper armor did anything anyway. At least then they'd preserve their own and their mounts' stamina a bit more.
I'm going to get skewered for this, but The Duel had some really good scenes demonstrating the effectiveness of armor, and the effort and specific weaknesses that needed to be exploited in order to defeat it.
Hell, there's a scene where Matt Damon is in a force caught in an ambush, and he sees his allies pull back from the arrows being shot at them, and he turns and asks them why they're running, while the arrows deflect off his armor. And another one where he half-swords in a melee, gets disarmed, grabs another weapon off the ground, and eventually beats a guy to death with a mail coif that he wrapped around his fist.
I had the same thought, watching the recent Dune adaptation. Everyone has those shields, that supposedly stop high-speed objects from striking the wearer with deadly force. Then we see the Harkonnen footsoldiers wearing what looks like full-body armour. Which should make them effectively invulnerable, right? The shields stop high-speed, high impact attacks that could defeat their armour. While the armour itself should stop the slow strikes that fighters are taught to employ to defeat shields.
But then the Harkonnens get shredded as if their armour is made of paper. By Atreides soldiers wearing no armour whatsoever. Including soldiers fighting with spears, which should be almost totally worthless against shields, because they are mainly dependent on thrusting force that would be nullified by shields.
@@apollohateshisdayjob9606 Jorah Mormont vs Dothraki Champion fight is a good example.
The dothraki slashes Jorah with a Sickle blade, doing minimal damage, Jorah then kills him with a straight sword.
"You can't defeat me! Not with my armor!"
"I have a can opener".
"Ok, that is Sauron's level of threat..."
Muskets penetrating armour is exceedingly rare. It’s a common misconception that armour wasn’t effective against period guns, and even the more “modern” muskets of the 1800’s cannot penetrate plate mail in tests.
LMAO
@@virtuallyreal5849
Some of those tests are badly flawed.
I have seen sub caliber shot with extra wadding for a good gas seal get higher velocities and thus better penetration.
@calvingreene90 primitive APDS
@Neo Alteisen "parry this you fuckin casual"
Skallagrim also tested the Armour Slayer.
Technically a sword, but it was designed to bypass armour.
The results were interesting.
Yeah, that thing was pretty impressive. It has the brute mass and narrow points to focus all that energy so you can stove in plate.
There is a superb book "The knight and the blast furnace" by Alan Williams. Author gives some excellent tables on how much force you need to penetrate different armor types.
Isn't that the really controversial one? I believe it isn't valid for a whole host of reasons- that started all this debate 20 years ago. It was universally agreed someone at some point should do it for real, but that came into the debate pulling a bow over 100 lbs is physically impossible. Then The Great Warbow: From Hastings to the Mary Rose came out a few years later that claimed the longbows were as much as 187 lbs. Which was of course considered ludicrous and started a trend of a few warbow pioneers who trained heavier and heavier up to in more recent years demonstrating 200lbs, showing it was more than possible, and one by one those voices shut up.
Essentially the research in that book is extremely outdated and flawed on just about every level, but it started all of this.
@@mandowarrior123 er I’m not sure I understand. The book predicted or covered the usage of high poundage bows, which people thought was impossible, but was eventually shown to have basis and be possible, so therefore the research is flawed?
@@Goji-Moji no, it was very flawed as force can't be used to measure armour penetration, velocity does. Also the armour was incorrect, as were the 'arrow heads' its a long story but it is inaccurate in almost every way.
@@mandowarrior123 “force can’t be used to measure armor penetration” sounds like a patently absurd statement in general, as it’s entirely possible to punch through metal with out any kind of speed at all, with high force, and this principle is used to punch out mass produced steel parts in general. Deformation of a material, any material, under any circumstances is done with force. If there’s no force exerted there’s no work done. This is such a bizarrely wrong basic physics thing to say, it’s difficult to imagine you actually know what you’re talking about here. Measuring force and impulse with any kind of reliability is a separate challenge, but to say “force can’t be used to determine penetration” is blatantly wrong. If anything the mass and kinetic energy of projectile are what are informing us of the kinds of forces that will be seen on impact.
Furthermore it’s wrong in the context of the paper itself; the calculations referenced don’t use force, they use kinetic energy. So, what exactly are you talking about? By all means, give me the long story.
EDIT: If by “force” you mean bow poundage then you’re running into the fabulously obvious issue that the force of the bow, along with the distance over which that force is exerted, along with the *mass and density of the arrow, which is extremely important as well, not just it’s velocity* determines said arrow velocity. I’ve read the paper, it doesn’t suggest anything as asinine as “200 pound bows are better than 100 pound bows no matter what” and ignore draw distance or force curves over tension ranges or anything like that, so I’d again want to know what exactly you’re talking about.
best thing about shad is he isnt affraid do not give a staight answer and prioritises honesty instead of just getting to a general answer
I just went back to watch an older video from 2020 and even in those two years it is surprising how much you have slimmed down, you are looking good, good on you mate!
I found that every day I am looking for a new Shad video especially with the Shadlands update and I am thinking C'mon Shad I want another video, and I am excited to watch another one. But I realized that it is amazing that you upload as often as you do and I am awed by your creativity and work ethic as many RUclipsrs have said it can take hours to make a video if not days. So I shall reel, reign in my anticipation / impatience and be grateful for all of your future videos. 😁
I've never seen a modern test where any arrow has pierced decent plate armor.
And still, I would NOT want to be under an arrow storm even if wearing the best armor ever made.
Its a really old argument... weapons are too powerful for any armor; no, armor is too powerful for any weapon. As for me, I would have worn armor for IF I got hit, not so that I COULD take hits without worry.
The idea of an arrow storm was 'fire enough and some will hit'. So I can't agree more. Wear it in case of getting hit rather than to make yourself invincible
@@DarthAxolotl similar to modern doctrine of volume of fire with guns
@@DarthAxolotl It´s a moot point. Armor clad knights were a rarity. At best, they would represent 5% to 10% of the fighting force. Therefore debating wether arrows would penetrate them is a non issue, because the point was not to down the knights, but rather to down the men around them. The debate about arrows vs. common man-at-arms armor is much more prevalent and interesting. One thing we know for sure, is that they were not idiots. If the bow was a common weapon on the battlefield, then we must assume that they worked, and weren´t carried just for giggles. Therefore, we must arrive at the conclusion that they DID penetrate the average armor, otherwise they would have faded from use.
To put into perspective: Rifles don´t pen a tank, yet they haven´t faded from use either, because:
a) they work for the number 1 threat a soldier faces, which is other soldiers., and
b) tanks aren´t that numerous in a battlefield, to warrant arming every soldier with something else to counter them.
Likewise, bows were not abandoned, because they were still an excellent weapon against 90% of the threats they faced. The remaining 10% would be dealt with by spears, swords, and halberds, wielded by other knights. If you down the knight´s men (knights were often lords, that commanded their own men), chances are you get the knight to surrender, and you can ransom him for a hefty ammount, to pay for your campaign. Therefore, actually defeating a knight might even not have been their intended purpose. So why arm yourself for it?
@@Biden_is_demented Some armies were comprised of almost entirely plated soldiers. For example, in the battle of a Agincourt, almost every French infantrymen was a lord wearing plate.
In the early 1500s some armies were comprised completely of men at arms, or mercenaires clad in plate maille.
Many medieval depictions also support this.
@@virtuallyreal5849 That´s a Hollywood myth. The rank and file of any army was lucky to get a mail shirt, a gambeson and a helm. Only nobility could field a full plate suit. The rest were armoured in a hotchpotch mix of mail, gambeson, and leather. Remember that kings and lords were footing the bill, and had to arm the men who were mostly farmers and poor artisans. The cost of arming every man-at-arms in plate was just untenable. And a full suit of plate took months, even a year to make, and cost a fortune. The idea of giving every man-at-arms such a thing is ludicrous.
They should try a volley test: get as many people with appropriate bows as you can and send a single volley at several set up suits of armor to average the chances of hitting a weak spot.
Yes, can't support this enough. I would have made the same comment if you didn't get here first.
What's the difference between that and multiple successive shots by a single archer?
@@TheLoachman variance between shooters primarily. But mostly just the visual of what it would look like for an armored group of knights to get hit with a volley.
@@kongilian I'd definitely enjoy the spectacularity of that (and who would not?). It would be far, far more entertaining than repetitive shots even if both achieve the same overall result.
I don't think, from what I've seen so far, that there would be any change in the "the chances of hitting a weak spot", though.
But, yes, I'm all in favour, now.
All the examples shad gave on how different weapons/arrowheads effected armor differently were good and i was paying close attention to see if he would mention waxing the arrowheads. unfortunately he didn't cause i think that was the most revealing thing to me when todd tested that. blew my mind on how much it increased the effectiveness against textile armor.
I know I'm far from the only one, but it really is a giant pet peeve of mine that practically no movie or show ever that features armour ever shows that armour actually being effective - even LOTR that shows Frodo's mail saving him has several other armours that seem to be made of paper.
"When you think about it, berserkers were basically drug fueled real life furries of the Viking age" - Skallagrim, 2022
The problem i see with arrows, as that they were usually not aimed. It was just volley fire at range. And at range the arrows are going to lose energy. The testing i saw in this video was basically point blank.
there is some controversy if they were used short ranged and flat shooting.
though i can definitely find a whole bunch of accounts of long range shooting, where the archers retreated before a attack could be mounted, or where one side was out of range and the other in raaange (like towton) but also sniping carpenters trying to rebuild a bridge in campaigns by charles the bold are mentioned (there is an account quoted in richard vaughns works on the dukes of burgundy)
the test todd did was stacked against the armour, so best possible aaarrow shot with medium weight armour protection, but representative... if thaat doesn't penetrate, then breastplates are frontally pretty proof. Stacking it to one side of the spectrum makes sense in that it shows that it is pretty impossible.
"Usually not aimed but just volley fire at range and arrows would loose energy over distance."
Now think about that for a second. If you would be in command of archers in medieval battle, would you want your guys to shoot all their arrows at range, where it is least likely to hit someone and on top of that would deal the least amount of energy?
English arrow bags held 24 arrows, and an archer was expected to be able to shoot 12 arrows per minute (can be done faster tough, even Shad shot 18 per minute) that is average of 2 minutes and your archers are out of arrows. How long did battles last? I don't know, but a whole lot more than 2 minutes. I would choose careful when to order my archers to shoot and when not, if I would be the one in command. I would try to make sure that as many of the arrows actually hit someone as possible and thet they would do as much damage to said someone as possible.
But the purpose of arrows varied according time and place, from beeing the most important factor dealing enemies casualties to being only harassment and making enemies ability to fight and execute tactical manoeuvres more difficult.
@@jkre at Towton the one side shot most of their arrows out of range (not being able to see the fall of shot due to the blizzard) and those were shot back by the opposite side who was in range.
so we have a bunch of examples where extreme range is really evident.
area interdiction is a big deal, in fact on several occasions the chroniclers say that the arrow shot simply forced the opposite side to start their attack, so this is a common use, where you make them not want to stay where they are.
even a modest movement of the target unit can greatly reduce the number of hits the arrows make even on very large bodies of men
Of volleys of thousands of arrows you can have instances where but about a few dozen arrows actually hit a person, many fall between people in the ranks, even, or just fall short or long of the unit. These often still don't defeat the armour then.
conversely, you don't need that many wounded soldiers to make a real impact on morale.
if 5 vollies of 4000 arrows are loosed (20k arrows total) and, say, 200 people get hit.. and only 20-40 of those are hurt at all, that would be a significant loss in a short space of time.
more modern gunfire doesn't do any better, btw, if you look at the charge of the light brigade, how 'few' people actually get hit before they reach the guns, but there are many instances.
The rate of hits of arrows is probably, in my numerical assumption above, much higher than musket fire in most of history, even at 1/3 of the range.
@@jkre Look at actual historical uses or archers. That is more often than not exactly how they were used. They were using mass manufactured arrows, that may or may not be decent quality, and certainly were not set up for each archers individual bow. Different draw weighs and bow sixes optimally use different arrows. Can't do that when you are supplying thousands of arrows for a campaign.
So while individual archers probably could hit what they aimed at at close range with hand made arrows suited to the bow they were using, two problems with that. Those aren't the arrows they will be using in combat. And you don't want your archers getting overrun by calvary or infantry. You lose a lot of archers that way.
@@jeromethiel4323 your theory is based on assumption that they cannot shoot accurate with mis match arrows, but that is wrong. The accuracy difference between mis match and matching arrows is so minor, that it doesn't have make any difference in the context of war archery or hunting. Arrow tuning is a modern thing made for target archery, where you are after one inch bull's eye, in war, your bull's eye is as big as the person you are aiming at. You don't need as high level of accuracy for that as you need for modern target shooting.
I make bows and arrows, and for my personal use, i don't even care about arrow tuning, I shoot so many different types and poundages of bows with multiple different shooting styles, that would take for ever to make perfectly matching arrows for every bow and shooting style and the accuracy gain is so minor that it doesn't make any difference to me, since i don't shoot in competitions. So I just use same arrows for everything, I have multiple different spine, length and weight arrows and I even use them mixed, cus I no longer have proper set of any arrow cus I have broken most of my arrows. And the number one reason why my arrows break, is that they are hitting each others in the target, without accuracy, that wouldn't happen so often.
So to think that medieval archers wouldn't shoot accurately cus they couldn't because of mass produced arrows, is just wrong. They very much could and did shoot accurately. Humans would have ditched bows a long time ago if they wouldn't have been accurate, at least in hunting, where accuracy is more important than in warfare.
16:55 This is a principle still used in armor. The rifle plates in modern body armor have a plastic coating that keeps you from getting shot in the neck by exploding bullet fragments.
I am curious if soft armor pad layered on top of AR500 steel would be better than the truck bed liner.
Am I the only one who lets the entire song play out at the end, just because it sounds so cool?
I love the aussie pronounciation of armor. aa-m'r
I made a comment on the Longbow vs Armour test in that during the test the first shot went low and completely transfixed the target. Therefore, the probabilities are against the approaching soldier, in that say 1% of arrows find a 'chink' in the armour and that you are approaching 5,000 archers shooting, on average, 12 arrows a minute. That is 60,000 arrows or about 600 casualties a minute. As for what is considered a Traditional English Longbow, many of these are really Welsh, in that English Warbows (shown in contemporary images) had a recurve, this follows lessons learned during the crusades
Man, Tod has so many projects these days that I need to see more of. Lockdown longbow, arrows vs armour, not to mention the trebuchet... Shad I really recommend that you check out HistorySquad's series on Medieval Archery and Agincourt.
love kevin hicks; great channel
I've been enjoying it, and the channel is still small enough to reliably get replies if you have any good points, information, or questions.
Always nice.
The cloth layer on top reminds me of how some armour plates work now. With a kevlar sleeve on top to catch and stop fragmenting bullets
One I noticed about when testing bows against armor is they always fire bows directly at the armor. but if you look at images and even texts the archers weren't firing directly they fired up using gravity and terminal velocity so the arrows would not be coming head on but from above. Thus the arrows would be more likely to hit along the collar area of the armor and so if that wasn't as heavily protected that could do so serious damage.
These are my favorite Shad videos
I've always wanted to see more comprehensive tests done using historical things. Yes, weapons and armor, but also things like camping equipment, horses, formations in battle and other things we don't really use anymore.
As an example, we all know formations were intrinsic to warfare for thousands of years, but at least I've never heard a firsthand account of what it was like to be in those formations, knowing you could be killed if it failed.
I'm from the USA and I've read letters from various US conflicts about war, but those were after hot weapons became standard on the battlefield. What was it like for those few thousand Greeks to be facing down the Persian army?
And how did they eat, camp, store their weapons before the battle? How did religion play into their actions? Not in a "Who did they pray to?" kind of way, but did their religion demand certain rituals and did those rituals have any impact on their performance during the fight? How about their rations and the way they conducted themselves?
I only use the Greeks because the Battle of Thermopylae is very well known in history, not because I'm exclusively curious about them.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'd love to see almost mockumentaries about living in those times. Both in and out of battle.
Maybe if the Shadlands ever get finished then you could make them. Historically accurate representations of the life of different class soldiers, peasant, freeman, landowners, knights, minor lords, and great lords.
These are all excellent suggestions! Aside from a latent curiosity about these things, they would be immensely helpful details for the books I'm working on. There will be several battle scenes, but the bulk of the story will revolve around traveling adventurers. Even in a fantasy world, it's important to have realistic elements!
Exactly!
While I've stopped writing because my life got busy, when I was, finding accurate information about life and travel was the hardest thing.
Thermopylae is a choke point. The fact is, the Greek did not really out perform the Persians in battle, there is quite a few victories on both sides, with similar numbers. Plus, the first Greco-Persian war, had the Persian achieve their goals, which technically makes it a Persian victory, not a Greek victory, like is depicted today.
Thermopylae is in the secind Greco-Persian war though.
Note that the Persian army was not exactly Persian. It was multi cultural, levied from all over the largest empire of Antiquity (The Persian Empire under Darius dwarf Rome at its height, under Trajan, in both land size and % of the world population, which is often estimated to be 44%, the higest of any empire by far). The Elamites were rebowned for their archers, the Persians and Medes for their cavalry, the Assyrians for their heavy infantry, Indians had elephants, etc.. Those are all people the empire levied and there was soooo many more. The Achaemenid Emoire stretched from Makedon or Thrace, depending on the source, to the Indus valley from West to East and from Crimea to Egypt fron North to South. This is just before the population of China and the Gange exploded, back when Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley and Egypt were the most populous regions of the world and the Empire held all 3 of them.
@@nathanc939 Okay, to start I'd like to say sorry for troubling you by getting my facts messed up. I was writing quickly and couldn't remember the names correctly. Not that I get battle names correct even when I take my time. 😅
Even still, what you told me were outcomes and numbers. While they tell us a lot, it leaves out so much detail. And those details matter, at least I believe that they do.
What I was trying to say was that I wanted to know more about what individuals would have experienced from a practical point-of-view. How long did it take to put on their armor? Did they sleep partially armored if it took long? If soldiers knew they were facing death in the morning, how did it change their behavior? What would it look like to walk into the campsite? What were people doing and saying? Where did they sleep? What kind of bushcraft was used, or did they bring everything? Were there servants or slaves following them like in later armies? How were they treated and what did their lives look like?
Honestly I just have so many questions.
@@danieltiffany1793 that would very much depend on the situation.
See, the Rajput had major defeats against the Muslims, because they followed a strict code of honour, which meant no surpise attack. In Indian warfare, it worked perfectly fine, as it was followed and thus soldiers did not have to be ready at all time, even with opposing armies right next to each others. Well, the Muslim invaders did not give a shit. It took a few battles for the Rajputs to adapt and prepare for it. There is a reason they were known as the warriors of North India though, they were extremely professional, compared to everyone else.
As for medieval Europe, knights would not wear the full set, most of the time. Same with most soldiers actually. It does not make sense, in most cases to be ready at all time, at least not for the whole army. You see, armies often stopped in sight of each others. Mounting a attack takes time and it can be seen, so you can usually just prepare when you chose to attack or see your enemy doing just that. This is why ambush forces were usually smaller and detached from the main armies which is in turn why a small portion of the army was always ready and on guard. This seems to be what applies to most of the world btw.
As for what people said and talked about, I do not know.
one thing also is the matter of impact from hits. a sword might not cut through, say mail, but it will still do a nice boink on whatever you are hitting. bruises, internal damage, even breaking bones. with big two-handed sword you may be able to topple a plate covered opponent and overwhelm them with sheer brutality. once they're down, curb stomp 'em.
This entire video is gold for any out of context compilations or YTPs.
"...if the opportunity presents itself, then just going hard and penetrating the..."
"...thrusts are the easiest way to penetrate..."
-Shadiversity, 2022
My eyebrows were raised when they were first mentioned
Tod's done some great work on this topic so far, I certainly am looking forward to the end results of this new set of tests. I intend to help as soon as I can see what my budget for the KS is going to be,
16:43 the more things change the more they stay the same. Modern hard body armor has a coating on it the prevent fragments of the bullet, or in extreme cases the armor itself, from hitting the wearer. After all it would suck to have the jacketing from the bullet your armor just stopped hit you in the jugular.
Shad has to be one of the best people I've seen use practical and defended arguments on any topic
I can't wait to see Tod's new video in a few months. I appreciate all the promotion and hopefully more stretch goals added to the project.
A comment about the weights of bows: I think that an archers may have more than one bow; possibly a lower weight to let off continuous volleys, & a heavier bow for longer range one off shots.
There is no evidence that supports this. With all my years I have been into historical archery, I have only heard of one army who would carry two bows, and that is recorded as something out of ordinary. The army being Mongols during mongol conquest.
Some say the other bow was lighter than the other one, but even that is not verified as a fact by my knowledge. There are many theories why they would have carried two bows.
One is that the other one was kept strung and the other one at rest (horn bows can handle long times being strung, but would loose some of the draw weight, but gains it back at rest for some time without the string) and they would change every now and then, so they will always have a bow in their disposal.
Second theory is that because the temperature greatly affects the draw weight of the bow, and mongolians would fight also during winter (witch some composite horn bow using people didn't do) they would have one bow for summer and one for winter, so the power of the bow would stay consistent.
Third theory (that is in my opinion most unlikely of these 3) is that other bow was stronger to deal with heavy armored opponents and longer ranges, and the other was lighter to shoot faster rate at lighter armored opponents.
But yeah, how ever it may have been why mongolians carried two bows, the records lead to believe that they were the exception and not the norm in the amount of bows archers carried. I would imagine tough that there were spare bows in every army including archers, just for the case of bows breaking, but there is no evidence of two bows being in active use by single archer is battle (including the mongolians, even tough they carried two, I don't know any evidence that they actually used them both in same battle).
Sharpness matters a lot against soft armor because it directly affects the amount of pressure placed on the target by the blade. This changes the damage mechanism from trying to stretch the material in half, to actually exceeding the cavity strength of the material locally.
In other words, it changes it from delivering energy to a large area of a flexible material (much larger than the sword) to delivering it to a tiny area (the actual contact patch).
first thing on my mind was harden the gambeson with beeswax, i also theorize potential problems. Waxed textiles was a thing mainly used in storage and water protection, so its not far fetched if the gambeson was waxed but more for weather protection
It is theoretically possible that in some scenarios a weaker bow may penetrate better due to differences in angle fired which will alter the angle of the strike.
I'd have to think the cloth over the plate armor is also about protecting the plate.
Plate armor is expensive and while arrows might not go through it we did see that those specifically made to be anti-armor, when shot at 160 lb can put a good sized dent in it.
Such dents ruin the structural strength of the "dome" and so could lead to actual penetration or just make moving in it very difficult.
In other tests though Todd found that arrows made to be anti-armor tended to not be as good against cloth armor, at the lower ends they even bounced off.
So, to get the most out of your big investment in plate armor it's only logical to put the cloth armor over it.
2. point (more for shields) that is often left out, an arrow shot straight at the target has a much higher chance of penetrating than if it is shot at an angle. Nearly all tests don't take this into consideration and that leads to people thinking armour is useless
During the Taiping rebellion (1860) some rebels had 50+ layers of raw silk glued together to make gambeson.
Greetings from Brazil Shad! Here's an idea for a video: the new season of Love, Death and Robots just came out and one of the episodes focuses on a group of european knights. It would be great, as always, to see your perspective and breakdown of it. The Arms & Armor look stunning and the animation is insane, I am sure you will find it interesting.
Love your channel and everything you have done to spread knowledge of the medieval period worldwide. You have even inspired some to start similar channels in my home country. I have also read your book and found it to be a great experience. I wish you success and can't wait for the next video!
I have found a considerable number of arrowheads around some German castles and the weight and shapes of the actual arrow/bodkin heads vary greatly. Besides the bow or crossbow poundage the actual shape and weight of the head and hardness of the head are important as it has to be able to deliver the maximum energy without deflecting. Counter intuitive but a pointier arrow isn’t better at armor plate penetration and the majority of arrows are chubby heavy bodkin that are not sharp but are just intended to pierce by mass and velocity.
One thing I would like to see done is having a dummy/target with some rotational freedom. A lot of tests always seem to only give the option for the target to move purely backwards making the armour take all of the force and do all of the work in deflecting the arrow/strike. When in reality if a person gets hit on the left side of their chest, their body is going to twist to left as well as fall backwards, helping to further deflect the force.
I'd like to see that if an arrow or bolt does pierce the armour, if adding that rotational freedom like a human has would be enough to then deflect the arrow/bolt.
The idea that at the start of battle you swing a sword and it goes through the gambeson and could fatally cut someone only for minutes later you to swing against someone with potentially worse armor and it does nothing is quite the interesting and in some ways shocking thing to realize.
Brilliant, excellent ideas for what could be looked at by Todd's project, but can I add the fear element of walking forward into a potential haze if constant arrow impact, surely terrifying, cheers jj
what you need is a leveling system for medieval armor, something like body armor has today, and classify diffrent arrowheads and over variations of weapons too.
I would be fascinated at how different metal grades would work in the armor, as in the 20th century we built battleships and tanks from Steel that is face hardened to a certain thickness, then behind it is a layer of soft steel. This being done to acknowledge that hard steel is brittle but also hope to blunt the incoming projectile then have the soft steel absorb the energy.
It's like modern armor using an outer layer to capture bullet fragmentation.
Understanding armor is about understanding physics. A softer material can not pierce a harder material no mater how much force is applied, all that happens is the softer material deforms. As a materials hardness and thickness go up, so does the amount of force needed to deform it, this is super important because the armor is being worn by a mobile object. With full plate we get to the point where the needed force to deform that armor ends up moving the human instead. This is why full plate wearers where first knocked down / immobilized and then had a dagger shoved through one of the natural openings of the plate. Finally swords were terrible against metal armor, they were strictly personal defense weapons. Instead spears and polearms were the preferred methods, less metal to make sharp / hard, easier weapon construction and easier to train mass numbers of men to effectively use.
For the reasons above bows were never good against solid metal plates, ever. It took arrows finding the same openings the dagger was shoved through to disable or kill, and since accuracy isn't that precise you ended up having to fire mass volleys and rely on sheer number of shots. Of course solid metal armor was actually quite rare, most soldiers were conscripts who didn't have the training to effectively fight in metal armor and instead where given cheaply made gambeson. Only the relatively small number of nobles and maybe their personal guards would be wearing metal armor, as they commanded hundreds if not thousands of peasants.
Keep in mind that the weapon itself need not necessarily penetrate the armor. A mace to the head is gonna hurt even if you're wearing a very good helmet because the shock and momentum of the impact penetrates the armor even though the weapon doesn't.
So glad you said that bit about role playing and wanting to understand in order to have a greater grasp of the subtle advantages. So then, here is mine. I am a slinger, and I am amazed at how much attention bows and arrows get without consideration of their sister war weapon, the sling. The arrows is the weapon of precision, the sling is the weapon of destruction; the arrow penetrates, the sling bullet hits with blunt force. Name the armor that can withstand a fist-sized stone hurled at over 100 miles an hour. Plate becomes a liability, mail does nothing, gambeson is the best protection.
I believe that slingers are more of a consideration to be reckoned with on the bistorical battlefield. Slingers could inflict structural damage and penetrate defense that arrows could not. They could also fire incendiary rounds and I am finding extensive evidence of explosive ceramic grenades as far back as the 11th century. This seems to give an edge to the slingers vs the archers. Curious about lack of coverage in this historically as well as in gaming, LARPing, film. The sling was a vital weapon and was used from antiquity up to the time where firearms and cannon took over the scene.
Man, that's another bunch of stuff to consider when developing a game with medieval combat . I feel like if someone wants to add in as much realism to a title, the best example to emulate would be Project Zomboid.
True, though personally I don't like games or fantasy books/movies that have too much realism/complexity.
Crazy sharp and polished sharp. Both shave, both cut amazing, both slice paper and tissue without ripping it but, the crazy sharp one will clog up and stop cutting textile armor efficiently.
I think that advancements in weapons and armor technology would've been competitive over time. I think if plate armor could be bypassed so easily with melee weaponry and arrows perhaps guns wouldn't have even been invented.
Testing with lower poundage could also be used as a proxy for longer shooting distance, if you figure out approximately how much speed the arrow loses due to air resistance over a certain distance. With a well thought out test and thorough documentation of the results, you could have a great basis for approximating and extrapolating a wide variety of cases with many different variables.
This conversation reminds me of the random videos I see of computer models for sabot tank rounds being shot at different armor types. I would love to see something similar but for getting through medieval armor.
Ever since I was a kid and I was watching medieval films and I noticed that swords and arrows would go straight through the front of plate armour. I always asked myself "What's the point of the armour if it seemingly doesn't do anything?"
So hopefully, these tests over the coming months will give some answers to my questions.
@Aggromemnon this actually makes perfect sense. Thanks man!
A lot of these type of tests have been done pre-internet but are incredibly difficult to find in out of print books.
When I was about 10 yrs old,(50+ years ago) my great aunt gave me a book on Medieval Armour (I think limited edition from Cardiff Museum, South Wales UK?)
Unfortunately it has disappeared sometime in the last 50+ years.
I do remember reading that 'front line' archers used 140~170 lbs bow and were actually paid more for high draw weight? The 'effective range' was also given as 250 yards but I think it meant maximum range? (it was a book with notes you had to look up in the back and references to various historians)
Being Welsh 'we' always got taught about the Welsh Bowmen at Agincourt (even during English lessons and we were not even doing Shakespeare's Henry V)
I always love these history talking videos from shad
Armor like many other things can have pros and cons and that includes getting damaged or destroyed.
Armor does have its limits and constraints, more so than the chitinous shells of insects. If you wear armor it then it is much more akin to getting a second skeleton rather than a second skin. But it still depends. If you go for mastercrafted maille, then it should be like getting a harder yet still mostly flexible skin. If you wear plate, then having a surcoat over it might seem stupid at first, until you realize that cloth is an insulator. To even keep more cool don't wear a gambeson, just some pretty thin stuff underneath the maille and armor (although it would degrade the armor way faster than if you had a gambeson, also if by any chance you get hit by a mace or a war hammer, the gambeson will function akin to a buffer, so not wearing it would probably lead to a few fractures here and there or a collapsed ribcage and fractured organs).
Shad I really love how you support other RUclipsrs when they do good work
I'd also like range taken into account for such testing. Plus, I'd love to see throwing spears and javelins added to testing, since bows really didn't play a role in the early medieval period.
Something no one seems to be mentioning is variance (There's a Tod's video that mentions it). The same armour can be 3mm thick on some places and 1mm in other. In medieval times, variance was much higher than in modern times.
More so than modern times, sure, but _that_ much variance would either be deliberate (side armour deliberately being thinner) or poor quality even by the standards of the day.
I have seen a skull belonging to merchant guild landsknecht which was penetrated by a bolt from farmers hunting crossbow, which wasn't military grade and it had penetrate his skull but also his steel helm. This was during farmer revolt on Gotland Sweden and the farmers used basically modified farming and hunting equipment against professional armed mercenaries and knights, they succeeded to kill some men of arms but was really massacred outside Visby. The professionalisms which died was basically zerg rushed or killed by ranged weapons and most farmers/peasants killed was killed by horsemen in close combat.
As a armoured fighter this helps me make the perfect armour.
“If it’s penetrating with a higher pounding…”
🤣
It's interesting that you mention at 15:53 that linen/cloth worn over armor can catch arrow fragments. This is similar to modern body armor systems, where armor plates are often covered with a rubber layer. A major reason for this is to catch fragments of bullets after they hit the armor (known as spalling).
the 'using different poundage' is valid, but if I remember correctly they went with a high estimation of the average since its still representative to the damage arrows might do, as well as giving a way to approximate a lower draw weight.
In the performed tests, not a single 160 lb arrow pierced so with that regard there was no reason to go lower.
If tod does it, I still want him to go at it with the 160lb bow first in his tests, and then after seeing what sort of damage it did see it repeated at either 120 or 200lb.
120 is probably the lower average, while 200 is just about the limit, making both of these good measuring points. It's also nice because they are both the same distance from 160.
I haven't read tod's stretch goals yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if he has a part like this in mind already.
Sounds like Shad needs to go on a trip, with the recurve. Line up the long bow, recurve and Tod"s heaviest crossbow.
We all can agree that full plate armor dont help in case of swimming.
(unless you have nothing against walking thru the bottom XD)
You can actually swim wearing mail or plate. It is much harder, but doable. Gauntles and sabatons are what actualy has the most impact, in my experience.
@@nathanc939
Hmmm.
Chain and some types of half-plate maybe could give you chance to not socialize with fishes.
But from my foint of kowledge most armors (french, Gothit and Maximilian on top) will force you for walk, instead of swim.
There was actually a photo of diver-knight trying to fight shark with a sword.
I am curious if there were some videos from that event...
It would be helpfull in our debate...
I got him!!! :
ruclips.net/video/GL411hkK2vE/видео.html
He stands relativly "still", so I think I was right at my point about walking.
Proof to your point can be how soldiers in bulletproof wests are going in water.
They can try not to drown, so thats something around being a "good" thing. XD
@@mateuszbanaszak4671 The guy is wearing a diving mail under that plate. This is basically double weight armour, if we assume it isn't an over built modern version to start with. While you might have mail with plate, that is only really true for early plates, later, you only have mail in joints, if at all and in this case, diving mail is purposefully heavy.
Full plate armour is not heavier than a full mail set. A mail is heavier in proportion of the area covered, quite significantly so. Yes a mail shirt is lighter than a full gothic set, but a large hauberk, covering from your knees to the top of your head is actually heavier than the set of gothic armour.
@@nathanc939
Thanks.
This fact about mail can be usefull.
Also thats that chain equivalent of full plate is heavier from plate will change a thing that i was working of.
And what about gambeson, or how it was called?
I mean this cloth weared under armor.
Did it "drinked" water?
If yes, its weight would be greater than chain-mail.
@@mateuszbanaszak4671 yes the Gambison did obviously drink water. This does not mater though, soaked clothes still float. I am not saying a man in armor floats well, because he does not. It barelly floats, basically, they have to spend energy to keep the head above water, and if they don't, they basically have only the top of their head out, as far as I am aware. This also varies depending on individuals, fat people float really well, meanwhile, I don't float well to start with and swim like a rock, so I would likely drown ifbI were to try for more than 30 seconds.
One thing i’d like to see that never really gets covered in these testing armour vids is field repair on the armour. Everyone always takes out a breastplate thats fresh off the forge, all shiney and not an armour thats moved from battle, to siege to battle to passed down to descendants and has been repaired over and over.
How does it effect the thickness of the armour? Did they do spot welds where a different kind of steel was used because its all they had on hand and how does that effect the armours integrity at those points? Or am i just underestimating soldiers in the medival period and everyone could afford several breastplates to swap out between battles while one sets at a proper forge for repairs and not a hastily set up military camp.
I am pretty sure if you have a hole in your plate you either live with it or get someone to make you a new one , which might point to why brigandines were popular since they were made of multiple smaller plates where a hole would be much easier to patch than a solid breastplate
@@pp-wo1sd not even just holes but say just dings and bumps from hammers etc. Did they get banged back into shape or were they just left like that. And if they were straightened out how much of a problem does metal fatigue become etc
@@micheal5973 I think they only hammered out the ones that would be uncomfortable for the wearer (ie poking him or restricting breathing) . Maybe scratches and small dings were viewed as a point of pride , showing you proved yourself in battle
Definitely not welding bro thats recent tech. Maybe they would rivet a patch on, maybe.
Hey Shad, a question. Have you ever considered doing a video looking over the Byzantines?
Since to cut things through a bit. The Byzantines are the descendants of the Roman Empire, and went on to pioneer a fair amount of military systems and tactics in the medieval period.
The Stratuscon or something gives great insight to much of this. And I was wondering if doing the Byzantines, the link between the Ancient World, the Dark Ages and the Medieval times. Would be very interesting to look at in terms of tactics, approach and gear used.
Just a thought.
I wish I could remember the video but I remember watching one where there was a scholar of medieval warfare discussing Agincourt and he basically said the arrows 'could' pierce the armor, but it was very unlikely, but it was also quite unnecessary. That the concussive force imparted by the warbows even through the armor would be like taking a very hard punch, and there's only so many of those you can take before you have, maybe not life threatening, but debilitating bodily injury that would prevent you from fighting nearly as effectively as you could normally
I disagree with the warbow poundage ranges. Archers back then had been doing archery for their whole lives they were probably some of the strongest people in the military. I feel pretty confident that 160 or so pounds was the common for long bowmen which is what made them so devastating on the battlefield. I think the 200 lb or so was probably the more strong outliers
Archeological evidence does indeed show them at right around 150-180
@@RhodokTribesman all the more reason to disagree
8:20 i offer a different theory and feel it could be the opposite, in England around the time they were testing for by law all boys trained with a bow atleast every Sunday and would of built up strength and technique over their life times. Its quite possible that 160 lbs was the average and not the higher tier. just because we couldnt field that average now doesnt mean they couldnt of back then. for those that didnt have the build to be able to draw that much no matter how much they trained then they wouldnt of been selected as a bowman in the kings army, and it would be a spear or pole arm for you.
Most peasants wouldn’t have been selected then… but we know most peasants trained archery and made up the majority of the army.
@@jimmybobby4824 why wouldnt most peasants of been selected? The skeletons dug up from that period show massive deformed left arms and other bones from years of regular bow shooting.
@@upursanctumMost average peasants would not have been strong enough. They were smaller and weaker than modern humans, by your theory, most peasants would not have been able to be archers because you randomly think 160lbs is not the average weight. We 140-160lbs is the average weight due to the mary rose bows. A few higher and a lot lower.
@@jimmybobby4824 i see what your saying. "the higher the draw weight the more people are excluded"
my point is that a lot of people yourself included seem to think that modern people would be stronger than people from 1200-1500. im suggesting the opposite these men had no sports during this time as they were banned. competitive males only had archery to compete with each other from the ages of 12 to 60. there would of likely been a lot of social standing/importance on their ability with a bow as a result.
there are skeletons with visible deformed bones due to this life of war bow conditioning.
google (pinch of salt required) states the draw weight of warbows being 160 to 180. so even at that joe is shooting at the lower end. mary rose had 200lbs ++ and i dont think its way out there for archers of that day that have trained all their lifes to shoot a 200lbs bow all day as joe can with a 160. That doesnt mean they didnt shoot 120s or 140s.
Im not convinced they were weaker than us i think we a weaker than them. they had hard lives worked everyday, all day and likely had the mussels to show for it.
Im suggesting that these days Joe is impressive but back then he would of been average to good "for a young male".
take this for an example what percentage of Norway and Denmarks population today are competent rowers compared to 600 -700AD population.
@@jimmybobby4824 even at 200lbs i dont think the bow will penetrate the armour. personally i think the way the bow was used was "volume of shots" and made its name by finding the weak spots eyes, neck, shoulders, elbow, stomach and knees. i think it was Joes first or second shot on todds video where he missed the armour and hit straight below it in the stomach area going through everything.
they all went "arh he missed" if that had been for real that chap would of been of the floor clutching the arrow screaming for his mother bleeding out everywhere and all his mates would of had to walk past that. it would of been horrific. Joe didnt miss, that was the bullseye
Shad, I absolutely love how much research and detail you go into on the topics you discuss. I try to do this as well when I'm discussing topics, and I will always let it be known if I don't have much knowledge on the topic. It also helps that I'm interested in a lot of the things that you discuss on your channel. Also, if you want to talk about impenetrable armor, your beard is one of the best. Recently I have been studying fantasy maps, and normal maps in general because I have always found them fun. A bit of context, I'm studying to be a Geologist and it's crazy how much that changes your view on things.
Like how when you have mountain ranges on a map, where on one side you have an ocean, and on the other side you have a desert. Most would not think much of that, but the reason the desert is there is because the updraft created by the ocean carries the moist, warm air up high over the mountains, where it then looses it's moisture, due to airs inability to hold water within low pressure areas. The now dry air descends down the other side of the mountain, creating a desert on the other side due to it. These are called Rain Shadow Deserts, and I find it to be really fascinating.
But now I question why there are no deserts on the other sides of mountains that meet this criteria. It would be due to the atmospheric circulation zones on the planet we are on in the campaign obviously, but it annoys the hell out of my DM when I bring stuff like this up. I made my D&D character have a background in Geology so I could reasonably ask these kinds of questions. My DM hates me because I bring these things up and question him about it, along with other various things in similar lines of thought.
Fun analysis, always appreciate a different perspective of medieval nuances.
Medieval armour is often mentioned as being 'defeated' in period texts. Modern tests need a definition of defeated, was the armour bypassed, was it penetrated and if so what is the depth of penetration and effect of the hit. Plate armour might be holed but the penetration might only be 5mm, mail armour might also be penetrated by the same depth (5mm) but the deformation might take the point deeper than the obviously apparent depth.
That's a nice looking "The Name of the Wind" on the background, it's a very well written and fun to read book, it's a shame the bible will get an update before Rothfuss drops book 3
So I’ve been trying to make my own ttrpg with all this kind of information on and off for a few years now. The idea is to address my biggest pet pieces with 5e and Pathfinder 1e. That is bloated numbers (especially hp) and lack of true weapon and armor diversity. Currently using bludgeoning, chopping, piercing, and slashing as damage types with some armor immune or resistant to each damage type, only providing a very small AC to the others, and some (like gambison) fall apart after taking too much damage. Keep up the good work.
This honestly would really help with immersion and just plain feeling a sense of progression and badassery in video games
16:30 same with modern bulletproof vests, plates have rubber or composite coating to prevent fragmentation
I would really like to see the some bodkins forged of something like 1095 or a different spring steel. Just for shots and giggles.
Even in the modern day take for example a 22 the 22 does not always penetrate the target whether it be a human skull or really thick clothing
Could we have a vid on medieval training material? (What did medieval peoples/knights used to train to combat. Wooden swords? Steel swords? Training armor? Training dummies?)
I want to see arrows vs brigandine armor.
I LOVE the Elder Scrolls Online cinematics. But I was utterly SEETHING at men in heavy plate dying from being slashed in the chest(the strongest part) by a sword or having throwing knives(THROWING KNIVES?!) penetrate the armor. It was extremely frustrating. I love fantasy, I love movies, I love video games. But DAMN do they disrespect armor.
Exciting, eh? Good on you for supporting Todd’s tests! I love gaining these nuggets of information. I wish I had the resources and setup to do my own tests. So far I’ve been limited to ending a few water bottles, tatami, and sticks with swords and one of Todd’s 🗡 daggers. :)
Kudos for supporting Todd's project. When I saw the title of this video, it immediately made me think of Todd Cutler and Matt Easton. Awesome.
Another thing I'd love to see tested, is not just square on, at a perfect 90 degree angle. So far most tests I see are always getting the perfect angle for penetration. In real life, you won't always get the perfect angle against a moving target. I'm pretty sure people who went to war with this equipment had a pretty good idea of how it would behave vs different types of weapons, and if they know the bows the enemy has will likely penetrate with square on hits, they would angle their shields appropriately to prevent that type of hit, to force angled hits.
So a question I have is at what angle would a arrow and bow type combination that can penetrate a particular type of shield stop penetrating and start deflecting?
Filmmakers don't care about how stuff really works, but it's great for roleplaying.
He should see if anyone will donate a piece of armour or arrows for the cause. Perhaps get a whole miniseries out of it. Great publicity.
I'm exited 😁
I think that the amount of variables is too great...like: what if a strong archer is shooting a 200 pound bow targeting a mounted knight in full high quality armor that is charging towards the archer? Usually archers would focus on the horses, but what if he chose to fire at the knight's chestplate? Would the combined force of a charging war horseman in full armor with a 200 pound war bow be enough to beat the best chestplate money could buy? What if the bow was a 160 pound one, the horseman were fleeing and he were using only mail? You could go forever imagining scenarios
I was thinking twice and feeling nonsensical about putting on my Shadiversity gear on then this video popped. Finally Shad makes a video for what I started to watch him for Medieval Excellence!!!.
I would imagine gamberson to act like modern soft body armour. So the material would rap around the incoming projectile as it hits. Absorbing alot of the kinetic energy the gamderson was hit with.