Got a Real-World Weapon or Armor Question? Mk. VII

[Psyx]

Not saying they're comparable in any way to the knight, but the idea that they were an untrained disorganized rabble is a bit of a misconception.

But the idea that they were as competent as a knight is laughable.


Simple question how long would it take say A master armor smith and 3-4 apprentices to craft suit of armor? Say mid 17th century heavy cavalry full plate.

Erm... I don't think there was such a thing as C17 full plate.

If you mean earlier full plate, then I believe it was made in a few places in Europe in very large workshops. Certainly more than 4 people were involved in the making of it. No idea on timescale, though.

[Yora]

What did people think about the musketeer vs Ming episode.
You are talking about Deadliest Warrior? Isn't that the show that most people with a bit of knowledge of the subject think to be completely laughable?

[Dienekes]

But the idea that they were as competent as a knight is laughable.

Well yeah, we're in agreement here.


You are talking about Deadliest Warrior? Isn't that the show that most people with a bit of knowledge of the subject think to be completely laughable?

Except a lot still watch it. Because, hell man, a guy punched through a cow!

[Spiryt]

Simple question how long would it take say A master armor smith and 3-4 apprentices to craft suit of armor? Say mid 17th century heavy cavalry full plate.

As have been said, there were at most few full plates armor suits mid 17th century, at least the utilitarian, actually battlefield ones.

Anyway, answer's obviously not very simple at all, since like with 'clothes' in general, and armor in particular, such details would hugely depend on overall quality of the piece, how well it's adjusted and fit to the owner... And many others.

[Yora]

Except a lot still watch it. Because, hell man, a guy punched through a cow!

And without having seen it, I think many people will think something similar about said episode. :smallbiggrin:

[HenryHankovitch]

Simple question how long would it take say A master armor smith and 3-4 apprentices to craft suit of armor? Say mid 17th century heavy cavalry full plate.

Going off of what people have mentioned in earlier threads, I believe there are references to munitions-grade, late-medieval plate armor being turned out in a matter of a few days. Though this is more the "one size fits all," mass-produced sort of armor, rather than a custom-fit harness for a particular individual. This probably also assumes a specialized shop with lots of trained labor on hand.

[fusilier]

Going off of what people have mentioned in earlier threads, I believe there are references to munitions-grade, late-medieval plate armor being turned out in a matter of a few days. Though this is more the "one size fits all," mass-produced sort of armor, rather than a custom-fit harness for a particular individual. This probably also assumes a specialized shop with lots of trained labor on hand.

I think that the main issue would be having stock material at hand to make the armor from. If they have to forge the plate themselves, then I suspect it may take longer. I'm sure there's someone here a bit more knowledgeable that can explain more completely.

[Fortinbras]

You are talking about Deadliest Warrior? Isn't that the show that most people with a bit of knowledge of the subject think to be completely laughable?

Yeah, it also seems to be the most popular topic for analysis on this thread.

[Adlan]

Only untill we get some good questions to answer :D

[Crow]

Maybe this falls outside the scope of this thread, but...I'd consider a longship a weapon of sorts.

I recently got a chance to go look at an honest-to-goodness viking longship, which was really cool since I got to examine it's construction some. But what I forgot to check out was how the prow and stern were put together.

The spine of the ship is basically one piece of wood, but the prow and stern are too steeply curved, so they use additional pieces of wood and put them together to get the right shape. Like (slashes are additional pieces of wood);

\........................................../
.\.________________________./.

What I forgot to find out is how those pieces are fit and secured together. Does anybody know?

Also, for the planks which made up the sides of the ship, how did they get them to bend in order to take the proper shape?

[Aux-Ash]

Also, for the planks which made up the sides of the ship, how did they get them to bend in order to take the proper shape?

Heat, water, pressure and living wood.

Basically... the wood must still be alive, as fresh as it can be. It cannot be dry or similar. Then you immerse it in water which you heat and then slowly apply pressure and preferably a shape to bend it over. You allow the wood to slowly change it's shape. Allowing it plenty of time to adjust before you apply more pressure. Occasionally taking it out of the water to test it. Slowly, gently reaching the shape you want.
It's a living material and thus it can change shape if you treat it gently and don't rush it.

That's how one bends wood on a smaller scale anyways. I think I read somewhere that the vikings used the same or a similar method, but I'm not entirely sure.

[Xuc Xac]

I've got a question about fictional weapons. Those of us who know about the materials science and physics of weapons have all seen things in movies or games that made us think something like "That's so stupid! That would never work/be more likely to kill the wielder/be really awkward to use/be incredibly impractical/etc."

I'm just curious if you've ever seen a fictional weapon that seemed reasonable. Some fictional melee weapon that could have seen actual use (and not been just a failed experiment) in the middle ages if someone had thought of it?

[Karoht]

Well, the big thing on Pirates vs whatever is that vikings ARE pirates. And vikings are awesome.

I have no trouble whatsoever with the idea of a bunch of vikings tearing up a bunch of knights.
Neither do I.
In my swordfighting group, we occasionally cross swords with a rival viking group in town. They're cool people. If we were playing the authenticity game, I'd say our armor would keep us alive better than theirs would. Training wise, sword and shield VS sword and shield (assuming similar size) is going to be very similar no matter if it's a knight or a viking or a man at arms or peasant. It's going to come down to the skill of both combatants more than anything. Once skill/luck ensures a blow, the armor becomes a factor, but not the deciding factor.

...and I'm pretty sure that Technoviking could take all of us.


Xuc Xac wrote:
I'm just curious if you've ever seen a fictional weapon that seemed reasonable. Some fictional melee weapon that could have seen actual use (and not been just a failed experiment) in the middle ages if someone had thought of it?
The Heron Mark Sword which is from the wheel of time series if I'm not mistaken. Museum Replicas carried a representation of it. It was like a katana, with a reversed curve handle (which I can only assume is for leverage) and it featured BOTH a standard tsuba AND a crossguard style hilt. As ungainly as that sounds, it looked beautiful, and the design seemed like something that maybe (big maybe) a swordsmith in japan might have crafted as an experiment. The the reverse curve handle I don't know if that actually does anything positive or negative for a katana. I've seen a lot of wall hanger pieces and fantasy pieces sold at conventions with that handle style, and it did always make me a bit curious. It seemed a resonable design, and I could see the thought process behind it, but I couldn't speak on if it's actually an improvement or detriment to the design, or if it would merely be an aesthetic/comfort sort of choice.

Edit: On the note of the LotR weaponry, check out the special features in the Two Towers DVD. They show the stunt guys working with the elf and orc weaponry and trying to maintain fighting styles appropriate to those weapons. Really awesome part of the behind the scenes stuff.

...and I've wanted a fight capable version of King Theodin's sword (the pretty one with the horses on it) since forever. If you look carefully, you can see elements of a Roman Gladius paired flawlessly with the sort of Norse/Byzantine styles typical of the rest of the Rohan equipment.

[Spiryt]

I've got a question about fictional weapons. Those of us who know about the materials science and physics of weapons have all seen things in movies or games that made us think something like "That's so stupid! That would never work/be more likely to kill the wielder/be really awkward to use/be incredibly impractical/etc."

I'm just curious if you've ever seen a fictional weapon that seemed reasonable. Some fictional melee weapon that could have seen actual use (and not been just a failed experiment) in the middle ages if someone had thought of it?

I'm pretty sure that those elven swords from LotR, or many stuff from the film adaptation in general, could work if someone who knows his stuff made them.

Although you may want to narrow your definition of "fictional" for the purpose of your question.

[Fax Celestis]

QVEZTIN TIEM

To settle an argument: I have made a feat that allows one to bull-rush a target with a ranged weapon (such as a longbow). The argument I'm receiving is that this is 'unrealistic'. What kind of force can one assume coming off of, say, a composite longbow for a +3 str score (so between 77 and 153 lb pull, judging by medium load)? Is it enough to shove someone (assuming it doesn't go clear through)?

[Lapak]

QVEZTIN TIEM

To settle an argument: I have made a feat that allows one to bull-rush a target with a ranged weapon (such as a longbow). The argument I'm receiving is that this is 'unrealistic'. What kind of force can one assume coming off of, say, a composite longbow for a +3 str score (so between 77 and 153 lb pull, judging by medium load)? Is it enough to shove someone (assuming it doesn't go clear through)?Good ol' action/reaction tells us no. Whatever force you're applying to the guy at the other end, you're fighting the same amount of force on your end.

In essence: any bow that pushed someone hard enough to Bull Rush them when it hit would also make a Bull Rush attempt against the wielder, more or less.

[Spiryt]

QVEZTIN TIEM

To settle an argument: I have made a feat that allows one to bull-rush a target with a ranged weapon (such as a longbow). The argument I'm receiving is that this is 'unrealistic'. What kind of force can one assume coming off of, say, a composite longbow for a +3 str score (so between 77 and 153 lb pull, judging by medium load)? Is it enough to shove someone (assuming it doesn't go clear through)?

Not really. There was pretty decisive Mythbusters episode, among other things, when they had shot 0.50 bullet from Barrett high caliber sniper rifle, into a mannequin. Mannequin had solid lump of steel inside it, so bullet was completely stopped by it. Mannequin moved back 6cm, as far as I recall.

And really any arrow in the world would have way lower kinetic energy and momentum than bullet from Barrett. Not to mention, that before energy would be used to knock someone, or whatever, it would most probably break arrow before (and similar effects) - that's it, if it was stopped really violently, such as by armor.

Simply, aside from the fact that energy and momentum is too low, arrow can't really initiate 'pushing' motion, because it's not how it behave. It would bounce off (or brake as I mentioned), because of the simple difference in masses.

So if you care for "realism" at all, arrows shouldn't really knock anyone back more than pain, shock etc. would cause them to buckle back/fall down.


Good ol' action/reaction tells us no. Whatever force you're applying to the guy at the other end, you're fighting the same amount of force on your end.

In essence: any bow that pushed someone hard enough to Bull Rush them when it hit would also make a Bull Rush attempt against the wielder, more or less.

More powerful crossbow are said to do something similar - particularly when too light bolt is fired from them - because efficiency isn't really good at very high draw weight, arms of the bow pull the rest of the crossbow forward. Using energy that hadn't been given to the bolt. I'm not sure if it's even enough to pull it out of the shooter hand at least sometimes, but it's certainly noticeable effect.

[fusilier]

QVEZTIN TIEM

To settle an argument: I have made a feat that allows one to bull-rush a target with a ranged weapon (such as a longbow). The argument I'm receiving is that this is 'unrealistic'. What kind of force can one assume coming off of, say, a composite longbow for a +3 str score (so between 77 and 153 lb pull, judging by medium load)? Is it enough to shove someone (assuming it doesn't go clear through)?

Oh boy . . .

The physics involved can be quite detailed and involve a bunch of factors, complicated by the kind of collision, and the fact that people aren't well represented as point masses. However, I would say it would be very unlikely that someone would be shoved by an arrow. The condition that should generate the most force would be if the arrow reflected directly back. In reality this would probably overcome the structural integrity of the shaft and it would shatter. But even if it did rebound I doubt the force would be sufficient to shove anybody.

@Lapak

It's not actually that simple. If person A was pushing against person B then yes. But once you let go of something momentum must be conserved. Think about a musket firing a lead bullet, and the bullet hitting a brick wall. When it hits the wall the bullet is flattened. If the same amount of force had been applied at the gun, the bullet would have been flattened inside the barrel. When the bullet is fired, it, the gun, and the person shooting, experience less force, but that force is applied over a longer amount of time, as the bullet is accelerated over the entire length of the musket barrel. When the bullet hits the wall, the wall and the bullet suffer a greater force but in a shorter amount of time . . . but now the gun and the shooter are totally out of the equation.

However, assuming that the projectile doesn't lose a significant amount of velocity (so very close range), in order for the shooter and target to experience the same force (again assuming similar masses), the target would have to move backward the same distance that the projectile was accelerated over (length of musket barrel, or draw distance of bow). There are stories of people being knocked over by musket balls, but this probably has more to do with where they are hit and their configuration (i.e. they're being knocked off balance). Likewise there are stories (and videos on youtube) of people being knocked over by the recoil of firearms. :-)

[Dienekes]

QVEZTIN TIEM

To settle an argument: I have made a feat that allows one to bull-rush a target with a ranged weapon (such as a longbow). The argument I'm receiving is that this is 'unrealistic'. What kind of force can one assume coming off of, say, a composite longbow for a +3 str score (so between 77 and 153 lb pull, judging by medium load)? Is it enough to shove someone (assuming it doesn't go clear through)?

No, but you could probably call it staggering shot or something, say the shock of the arrow forces the target to take a step back from pain. Make them only move 5 feet back maximum but still take damage and/or the amount of legs doesn't get a bonus for more legs.

[Fax Celestis]

So since I can type the feat as an Extraordinary ability (which the ability type description explicitly states EX abilities can break the laws of physics), and as long as I trade down damage for the ability to shove, I can wrangle it. Okay.

[Lapak]

@Lapak

It's not actually that simple. If person A was pushing against person B then yes. But once you let go of something momentum must be conserved. Think about a musket firing a lead bullet, and the bullet hitting a brick wall. When it hits the wall the bullet is flattened. If the same amount of force had been applied at the gun, the bullet would have been flattened inside the barrel. When the bullet is fired, it, the gun, and the person shooting, experience less force, but that force is applied over a longer amount of time, as the bullet is accelerated over the entire length of the musket barrel. When the bullet hits the wall, the wall and the bullet suffer a greater force but in a shorter amount of time . . . but now the gun and the shooter are totally out of the equation.The total force is the same, and the entire force is applied to the shooter. It isn't about what the musket ball suffers and when; it's about what the target (the wall) and the source (the shooter) suffers - this is not caused by the ball itself, which simply transfers the energy from place to place, but by the explosion. Minus a small amount due to friction with the air, it's the same - and the lesser amount is suffered by the target.

[fusilier]

The total force is the same, and the entire force is applied to the shooter. It isn't about what the musket ball suffers and when; it's about what the target (the wall) and the source (the shooter) suffers - this is not caused by the ball itself, which simply transfers the energy from place to place, but by the explosion. Minus a small amount due to friction with the air, it's the same - and the lesser amount is suffered by the target.

Can you clarify what you mean by "total force"? As typically F = ma. The bullet is clearly undergoing less acceleration when it takes 3.5 feet to accelerate from zero velocity to some velocity, and clearly much greater acceleration when it goes from some velocity to zero velocity in about 0 feet.

The amount of work being done is the same (work = force * distance), but the forces are clearly different.

[Lapak]

Can you clarify what you mean by "total force"? As typically F = ma. The bullet is clearly undergoing less acceleration when it takes 3.5 feet to accelerate from zero velocity to some velocity, and clearly much greater acceleration when it goes from some velocity to zero velocity in about 0 feet.

The amount of work being done is the same (work = force * distance), but the forces are clearly different.I was imprecise in my word choice. Force was a bad choice; work is clearly better; amount of (kinetic) energy is what I was aiming at. "Enough work to accelerate the projectile to the speed it travels at" is applied to both the shooter and the target, and that amount is either enough to move the mass of the target a noticeable difference or it isn't. But you're right that this is complicated by the difference in how that energy is applied. You're more accurate not only in word choice but in the physics of it, with regard to how you qualify the statement. And that's never a bad thing. I should have looked at what you were saying more carefully before responding.

[fusilier]

I was imprecise in my word choice. Force was a bad choice; work is clearly better; amount of (kinetic) energy is what I was aiming at. "Enough work to accelerate the projectile to the speed it travels at" is applied to both the shooter and the target, and that amount is either enough to move the mass of the target a noticeable difference or it isn't. But you're right that this is complicated by the difference in how that energy is applied. You're more accurate not only in word choice but in the physics of it, with regard to how you qualify the statement. And that's never a bad thing. I should have looked at what you were saying more carefully before responding.

Yeah, we had a similar discussion earlier on this board and I also thought about force in that manner, at first.

A little more clarification, *kinetic* energy doesn't have to be conserved. Energy has to, but energy can be converted into so many forms. Force is what's actually going to move something. Force is needed to overcome friction, air resistance, and in the case of an animal, whatever other resistances the creature can apply with it's own internal muscles.

[Lapak]

Yeah, we had a similar discussion earlier on this board and I also thought about force in that manner, at first.

A little more clarification, *kinetic* energy doesn't have to be conserved. Energy has to, but energy can be converted into so many forms. Force is what's actually going to move something. Force is needed to overcome friction, air resistance, and in the case of an animal, whatever other resistances the creature can apply with it's own internal muscles.All of that is true, and I appreciate the clarification. But all of that said - I'm not sure any of it makes enough difference to the basic situation of 'more or less standard projectile weapon (bow, sling, spear, handgun) fired at ranges appropriate for human-scale combat' to change the answer to 'can I push someone backwards with the impact of the projectile without being propelled back myself?' :smallsmile:

[fusilier]

All of that is true, and I appreciate the clarification. But all of that said - I'm not sure any of it makes enough difference to the basic situation of 'more or less standard projectile weapon (bow, sling, spear, handgun) fired at ranges appropriate for human-scale combat' to change the answer to 'can I push someone backwards with the impact of the projectile without being propelled back myself?' :smallsmile:

Yes, but it depends upon what you mean by being knocked back. I know that sounds weird, but you don't have to hit someone with a enough force to move their entire mass backwards, in order to get them to move backwards. I believe that you only have to unbalance the person, to either get them to fall or stumble. This is where the nature of how the body works with all of its limbs and muscles really complicates things. In the simplest sense, you may be able to treat a standing person as a standing board -- at which point you only need to get it to start rotating, which doesn't require much force near the top (or head), and falling is basically assured, but even that is too simplistic.

But yeah, somebody isn't going to be lifted up into the air and thrown through the window of the saloon by a shotgun blast. ;-)

[Theodoric]

Yes, but it depends upon what you mean by being knocked back. I know that sounds weird, but you don't have to hit someone with a enough force to move their entire mass backwards, in order to get them to move backwards. I believe that you only have to unbalance the person, to either get them to fall or stumble. This is where the nature of how the body works with all of its limbs and muscles really complicates things. In the simplest sense, you may be able to treat a standing person as a standing board -- at which point you only need to get it to start rotating, which doesn't require much force near the top (or head), and falling is basically assured, but even that is too simplistic.The way nerves and (by reflex) muscles sometimes respond to certain stimuli, moving in another direction than straight down isn't at all impossible or even unlikely. Indeed, it's possible (for neurological and psychological reasons) that someone does that without even getting hit. IIRC, it's also a part of the 'stopping power' thing.

[fusilier]

The way nerves and (by reflex) muscles sometimes respond to certain stimuli, moving in another direction than straight down isn't at all impossible or even unlikely. Indeed, it's possible (for neurological and psychological reasons) that someone does that without even getting hit. IIRC, it's also a part of the 'stopping power' thing.

Hmm. I would like to hear more about this. Walking is little more than controlled falling. :-) So being unbalanced would be the key to stumbling or falling. But I suppose it's possible to flinch in such a way in response to being hit that could create such an imbalance. Although I still maintain that without "flinching" (for lack of a better word), it still may be possible for a projectile like a large caliber bullet to unbalance someone.

[fusilier]

Responding to Fusilier's post (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9355347&postcount=2631) in the previous thread, the reason why revolvers are mechanically more complex than semiautos (in general) is that a revolver needs a mechanism to advance the cylinder, but generally a semiauto feeds a round by virtue of the slide pushing a bullet up a ramp. Comparing a 1911 to a Smith and Wesson Model 10, the 1911 has 59 parts, 14 of which are either extraneous to the function of the weapon and not moving, whereas the model 10 has 81 parts, 11 of which are extraneous to the function of the weapon.

Now, newer semiautos, like the Glock, have fewer parts than the 1911, but newer revolvers have not made the same gains when it comes to reducing mechanical complexity.

This is an old post, but I stumbled across some relevant information today. I wasn't totally convinced that revolvers were mechanically more complexed, but didn't have any way of refuting your evidence. It was just a general impression gleaned from statements concerning the robustness of old service revolvers.

I just ran across this:
http://www.allworldwars.com/Colt%27s%20Double-Action%20Revolver%20Caliber%2045%201909.html

Which states that the Colt 1909 .45 caliber double action pistol has only 44 parts total. Why exactly the S&W would have nearly twice as many parts, I don't know. Sometimes military weapons would be a bit too simple. The German Reichsrevolver didn't even have an ejection mechanism. Anyway, I'm just trying to gather some more info on this subject, and present it as I find it.

[Yora]

Now here's a rather odd question: When you put two arrows on a bowstring, does it reduce the impact force of the arrows? And let's discount the decrease in pulling strength, because you're ussing an unusual grip on the bow and the string.
But when you pull the string, it stores (tension?) energy and when you let it go, the energy is released. With two arrows on the string, the same energy would have to move twice the mass. But at the same time, my intuition tells me that the arrows would not penetrate only half as deep.

What's exactly the physics involved here?

[Norsesmithy]

Now here's a rather odd question: When you put two arrows on a bowstring, does it reduce the impact force of the arrows? And let's discount the decrease in pulling strength, because you're ussing an unusual grip on the bow and the string.
But when you pull the string, it stores (tension?) energy and when you let it go, the energy is released. With two arrows on the string, the same energy would have to move twice the mass. But at the same time, my intuition tells me that the arrows would not penetrate only half as deep.

What's exactly the physics involved here?

It's my experience that they will most likely each hit with less than half the strength of a single arrow, due to the fact that they will never launch or fly as cleanly as a single arrow, BUT if you were to manage to fire two arrows perfectly, preventing all that excess loss of energy, I think you would find that the two arrows would have more energy than a single arrow.

This is because two arrows (or a single heavier arrow) will be accelerated more slowly than one, though with similar amounts of force applied. The slower acceleration will cause the heavier payload to be accelerated for longer, and that will increase the efficiency of the system, resulting in greater energy imparted.

Of course, when hunting, one often chooses the less energetic lighter arrow because the higher velocity will cause it to shoot flatter, and you don't need much energy to push 2-4 scalpels through a deer.

But heavier projectiles being more efficient than lighter ones for a given amount of force applied is pretty universal. If you look at reloading data for firearms, you alway get more energy out of a heavier bullet than a lighter one, for the same amount of powder used, though a lighter bullet might be able to have more powder used with it.

[Stephen_E]

I suggest when doing those debates about the effects of a missile weapon on a target you use the terms Kinetic Energy and Momentum.

Strictly speaking Kinetic Energy doesn't have to be conserved, but momentum does.
Arrow would generally have a higher momentum for the same energy when compared to a bullet.

This is because Momentum = Mass x Velocity
Kinetic Energy = Mass x Velocity squared

While knocking someone backwards to any real degree with Arrows or bullets obviously doesn't work bu physics, knocking them down does because Humans are an inherently unstable creature when upright. Thus to knock a person down you merely have to destabilise them quickly enough or by large enough degree that they can't restabilise before falling, or temporaily shutdown or hamper the auto-stabilsation system that keeps you standing.

There is plenty of evidence that been shot by a bullet, and to a lesser degree an arrow, can essentially cause the brain to hang/reboot during which time the autostabilisation systen ceases to function and they collapse. Remember the human brain is an organic computer. All those problems that occur with your PC also can occur with human brains.:smallbiggrin:

Stephen E

[Shademan]

can you actually take someones head off with an axe or sword?
consider these conditions:

excecution. You have a target that is alive and scared but resigned to his fate, possibly with his head on a block of wood.
I have heard that excecutioners using big axes sometimes had to finish the job with a knife...

battle. you may or may not be mounted, your target may be moving in any direction.

scientific. your target is happily sacrificing himself for science in a labd full of all kinds machines you need.

[Spiryt]

It's my experience that they will most likely each hit with less than half the strength of a single arrow, due to the fact that they will never launch or fly as cleanly as a single arrow, BUT if you were to manage to fire two arrows perfectly, preventing all that excess loss of energy, I think you would find that the two arrows would have more energy than a single arrow.

This is because two arrows (or a single heavier arrow) will be accelerated more slowly than one, though with similar amounts of force applied. The slower acceleration will cause the heavier payload to be accelerated for longer, and that will increase the efficiency of the system, resulting in greater energy imparted.


This entirely depends on bows efficiency with different weighs on arrows, though, if you shot two relatively heavy arrows from a bow, they will in result be overweight for a bow, and result in rather pathetic shot.

If they are sufficiently light, bow could theoretically shot them as single heavier one, but as you noted it's not really possible, and in result give two light arrows velocities of single heavier one.


But at the same time, my intuition tells me that the arrows would not penetrate only half as deep.

They would in the very best case have a bit more than a half of kinetic energy and half of momentum, with being twice less massive.

"Penetration" would generally vary entirely on material being penetrated, arrows themselves and stuff, but generally they would penetrate half as deep at best in such circumstances.

It would of course never happen, even in perfect conditions, as "multishot" is generally a failure, everyone who tried can agree.

Arrows don't want to fly even 1/8 of distance single one would, so even very careful choice of weights, stiffness and other things would lead one so far.


can you actually take someones head off with an axe or sword?
consider these conditions:

Uh, yes as hell?

Of course, in less than perfect conditions (battle) it would rarely happen, as not only it's hard to hit defending target that well, but also no one would possibly care, as decapitation of opponent doesn't give anything at all compared to "just" slashing his neck arteries.

But from infamous Deadliest Warriur to many other 'test' it's rather visible that average human neck and spine can be chopped in half rather easily.

As far as 'failed' executions go, particularly with an axe, executioner had just to hit at single optimized angle, otherwise part of the neck would be still not severed, while blade would already be stuck into the wood. I think that anyone can imagine what I'm talking about, without going to graphic.

[Shademan]

they don't show deadliest warriur in my country so I would not know about that.
Recently saw a movie tho', where heads were chopped off all over the place and it got me wondering if you really could take it off that easily.
'course, stuff like that should be taken with a grain of salt...

[Spiryt]

they don't show deadliest warriur in my country so I would not know about that.
Recently saw a movie tho', where heads were chopped off all over the place and it got me wondering if you really could take it off that easily.
'course, stuff like that should be taken with a grain of salt...

Well, typing "the arma dear cleaving" in Youtube produces interesting video.

Typing ''Test cutting on a deer'' produces more 'realistic' target even though conditions, user and blade are somewhat lacking.

Typing 'Fiskars billhook and a Finnish chef in action' gives living target, and typical slaughter condition.

I posted it like that instead of links, in case if somebody might not like the links content, particularly last one.

[Shademan]

should it worry me that these vids make me hungry?

[Yora]

No, fresh meat is a natural food source for humans. :smallbiggrin:

[Shademan]

this is true.

It always amazes me how sharp and powerful them old weapons really were...

[Psyx]

\........................................../
.\.________________________./.


What I forgot to find out is how those pieces are fit and secured together. Does anybody know?

Rivets. Metal rivets.


Also, for the planks which made up the sides of the ship, how did they get them to bend in order to take the proper shape?

Get them wet and hold them in place, basically. They'll be formed to fit, in the same way that a cooper makes barrels. The way the planks over-lap is referred to as clinker-built.



I'm just curious if you've ever seen a fictional weapon that seemed reasonable.

I'm struggling to think of anything. Mankind is inventive. Especially when it comes to killing. If it works and can kill people; it's probably been done. Which is why fictional weapons always appear so laughable.




Hmm. I would like to hear more about this.

Essentially; people sometimes fall over because they think that they should, rather than for any real reason. Bullets themselves don't have vast amounts of energy: They just have a small areas to distribute it over. In fact; heavier rounds are even less likely to be able to physically knock people over, as they over-penetrate, and do not transfer all energy to the target. Knock-down is shock and psychological in the most part. It's perfectly 'normal' as far as physics is concerned to take a round and not even stumble. With body armour, it's possible to take rounds, and -in the heat of the moment- not even notice!



What's exactly the physics involved here?

Each arrow has half the energy, I reckon. When the string is released, the energy in the bow accelerates the arrosw. If there are two arrows, then there is twice as much mass that requires acceleration, so they get half as much each. This doesn't mean that they will penetrate to exactly half the distance of a single shot any more than 12 bits of buckshot penetrate to 1/12th the distance of a slug, though. However, they will transfer only half as much energy. I think.

[Crow]

Rivets. Metal rivets.


Yeah, I saw the planks were held in place by nails. Where they needed two planks to meet, the wood was cut at an angle so they fit together in an overlapping manner, then three nails held the overlapping pieces together. Is this the same way for the prow? Or did they use some other method? Because it seems like those would need to be huge nails for that part.



Get them wet and hold them in place, basically. They'll be formed to fit, in the same way that a cooper makes barrels. The way the planks over-lap is referred to as clinker-built.

So now for a stupid question; Would you soak (saturate) the wood then remove it from the water and then force it to the ship? Or would it require submerging the spine and ribs of the ship as you work with it?

[Karoht]

RE: Cutting off a head or a limb.

Hank Reinhardt did all kinds of test cuts with his weapons. He also had pigs on his property. He did tests armored, not armored, though I don't know if the creatures were alive or not at the time. He did not videotape any of it (that I can find) but supposedly did document it somewhere, and a friend of mine went down to visit him and personally witnessed some of those cuts. Suffice to say that a sword can indeed cut through something with the same diameter as a neck, and can indeed cut through a spinal column or neck.

[Mike_G]

Many swords an axes can cut through a neck or limb, but hitting at the right angle in combat probably didn't happen all that often. And, as somebody said above, severing is overkill. Hit the limb or neck hard enough to cut into it any real depth, and you take your target out. Maybe cutting your opponent's lower leg below his hauberk might sever it. If his weight's on it, it won't move much. Bones aren't all that resistant to sharp steel, as any butcher will tell you.

Axes can split logs, which are a lot tougher than necks. But if you've ever chopped anything, you know that it's all about hitting at the right angle.

[Construct]

So now for a stupid question; Would you soak (saturate) the wood then remove it from the water and then force it to the ship? Or would it require submerging the spine and ribs of the ship as you work with it?The former. When you steam-bend a plank of wood you first steam it - either by holding it in a steam box, immersing it in boiling water, or heating green or soaked wood. This breaks some of the bonds between the wood fibres, allowing them to slide past each other more easily and thus allowing the plank to bend further without breaking. Once the plank is sufficiently pliable it is removed from the steam/boiling-water/heat-source and held against a form - such as a mold or the existing boat-frame - whilst it cools and drys and those broken bonds between the wood fibres reform to keep it in the new shape.

[Crow]

The former. When you steam-bend a plank of wood you first steam it - either by holding it in a steam box, immersing it in boiling water, or heating green or soaked wood. This breaks some of the bonds between the wood fibres, allowing them to slide past each other more easily and thus allowing the plank to bend further without breaking. Once the plank is sufficiently pliable it is removed from the steam/boiling-water/heat-source and held against a form - such as a mold or the existing boat-frame - whilst it cools and drys and those broken bonds between the wood fibres reform to keep it in the new shape.

Interesting. So does anybody know which method the vikings used? Steam box, immersion, or green planks over a big fire?

[Norsesmithy]

I think that the prevailing theory is that they used a combination of steam box and heating soaked wood.

You don't really want to heat green wood for this purpose, because it won't be dimensionally stable later.

[Subotei]

Interesting. So does anybody know which method the vikings used? Steam box, immersion, or green planks over a big fire?

The vikings (and many other pre-industrial cultures) made planks made by splitting the wood along the grain with wedges, rather than sawing the wood into planks as we would do today. This creates planks that are very flexible by comparison with sawn planks - its likely you would be able to bend them round to the shape of the ship far far better than sawn planks, so maybe these techniques were not needed extensively.

[Lev]

Which is why fictional weapons always appear so laughable.[/QUOTE]



as far as physics is concerned to take a round and not even stumble. With body armour, it's possible to take rounds, and -in the heat of the moment- not even notice!

Which is precisely why adrenaline and chemicals like PCP give people the capability of enormous feats-- the selling point of the barbarian.

You may rip your fingernails off, but that door is coming off it's hinge.

[Norsesmithy]

The vikings (and many other pre-industrial cultures) made planks made by splitting the wood along the grain with wedges, rather than sawing the wood into planks as we would do today. This creates planks that are very flexible by comparison with sawn planks - its likely you would be able to bend them round to the shape of the ship far far better than sawn planks, so maybe these techniques were not needed extensively.

Not quite, they used hewn planks, which are more flexible than sawn, but don't perfectly follow the grain like a split plank would. And they did used the various forming techniques like heating soaked wood and steaming wood.

Of course, it's a good thing that they don't just split planks, because you'd maybe get 4 or 5 good split planks out of the average 400 year old oak, and sometimes not even that many, because of all the non-uniform thing that living trees do.

[Deadmeat.GW]

I suggest when doing those debates about the effects of a missile weapon on a target you use the terms Kinetic Energy and Momentum.

Strictly speaking Kinetic Energy doesn't have to be conserved, but momentum does.
Arrow would generally have a higher momentum for the same energy when compared to a bullet.

This is because Momentum = Mass x Velocity
Kinetic Energy = Mass x Velocity squared

While knocking someone backwards to any real degree with Arrows or bullets obviously doesn't work bu physics, knocking them down does because Humans are an inherently unstable creature when upright. Thus to knock a person down you merely have to destabilise them quickly enough or by large enough degree that they can't restabilise before falling, or temporaily shutdown or hamper the auto-stabilsation system that keeps you standing.

There is plenty of evidence that been shot by a bullet, and to a lesser degree an arrow, can essentially cause the brain to hang/reboot during which time the autostabilisation systen ceases to function and they collapse. Remember the human brain is an organic computer. All those problems that occur with your PC also can occur with human brains.:smallbiggrin:

Stephen E

Knockdown is also far too often described by witnesses as knockback.
Especially if the target going down was moving at the time.

And if the target was in between steps the amount of force to knock someone of balance and therefore trip them is far smaller.
It is all timing.

If you watch some Aikido (or any martial art with redicrects) you will see the throws and takedown attacks seem to be almost effortless and the thrown/tripped person tends to fly an impressive distance.
If you can however look for video's where it goes wrong and the target did not time his break-fall by rolling properly with the move.

I am not sure there are any around atm but my Sensei once told us that those would be more educational so as to shows us what not to do and what to look out for.
I dislocated my shoulder by trying to change my breakfall distance by a good 4 inches upwards.
Because I did not get the right curve on my roll and my opponent had not seen there was someone in my path behind him he did not aid me which meant I went flying quite fast at a very straight angle.
The net result was that I clipped the ground with my right shoulder just above the connection to the collarbone and the upper arm bone.
It snagged, I dislocated the bones as I was imparting too much force for it to stop just because I hit the floor and then I 'bounced' 5 feet into a wall.

Funny detail, when the sensei asked me if I was ok when I got up I told him yes and then promptly fainted face first into the table next to me which I broke...

The other students saw me sail 6 feet through the air, hit the ground and then they decribed it as me bouncing up and fly another 5 feet before bouncing of the wall after making a full rotation which meant I hit the wall chest first (I was very, very lucky as in that I did not hit my head at any point and that I managed to bang my shoulder in the wall in such a way that I popped my shoulder back into the socket).

[Psyx]

If the target was moving (forward) it makes the physics even more unlikely.


Knockback due to physical force was kind of dispatched as a myth quite some time ago. Many of the concepts behind firearm wounding (including full transfer of energy as fast as possible and temporary wound cavities for example) have kind of fallen the same way. I believe there's an FBI paper somewhere on the subject that - while now quite dated - makes a good read.

To knockback a moving target the bullet would need to stop a 150lb pile of meat, and then make it go backwards. Physics doesn't work that way, I'm afraid. If the target is badly off-balance: Sure. But that's a minority of situations.

The forces used in Aikido are FAR higher than that of a bullet. The acceleration of mass is fairly (deceptively) gentle, but the net forces required to throw people around are really quite huge, and don't forget the value of leverage: Pushing action to the upper outside shoulder will result in more torque than a bullet to the chest. Leverage is key in Aikido: As is making the other person do all the work.
Many of these forces are applied by the subject rather than the practitioner. For example; during kotegaishi, a tiny application of force triggers the subject to do most of the work themselves.

[Brainfart]

Katanas are actually hybrids, they work in both a slashing and chopping motion which is looser categorized as slashing.
A saber is actually more used as a chopping motion to take off limbs where a katana is best used to disembowel.


How does this make sense? Both blades function in the same manner. Their curvature imparts a drawing/slicing motion to the cut.

[Spiryt]

How does this make sense? Both blades function in the same manner. Their curvature imparts a drawing/slicing motion to the cut.

That would depends on how actually they work.... Because under the term "katana" one will find swords made over a good 1000 years, that can be quite different. And "saber" - well, this generally can mean thousand things.

Different length, cross section, taper, balance, edge, and stuff... Would define how they function.

The fact that both are curved, is just one not tremendously important detail, especially that while katanas were generally relatively similar in shape, sabers could curve in many different ways.

[fusilier]

That would depends on how actually they work.... Because under the term "katana" one will find swords made over a good 1000 years, that can be quite different. And "saber" - well, this generally can mean thousand things.

Different length, cross section, taper, balance, edge, and stuff... Would define how they function.

The fact that both are curved, is just one not tremendously important detail, especially that while katanas were generally relatively similar in shape, sabers could curve in many different ways.

There are even straight bladed sabers. The term saber is pretty arbitrary, and the most practical definition I've heard is a saber is basically a sword intended to be wielded on horseback. At least that seems to have been the military definition during the 19th century (sabers for horse, swords for foot). Thus some 19th century cuirassiers carried straight sabers. The distinction can be further confounded by circumstances: American Infantry officers in the mid 19th century generally preferred to carry a cavalry/dragoon saber rather than a sword.

Generally speaking cavalry sabers were curved, but the amount and style of curve could vary considerably as Spiryt pointed out.

[Yora]

Whats the benefit of a curved blade anyway?
I imagine you would have a smaller point of impact, but also a larger cutting surface compared to the length of the touching area. But what's actually the reason behind the two forms?

[fusilier]

Whats the benefit of a curved blade anyway?
I imagine you would have a smaller point of impact, but also a larger cutting surface compared to the length of the touching area. But what's actually the reason behind the two forms?

I've been told that it's easier to wield a curved blade when mounted.

[Spiryt]

Whats the benefit of a curved blade anyway?
I imagine you would have a smaller point of impact, but also a larger cutting surface compared to the length of the touching area. But what's actually the reason behind the two forms?

Heh, it's age old debate here.... :smallwink:

Generally, I believe that when curved blade strikes at "optimal" angle, it simply faces the target with greater width of the blade, that it would in case of straight one. Drawing it even in crappy way on paper helps to illustrate that.

Therefore, sectional density, is greater, there is greater "push" of the steel behind the point of impact.

Now, this effect won't be generally that great in most cases, but still.

Generally, it's all about angles, geometry and shock. Different shapes will cause different uses of energy involved.

[bansidhe]

From what I,ve heard...the lighter the cavalry,the more curved the blade,basically cos your going faster[at least you should be],and it offers more cutting area in a passing slash.Not sure if this is technically true or not though.

[Galloglach where is you?! :) ]

[Tvtyrant]

It also has to do with which area of the blade you cut with. Straight blades you either stab with the tip or cut near the middle, while a curved blade can cut with forward third. If you tried to cut with the forward third of a straight blade it would jar your hands. This is one of the reasons curved blades are used in cavalry, you can cut with the area near the tip, so you can hit things within blade reach without worrying about your sword twisting in your hand. And since you can't stab from horseback without losing your sword in a charge anyway, a straight blade doesn't perform as well.

[Spiryt]

It also has to do with which area of the blade you cut with. Straight blades you either stab with the tip or cut near the middle, while a curved blade can cut with forward third. If you tried to cut with the forward third of a straight blade it would jar your hands. This is one of the reasons curved blades are used in cavalry, you can cut with the area near the tip, so you can hit things within blade reach without worrying about your sword twisting in your hand. And since you can't stab from horseback without losing your sword in a charge anyway, a straight blade doesn't perform as well.


Uh, actually with swords like Oakeshott type XIII, and many others, tip cuts would be of great importance... Quite obvious, looking at their rounded tips.

Jarring, vibrations, and whatever, depend on sword harmonics, and while of curvature of blades would produce different harmonics, there's nothing about straight blades that make them automatically more "shaky".

And actually "sweet spot" of most cutting straight blades tend to be much more forward than in the middle.

[Crow]

My experience with straight blades is that most cuts you are likely to land in a real fight are going to be with the last 6 inches or so of the blade. We're not talking about cutting straw mats here.

I can't imagine how this optimal point of impact with a curved blade is going to be much different than that of a straight one except in theoretical scenarios.

[Lapak]

I don't know for sure, but I imagine that curved blades are curved because of how slicing works mechanically. (All that follows is speculation; I am in no way an authority on this.)

Take a straight chef's knife and try to press the blade straight down through a loaf of bread. Unless the blade is literally razor-sharp, you don't get a slice of bread; you get a squished loaf of bread. Slide the blade straight across the top without any downward pressure, and you still don't get a slice: you get a loaf of bread with a shallow cut in it. You need to apply the pressure in two directions at once to get a good slice - both down and across.

A curved blade, by its very nature, is going to do that no matter how you cut: if you hit straight on, and the curve adds some sideways motion due to the shape, and if you slide across the surface, the curve will add some depth to the motion whether you're trying to or not.

Now, I imagine that most hits in a combat aren't going to be dead-on straight or across anyway, but a curved blade is going to be its own guide for better cutting on any hit.

[fusilier]

A butcher's cleaver can have a straight edge (or only a slight curve to it).

[Lapak]

A butcher's cleaver can have a straight edge (or only a slight curve to it).Like I (tried to) say, it's not like you can't achieve a good cut with a straight or very slightly curved edge. The chef's knife is another fine example! But the targets of both cleavers and chef knives don't tend to be moving around like in combat, either, or creating unpredictable angles when you try to cut them. :smalltongue:

(Also, note the disclaimer that I'm only speculating.)

[Spiryt]

Or rather, butchers knives are good at cleaving bones, which is their main purpose.

They also tend not to be long enough for curve to have much sense.

[MarkusWolfe]

A butcher's cleaver can have a straight edge (or only a slight curve to it).

Actually, if you look closely, you'll see that it's actually a short axehead with a knife's handle.

http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:Ywp80KeyZazcxM:http://i691.photobucket.com/albums/vv280/staunchusa/butcher-knife.jpg&t=1

[Xuc Xac]

A curved blade, by its very nature, is going to do that no matter how you cut: if you hit straight on, and the curve adds some sideways motion due to the shape, and if you slide across the surface, the curve will add some depth to the motion whether you're trying to or not.


Almost but not quite. When you slice with a straight knife, you move the blade back and forth in a straight line. When you try to slice an opponent in combat, you do it by swinging the blade in an arc but you still want to draw the blade across the surface to be cut. With a straight blade, the blade will only be drawn straight across at one point of the arc. At the other points, it will be at an angle that is too high or too low for maximum slicing efficiency. A curved blade that matches the arc of the swing will allow the blade to be close to parallel to the target surface for the whole length of the cut. Some swords and knives have a very drastic curve (such as some Middle Eastern/Indian designs) because they are designed to be used up close with swings that pivot at the elbow and other swords have a shallower curve because they are designed to be used at arm's length with the shoulder as the main pivot.

[Deadmeat.GW]

If the target was moving (forward) it makes the physics even more unlikely.


Knockback due to physical force was kind of dispatched as a myth quite some time ago. Many of the concepts behind firearm wounding (including full transfer of energy as fast as possible and temporary wound cavities for example) have kind of fallen the same way. I believe there's an FBI paper somewhere on the subject that - while now quite dated - makes a good read.

To knockback a moving target the bullet would need to stop a 150lb pile of meat, and then make it go backwards. Physics doesn't work that way, I'm afraid. If the target is badly off-balance: Sure. But that's a minority of situations.

The forces used in Aikido are FAR higher than that of a bullet. The acceleration of mass is fairly (deceptively) gentle, but the net forces required to throw people around are really quite huge, and don't forget the value of leverage: Pushing action to the upper outside shoulder will result in more torque than a bullet to the chest. Leverage is key in Aikido: As is making the other person do all the work.
Many of these forces are applied by the subject rather than the practitioner. For example; during kotegaishi, a tiny application of force triggers the subject to do most of the work themselves.

Perhaps you should notice that I said KNOCKDOWN is described often by people watching as KNOCKBACK because of the optical effect of seeing something moving forward stop and drop on the spot.

[Spamotron]

I have a question about Modern Body Armor. I am given to understand that the problems of weight and restriction of movement are constantly being improved with new materials and armor designs. But that the building of excess body heat is somewhat more intractable. No material that will stop a bullet breathes very well.

That said personal under-suits with built in cooling have existed for years and are used by Race Car Drivers and Astronauts. I assume something makes them impractical for use with body armor. Is it just cost? or something else?

[Crow]

Every piece of kit adds to the overall weight that the soldier has to carry. While I am sure the suits are pretty light (anything in racing usually is), the other issue could be the cost. How much do these suits usually run?

[Spamotron]

Well after figuring out the right search terms I found water cooled vests that are intended for military use. Doesn't say if they fit under body armor though.

http://www.mscooling.com/militarycooling

[Psyx]

And since you can't stab from horseback without losing your sword in a charge anyway, a straight blade doesn't perform as well.

Straight blades work fine for thrusting on horseback. In fact, they were favoured by heavy cavalry in the Napoleonic period because they were 'killing swords', ideal for fighting mounted foes. Whereas the curved blade is better for light cavalry, making passing cuts, and striking at foes on foot.


Whats the benefit of a curved blade anyway?


A butcher's cleaver can have a straight edge (or only a slight curve to it).

And requires you to make a massive chop at things. Now take a filleting knife, simply press it gently against the same meat, and draw it, and you will cut just as deep, using less energy, and requiring less of a swing.

You don't cut cheese by hacking at it. Nor onions, nor tomatoes. You know that to cut well, you draw the blade along the cut and allow the edge to do the work; not your arm. The same is true with swords.

This is how curved blades work: They present a large amount of blade, and draw it across the target.

If you imagine grasping a straight blade with two hands and swinging at someone, you initially chop into them. Now draw the blade over the body in order to cut deeper, and the action is a little awkward and doesn't leave a long cut. If you perform the same cut with a katana, and then draw along the cut, pushing down and drawing, the action is a lot easier and leaves a longer, deeper cut.
This is why curved blades are good at slicing. The curve of the blade is designed expressly to optimise the cut.


Perhaps you should notice that I said KNOCKDOWN is described often by people watching as KNOCKBACK because of the optical effect of seeing something moving forward stop and drop on the spot.

I was expanding on a point, not arguing about or around it. Knock-down is primarily psychological in the majority of cases, and has little to do with energy.


That said personal under-suits with built in cooling have existed for years and are used by Race Car Drivers and Astronauts. I assume something makes them impractical for use with body armor. Is it just cost? or something else?

Race car drivers don't wear cooling suits. They wear nomex underwear. For a cooling suit to function for two hours in the cockpit of a single-seater, you'd need some form of heat exchange unit, which is extra weight and power drain from the engine.

Moving on to body-armour underwear, there are solutions out there. The first is the common sense one used by skiers and combat personnel alike: A wicking inner layer. Wear a breathable, well fitting under-garment that draws sweat away from your body, and allows your body's natural cooling system to function, instead of letting it sit in a pile of hot sweat. If you run a google on say' body armour under garments wicking', you'll see what I mean. There are dozens of types commercially available.

There are other solutions. Some private companies make vests which hold gel coolant packs: The kind you use to keep sandwiches cold. These don't need any heat exchange system or pumps, but have the drawback of only working for a couple of hours before needing to go back in the freezer.

The idea of carrying something heftier for a slight improvement is self-defeating in many ways. PBIs have to carry enough crud around with them to encumber them already. Adding to that just adds to the effort needed. And -frankly- you can wear a single layer of cotton in the Gulf, and you'll still be sweating copiously in the 45C+ heat. Nothing you can wear or do will stop you being overly hot and uncomfortable, short of a cold shower and a colder beer. Body armour makes it worse, but it's already a massive problem to start with. Best advice is just to carry as little extra kit as possible, and wear kit that lets your body cool itself properly. Any water in a cooling suit would serve better being in a canteen so you can drink the stuff and sweat it out.

[Stephen_E]

Apparently in WW2 The NZ Troops loved marching behind the US troops in Nth Africa because of all the kit the US soldiers would dump to reduce weight.
The NZ Troops would scoop it up :smallbiggrin: (they were chronically poorly resupplied by the NZ govt :smallfrown:)

Stephen E

[Storm Bringer]

ever since soldiers were centrally equipped, the PBI have dumped things they don't need and looked for ways to lighten thier load. during the days of Pike formations, the NCOs and officers had to be careful the troops didn't lop the lower ends off thier pikes for firewood. one captain lameted that, although the regulation length of pike was 18 feet, not one soldier in his unit had one over 15 feet, and if he didn't take care, they would be 12 feet long.

during the American civil war, the confederate troops often dumped thier 'wussy' issued bayonets in favour of thier bowie knifes and other personal melee weapons. recruits on both sides would dump thier heavy winter coats in the summer months and then complain when winter rolled around and they only had thier summer uniforms.

Troops in veitnam would take out the heavy truma plates form their flak jackets, and then get shot and rounds that might not have penatrated the jacket if the plates were in.


and on the amount of things modern soldiers carry, its freaking stupid. I've just come back off an exercise where, carrying everything i brought and the extra kit i had been given, it took two people to get me on my feet (I wasn't expected to fight carrying all this, but still, you get the idea). on overheating. it was October in Germany, thier was frost on the ground, i was sleeping outside, and ten minuites of marching was all it took to warm me up enough that i was comfortable in just my bofy armour and smock over the top.

[AslanCross]

Were Zweihanders ever used by warriors in full harness? All of the historical illustrations I've seen show them wielded by lightly-armored Landsknechts--usually in a breastplate or less.

[Kalaska'Agathas]

Why did breechloading firearms only become widely used (at least militarily) after the advent of the self contained cartridge? They are known to have existed since at least the 15th century, so I'm forced to wonder why they weren't widely adopted.

[PopcornMage]

Race car drivers don't wear cooling suits. They wear nomex underwear. For a cooling suit to function for two hours in the cockpit of a single-seater, you'd need some form of heat exchange unit, which is extra weight and power drain from the engine.


Well, NASCAR drivers might not use cooling circulation suits, but they do have air conditioning. Goes right in their helmet. They may have other cooling in the suit as well.

Sure, weight is an issue, but so is dehydration and heat exhaustion.

I'm sure the exact methods they use vary from driver to driver, and race to race, as well as league to league, but they do exist.

[Mike_G]

Why did breechloading firearms only become widely used (at least militarily) after the advent of the self contained cartridge? They are known to have existed since at least the 15th century, so I'm forced to wonder why they weren't widely adopted.

Several reasons. They were more expensive to produce, they were often prone to malfunction since they had more mechanics that could malfunction, and loose powder tended to foul the breech. It's not easy getting a good seal of the breech, so burning powder coming back at the user is a real issue. This was an issue as late as the Franco Prussian War in 1870. Brass cartridges solve a lot of these issues.

The Ferguson rifle tended to split the stock around the mechanism. No military Ferguson has been found without a repair to that area.

Plus, military doctrine and tactics took some time to evolve to where they could effectively deploy and supply troops with breechloaders.

Basically, the early breechloaders were fragile, expensive and prone to taking off your eyebrows. Not good selling points. A soldier wants a gun that goes bang when he pulls the trigger, and endangers the enemy more than it does him over one that promises great things but has "a few bugs."

Now, once the metal cartridge came into play in the mid 19th century, armies rapidly adopted breechloaders and repeaters.

[Storm Bringer]

also, metalurgy techology had to advance to the point were the manufacturing tolerances allowed a gas tight seal, and a gas tight seal that could be mass produced, at that (early breech loaders had hand crafted parts designed to fit each other, but were not interchangable with another rifle of the same type). it also had to be tough enough to take the punishment the average soldier can inflict upon his equipment (which, trust me, is LOTS). its no good having a gun that, as soon as it gets dropped/knocked over/blocks a sabre swing, requies a trip to the manufactures to repair it agian.

[Yora]

Were Zweihanders ever used by warriors in full harness? All of the historical illustrations I've seen show them wielded by lightly-armored Landsknechts--usually in a breastplate or less.
If you mean plate armor: certainly. There are some illustrations in the Fechtbücher which show two men in plate armor using longswords.

This is the one I was thinking of: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Wallerstein_219.jpg

[Psyx]

Well, NASCAR drivers might not use cooling circulation suits, but they do have air conditioning. Goes right in their helmet. They may have other cooling in the suit as well.
Sure, weight is an issue, but so is dehydration and heat exhaustion.


Can you cite a reliable source for that please, because I'm really struggling to believe that it would be anything other than a cool-air feed?

No other racing drivers in the world bother with such things. Formula 1 and LeMans series cars are far more demanding to drive than anything in NASCAR and just as hot inside, but don't have such luxuries: Drivers simply have to loose a few pounds during each race and be physically fit.

Air conditioning units are run off power taken from the engine, which means they suck power, which means the car goes slower. This isn't an ideal trait in a racing car. Ripping out the A/C unit is one of the first things I'd do to any car I was race-prepping, because it's just a drag on performance.

I may eat my words on this, but if so then my opinion of NASCAR drivers has just taken another dive.

[AslanCross]

If you mean plate armor: certainly. There are some illustrations in the Fechtbücher which show two men in plate armor using longswords.

This is the one I was thinking of: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Wallerstein_219.jpg

Yep, I do mean plate armor, but the swords I was referring to were the very large zweihanders, but I guess I found it now:

http://www.landsknecht.com/assets/images/landsknecht.jpg

[PopcornMage]

Can you cite a reliable source for that please, because I'm really struggling to believe that it would be anything other than a cool-air feed?

Plenty of Entries here. (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22cool+suits%22+in+Nascar&sa=N&tbs=nws:1,ar:1)

If it's not true, then why so much writing about it?

And yeah, some of the drivers probably do just have the cool air feed, that may even be the most common thing in the garage today, but that's outside the scope of the discussion.


No other racing drivers in the world bother with such things. Formula 1 and LeMans series cars are far more demanding to drive than anything in NASCAR and just as hot inside, but don't have such luxuries: Drivers simply have to loose a few pounds during each race and be physically fit.

Everything I've heard indicates that NASCAR drivers still lose weight during a race too. And be physically fit.


Air conditioning units are run off power taken from the engine, which means they suck power, which means the car goes slower. This isn't an ideal trait in a racing car. Ripping out the A/C unit is one of the first things I'd do to any car I was race-prepping, because it's just a drag on performance.


Yes, concerns about HP reduction are involved in their decisions. But so is the concern of the driver not being able to finish the race because the heat causes him to pass out.

It doesn't apply just to keeping the driver cool either. The brakes, the engines, they need cooling too. Sometimes they try to cut it, and sometimes that pays off, and sometimes it bites.


I may eat my words on this, but if so then my opinion of NASCAR drivers has just taken another dive.

You can do that as soon as you actually drive 500 miles in their boots.

[Yora]

You can do that as soon as you actually drive 500 miles in their boots.
How many times is that driving in a circle? :smallbiggrin:

[PopcornMage]

None of the top-level NASCAR tracks are actual circles. It'd be anywhere from about a thousand laps at Martinsville to less than 200 at Talladega.

BTW, it looks like there are some F1 drivers who have used some cooling methods: mentioned in regulations here (http://www.bellracing.info/fiaregulations.html) and KERS here (http://www.f1complete.com/content/view/12024/900/).

I found some mention in LeMans, but I'm not sure if they were American or French.

[Psyx]

Plenty of Entries here. (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22cool+suits%22+in+Nascar&sa=N&tbs=nws:1,ar:1)
If it's not true, then why so much writing about it?

There isn't, looking at those links. None of them detail a working A/C system in the car, and they're all at least 9 years old. Can you please cite something applicable from within the last 9 years?



Everything I've heard indicates that NASCAR drivers still lose weight during a race too. And be physically fit.


Although obviously less fit than every other racing driver in the world, if they need an A/C unit.



Yes, concerns about HP reduction are involved in their decisions. But so is the concern of the driver not being able to finish the race because the heat causes him to pass out.


So why aren't those concerns enough to put A/C in the cars on the grid of the LeMans 24h, F1, or indeed WRX races in Abu Dhabi?



It doesn't apply just to keeping the driver cool either. The brakes, the engines, they need cooling too. Sometimes they try to cut it, and sometimes that pays off, and sometimes it bites.


What? Huh? AC for the engine and brakes?!!

If there is A/C on NASCAR vehicles, then it must be well documented.

[PopcornMage]

There isn't, looking at those links. None of them detail a working A/C system in the car, and they're all at least 9 years old. Can you please cite something applicable from within the last 9 years?


I'm sorry, I think I misled you, by air conditioning I'm referring to the cool air that goes in the back of their helmet, not to a conventional air conditioner like you find in your street car.

My bad.

Here's a direct link (http://www.nascar.com/news/features/racecar.cockpit/index.html)

Oops, that was just to a mention of a system to control it, I meant the link to the actual system
(http://books.google.com/books?id=yUXDIxV9YuoC&pg=PA109&lpg=PA109&dq=helmet+cooling+NASCAR&source=bl&ots=nUgEcIaPIp&sig=nvvogqQi0J7naEr5beq3D3x_v80&hl=en&ei=rXC9TIH1Isn6nAeqg9SKDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAjgK#v=onepage&q=helmet%20cooling%20NASCAR&f=false)

What? Huh? AC for the engine and brakes?!!

Well, cooling anyway. Otherwise they'd be going a lot slower.

[Psyx]

FIA F1 regs state that a lot of things are legal that are not fitted to cars. KERS for example (which is a power boost system) is not currently used by any car on the grid, because it's not currently worthwhile. The authorisation of active cooling vests neither indicates the use of them, nor the fitment of A/C compressors.

Here: http://www.formula1.com/news/features/2010/3/10605.html
You can see a little article regarding driver cooling in F1.
There's a pic of a driver in a cooling vest. This is one of the non-circulating types which work like gel-packs that you put in the 'fridge. ( Details on the TST vest here: http://www.liquavision.com/product.php?product_id=110&detail_type=general ).
It isn't connected to any external exchange system, and such vest are a short-term solution. In the pic, it mentions the vest being used in qualifying, and I'd be very surprised if such equipment was worn by drivers on race-day due to performance drop-off as the vest might not be able to take 2 hours in an F1 cockpit and remain functional.

[PopcornMage]

Just saying you're snooty attitude ain't something I'm buying.

Like I said, you want to say you're a real man and strut around, do it on the track first.

[Psyx]

I'm sorry, I think I misled you, by air conditioning I'm referring to the cool air that goes in the back of their helmet, not to a conventional air conditioner like you find in your street car.


That's better. Cooling hoses to helmets are certainly viable and not drastically uncommon, and are a very long way away from air conditioning units. The helmet that I wear for motorsport and on bikes in hot climates/summer is festooned with air feeds and it's a common sense solution that only adds a few ounces of mass.

Brake cooling is handled by cunning use of air ducts, in order to get cold air onto them. Although race [brake] pads are also designed to operate at ridiculous temperatures and simply won't work if you try to use them on a road car, because they'll never get hot enough to operate properly.

Engine cooling is less of a problem when flat-out than in is on the start-line, where the lack of cooling fans on single-seaters means that they will overheat if just sat there stationary. It's also a problem sometimes in drifting, because car radiators are designed to work when the car is going forward, and getting correct airflow can be difficult when the car is spending a lot of time going sideways...

[Psyx]

Just saying you're snooty attitude ain't something I'm buying.

Like I said, you want to say you're a real man and strut around, do it on the track first.

Sorry: I was attempting to learn something, because I have never heard of drivers using active cooling systems before. Which is why I wanted a citable source. I've been involved in motorsport since starting go-karting at 12, and I come form a motorsport family. Which is why I was more than dubious about claims stated.

I do it on the track already, thanks. Left AND right turns. I used to race single seat Formula Ford and Formula First in my late-teens, then some saloon cars and motorcross. I got into drifting in about 2001, although I can't afford to compete any more because my mortgage is gouging me.
I live about 20 miles from a circuit and about 3 miles from the Lotus factory and test track, so I still get down for track days a few times a year. I've got a Datsun 280zx and a Nissan 200sx S13 for drift and track fun, and I just bought myself a 1979 Series 3 Land rover for off-roading.

[PopcornMage]

That's better. Cooling hoses to helmets are certainly viable and not drastically uncommon, and are a very long way away from air conditioning units.

Yes, I had meant to use "air conditioning" to describe it, but I must have overlooked it. My bad.


Engine cooling is less of a problem when flat-out than in is on the start-line, where the lack of cooling fans on single-seaters means that they will overheat if just sat there stationary. It's also a problem sometimes in drifting, because car radiators are designed to work when the car is going forward, and getting correct airflow can be difficult when the car is spending a lot of time going sideways...

It's also a problem when some trash gets on the grill. There was somebody who had that problem this weekend, but I'll be darned if I can remember who, and it wasn't anybody important enough to get much coverage on it.

And your last line, or even just the last part of it, was not attempting to learn something. It was sticking your nose in the air and sneering down at others.

So yeah, you want to say you can do better, get on the track and do it. Theirs.

[Stephen_E]

That's better. Cooling hoses to helmets are certainly viable and not drastically uncommon, and are a very long way away from air conditioning units. The helmet that I wear for motorsport and on bikes in hot climates/summer is festooned with air feeds and it's a common sense solution that only adds a few ounces of mass.


Umm, to be brutally frank I always thought he was talking about AC in the suit or helmet. Not AC for the entire car.


Stephen E

[Psyx]

He was. As was I. There's still no such thing in the world of motorsport, as far as I am aware.

The cooling hoses in question are simply air hoses run from somewhere on the car where there is cool air (ie a vent on the front somewhere, or similar). They do not come from an A/C unit and don't feed air that is colder than the ambient temperature outside of the vehicle.

Air cooling feeds, vents and ducts are.... vents and ducts. Air Conditioning is a very specific thing, and one that is very unlikely to be seen on a race-prepped car, as it involves running a pulley off the engine. This is why cars fitted with A/C are down on power and less economical than cars which don't have it installed.

[Psyx]

And your last line, or even just the last part of it, was not attempting to learn something. It was sticking your nose in the air and sneering down at others.
So yeah, you want to say you can do better, get on the track and do it. Theirs.

Sorry, but I've re-read what I'd written, and I really can't see that. I spoke in an informed manner because I know motorsport pretty well. If that strikes you as snooty, then -sorry- there's not a lot I can do. It was unintentional, unlike your own very confrontational comments, which would have me actually winning NASCAR in order to be able to have a valid opinion on the matter.

[PopcornMage]

Well, there is simple air blowing, but there are also options for cooling below simple ambient as mentioned here. (http://www.news-journalonline.com/news/local/east-volusia/2010/07/02/race-drivers-struggle-to-stay-cool.html)

And as also mentioned there, they did use cool suits, but decided it wasn't cost effective.

And perhaps you didn't mean offense by your comments, I can accept that you weren't intentionally doing so, but I found them as offensive as somebody making a flippant comment about some edition of an RPG. I do not insist you win, so much as you actually drive in their boots. I feel the same with complaining about an RPG, play it, then you can smack talk.

{{scrubbed}}

[Stephen_E]

Ummm, Just a suggestion. Maybe people should take a bit of a deep breath and count to 10 or something on this topic.

I'm ducking back out of the discussion.
Have 2 warnings from a year ago and need another year before I lose them. Don't want to risk another.:smalleek:

Stephen E

[PopcornMage]

Sounds like a good idea to me too.

Sorry if I came across harsh to you Psyx, didn't mean it that way.

[Joran]

Why did breechloading firearms only become widely used (at least militarily) after the advent of the self contained cartridge? They are known to have existed since at least the 15th century, so I'm forced to wonder why they weren't widely adopted.

Echoing what people said before, the machining wasn't up to snuff for mass produced breechloading firearms cheaply. Breechloaders have more moving parts, so the machining needs to be more precise, especially if the gas seal is going to be secure. By the time machining got precise enough to mass produce breechloaders cheaply and effectively (interchangeable parts), the percussion cap was also invented, making self-contained cartridges possible.

Doing some perfunctory research, it seems like most of the effort to produce a breechloading gun were in rifles and not muskets. This is probably the second reason why it wasn't adopted. The gains in rate of fire for a musket weren't worth it the extra complexity and cost. Rifles were always a secondary weapon, up until the Minie ball, so less emphasis was probably put on their development.

[fusilier]

Several reasons. They were more expensive to produce, they were often prone to malfunction since they had more mechanics that could malfunction, and loose powder tended to foul the breech. It's not easy getting a good seal of the breech, so burning powder coming back at the user is a real issue. This was an issue as late as the Franco Prussian War in 1870. Brass cartridges solve a lot of these issues.

The Ferguson rifle tended to split the stock around the mechanism. No military Ferguson has been found without a repair to that area.

Plus, military doctrine and tactics took some time to evolve to where they could effectively deploy and supply troops with breechloaders.

Basically, the early breechloaders were fragile, expensive and prone to taking off your eyebrows. Not good selling points. A soldier wants a gun that goes bang when he pulls the trigger, and endangers the enemy more than it does him over one that promises great things but has "a few bugs."

Now, once the metal cartridge came into play in the mid 19th century, armies rapidly adopted breechloaders and repeaters.

Following up on this and others. By the middle of the 19th century they were starting to get half-way decent breechloaders without brass cartridges. The Dreyse Needle Rifle may be the best well known, but the similar Mle. 1867 Chassepot was probably the best that worked on that system. In the US, the Sharps rifles and carbines had a pretty good reputation, although they still had to be primed with a cap. The Sharps rifle, however, did not use the firing needle that would break on a regular basis.

The Hall "rifle" is an earlier design that was actually very successful. Probably it's key to success was that the designer clearly didn't try too hard to get a good gas seal, and simply accepted that there would be leakage. I got to play around with one at a Mexican-American War reenactment recently. In addition to not sealing well at the breech, a hole was added to allow powder that spilled while loading to escape through the bottom of the gun (there were concerns that if powder built up in that area it could explode and blow up the gun). Anyway, this hole is roughly where you are going to put your off hand when firing the gun. Of course, it's placed between the breech and the barrel so leaking gasses flow right down it when fired. It would have been nice if I had been told about this prior to shooting it!

Anyway, I put "rifle" in quotes because it was actually smoothbore, but because it was breechloading the ball would have a tight fit, and be significantly more accurate than a muzzle-loaded smoothbore. It was a popular cavalry weapon, although officially the US reverted to a musketoon in 1847, then adopted the sharps carbine in the 1850s. Nonetheless it did see service during the Mexican-American War, some of the Indian Wars of the 1850s, and with certain units during the Civil War.

[fusilier]

Doing some perfunctory research, it seems like most of the effort to produce a breechloading gun were in rifles and not muskets. This is probably the second reason why it wasn't adopted. The gains in rate of fire for a musket weren't worth it the extra complexity and cost. Rifles were always a secondary weapon, up until the Minie ball, so less emphasis was probably put on their development.

Ah, but a breechloading weapon was thought to be faster to fire (and they typically were). They clearly get around the need for ramming an oversized bullet all the way down the length of the barrel, as in a muzzle-loading rifle. So the emphasis on trying to develop a breechloading rifle, could be seen as an attempt to raise the rate of fire of a rifle to match (or exceed) that of a musket.

[PopcornMage]

I do have a science fiction book with cross-dimensional travel where they did make the British adopt a version of the Ferguson.

It wasn't very detailed in that aspect, but perhaps you might find something in the 1632 verse.

[Joran]

Ah, but a breechloading weapon was thought to be faster to fire (and they typically were). They clearly get around the need for ramming an oversized bullet all the way down the length of the barrel, as in a muzzle-loading rifle. So the emphasis on trying to develop a breechloading rifle, could be seen as an attempt to raise the rate of fire of a rifle to match (or exceed) that of a musket.

That's a good insight; I thought something similar. From what I've read, the Ferguson rifle had similar rates of fire compared to the Brown Bess. However, due to the Minie ball, rifles finally caught up to muskets in rate of fire and were used to great effect during the American Civil War.

Actually, now that I think about it, maybe the reason why breechloaders finally overcame muzzle-loading guns is because of the self-contained cartridges. Once self-contained cartridges arose, the rate of fire for breechloaders increased dramatically and once magazines were introduced, there was definitely no contest. Also, self-contained cartridges made loading and firing much easier, probably reducing the amount of training needed.

[HenryHankovitch]

The problem with making breechloading rifles is sealing the breech. Even the smallest opening in the breech will result in hot, burning gas spraying out of the firearm, most likely into the user's hands and face. Methods of doing this without brass cartridges require incredibly precise machining (which simply didn't happen before the 20th century; we're talking about an era which can't even produce interchangeable screws or bolts on a fine scale), or nonmetallic gaskets like rubber, which have an annoying tendency to rot, fail, and/or catch on fire.

The metallic cartridge fixes this problem because the cartridge itself forms a self contained firing chamber in which ignition happens. The firearm's breech provides (very necessary) physical support for the brass cartridge, but doesn't actually seal the propellant gas.

[Gavinfoxx]

Yea, for fiction, the 1632-verse, especially those Grantville Gazettes, goes reaallllyy in depth on the topic of firearms and such...

[fusilier]

That's a good insight; I thought something similar. From what I've read, the Ferguson rifle had similar rates of fire compared to the Brown Bess. However, due to the Minie ball, rifles finally caught up to muskets in rate of fire and were used to great effect during the American Civil War.

Actually, now that I think about it, maybe the reason why breechloaders finally overcame muzzle-loading guns is because of the self-contained cartridges. Once self-contained cartridges arose, the rate of fire for breechloaders increased dramatically and once magazines were introduced, there was definitely no contest. Also, self-contained cartridges made loading and firing much easier, probably reducing the amount of training needed.

The first self-contained cartridges were paper, but a lot of the innovations were slow to be adopted. On reflection, I started to wonder if this wasn't simply a technological issue.

We live in a time when designing and producing new weapons is a big business even in peace time. However, that is a phenomena that really rose to prominence during the 20th century (perhaps starting in the late 19th century). In the 18th and most of the 19th century governments spent much less money on new weapons and very little on development. Most development occurred through independent tinkerers or tinkerers working at government arsenals. During peacetime soldiers were typically seen by the public as louts who were too lazy or incompetent to get real jobs. So public support for funding research for the military was low.

A lot of new technologies had to prove themselves before they would be accepted, and as governments weren't willing to fund large scale testing it rarely happened. Technological innovations (and even revolutions) were often slow and incremental.

The Dreyse needle rifle was starting to enter service around 1848. At this time, most nations were converting to percussion lock smoothbore muskets. Of course, new muskets were made, but many were actually just converted from flintlocks -- it was cheaper that way. Development of the French equivalent of the Dreyse goes back to at least the 50s, but it wasn't until the Prussians had reequipped their whole army, and then used the weapon to great effect during the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 did the French finally move on producing the Chassepot.

Another example is the minie-bullet. The French are generally credited with being the first to adopt it. But they didn't immediately re-equip their whole infantry with new minie rifles -- in fact they actually introduced another smoothbore musket for the line infantry. Why? Because smoothbore muskets were cheaper, they could make use of the Nessler bullet (a kind of minie-ball for smoothbores that actually improved their accuracy a lot). However, after the Crimean War they transitioned to rifles. Many old smoothbores were simply rifled.

In America, the Civil War taught the US the value of metallic cartridges and they were formally adopted. Did they design a new rifle for the new cartridge? No. Instead you have the Allin (US) and Snider (British) conversions of old muzzle-loading rifles. They would much rather take the cheap route of modifying an existing weapon, then producing a new one.

There are French weapons that begin their lives as flintlock smoothbore muskets, and can now be found as breechloading, metallic cartridge rifles!

Not until the late 19th century, do you start to see immediate responses to one nation introducing a new weapon. The M1886 Lebel, caused everybody else to scramble to develop a small caliber, smokeless round, and magazine rifles. Without needing to prove itself during a war. Another example would be the famous rapid fire 75mm cannon.

[Storm Bringer]

During peacetime soldiers were typically seen by the public as louts who were too lazy or incompetent to get real jobs.

at best. this was a time before uniformed police officers. the Local governers would call on the nearest army or milita unit when faced with strikes or riots, so in many places the army was synomous with repression. the english in particular were loathe to maintian a standing army for longer than they needed to.

[Dienekes]

Alright a bit of a broad question.

What weapons and equipment were used in Europe around 1000 AD? How well equipped was the average soldier compared to the aristocrats? How heavily armored was the heavy cavalry? Any other information you feel like giving would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

[PopcornMage]

What weapons and equipment were used in Europe around 1000 AD?


I'd start with this item. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayeux_Tapestry)

A bit late, but close enough for your purposes I think.

[Adlan]

Alright a bit of a broad question.

What weapons and equipment were used in Europe around 1000 AD? How well equipped was the average soldier compared to the aristocrats? How heavily armored was the heavy cavalry? Any other information you feel like giving would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

Where in europe do you mean? Northern Europe was different to southern europe, and the Byzantines over in eastern europe were different again.

[Dienekes]

I'd start with this item. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayeux_Tapestry)

A bit late, but close enough for your purposes I think.

Excellent thank you.


Where in europe do you mean? Northern Europe was different to southern europe, and the Byzantines over in eastern europe were different again.

Well all of it interests me, but technically Northern Europe and Southern Europe is what I'm looking for. Byzantium doesn't really enter into it.

[Spiryt]

Hurstwic.org (http://hurstwic.org/)

Artifacts form Gotlandia, generally (http://www.frojel.com/_index.html)

Site about Rus and Scandinavia it seems, up to 1300, but will be something about ~1000 too (http://www.draconia.pl/index.php?strona=artykuly)

General Baltic Sea region (http://www.nordelag.org/norden.html)

Topic is extremely broad one, so for vague picture, sites like there are very good, although in case of reenacting one you have to ignore monstrous gloves/gauntlets/hand thingies of course, which are not historical in any way.

[Dienekes]

Thanks Spiryt, I'll look through all of them as soon as I can.

[Galloglaich]

Artifacts form Gotlandia, generally (http://www.frojel.com/_index.html)

Site about Rus and Scandinavia it seems, up to 1300, but will be something about ~1000 too (http://www.draconia.pl/index.php?strona=artykuly)

General Baltic Sea region (http://www.nordelag.org/norden.html)

Topic is extremely broad one, so for vague picture, sites like there are very good, although in case of reenacting one you have to ignore monstrous gloves/gauntlets/hand thingies of course, which are not historical in any way.

Those are great links Spyrit thanks for posting!

G.

[Fortinbras]

I read someplace that a katar can punch through a mail shirt. What do people make of this?

[Storm Bringer]

short answer: not impossible.

longer answer: depends on the shape of the Katar in question, the method of striking, how the chain was made, how the blow connected (i.e. was it a good, solid strike, or did it glance off?) and a lot of simmilar factors.

it can happen, with a very strong blow, striking dead on, can and will penatrate the chain. but agianst a defending enemy, its incredibly hard to pull off.

[Lev]

I read someplace that a katar can punch through a mail shirt. What do people make of this?
Easily, the thicker the blade and the lighter the whole thing is the harder this will be, the heavier the whole thing is and the thinner the blade, the easier it will be. Think about a straight drive punch mixed with an estoc or gladiator scissor.

[Spiryt]

I read someplace that a katar can punch through a mail shirt. What do people make of this?

Eh, it's a question quite literally like "can a car go 120 mph?".

You could quite certainly punch trough nice mail with a piece of stick, provided that you somehow managed to stab hard enough, without breaking it. :smallwink:

Generally, because of the way in which you hold katara, pata or similar weapon, energy transfer can be very efficient (provided you can hold it well).

Also, since it's literally punching motion, you can put your body behind the blow very efficiently.

So, provided that blade shape and cross section is suitable for this, such weapon would theoretically be very well suited for mail etc. punching compared to many others.

Of course, landing powerful,punching blows on defending target with such weapon wouldn't obviously be particularly easy, and be quite short ranged attack too.

[Galloglaich]

Plus katar are hardened for armor-piercing. It's specifically an armor-piercing weapon. Having seen a few real ones I definitely think it's possible, not easy but possible. That is what they were made for.

G.

[Spiryt]

Plus katar are hardened for armor-piercing. It's specifically an armor-piercing weapon. Having seen a few real ones I definitely think it's possible, not easy but possible. That is what they were made for.

G.

Well, what you mean by "hardened"? All bladed weapons were generally hardened, degree of hardness in different parts depended on shape, desired qualities and stuff, assuming that maker more or less knew what he was doing.

All I can find is Wiki, which is of course very shady stuff.... It says that points were often thickly reinforced to produce very stiff point for penetration.

That would definitely made it better suited for penetrating stuff like mail, although very big hardness probably wouldn't be desired at all then.

[Galloglaich]

Well, what you mean by "hardened"? All bladed weapons were generally hardened, degree of hardness in different parts depended on shape, desired qualities and stuff, assuming that maker more or less knew what he was doing.

Steel weapons were usually heat treated to a greater or lesser degree, sometimes hardened sometimes tempered, sometimes both or neither. My understanding of heat treatments is somewhat crude since I've only just started working with a forge, but here is what little I do currently understand:

And as you probably know, there is a difference between tempering and hardening. Tempered steel is tough and springy but is not as hard as for example a file or a drill bit. To harden a blade you can simply heat it up and quench it. This is not usually done to swords because it leaves it brittle, but it is sometimes done with daggers or with blade-edges. To temper it must be re-heated to a specific (moderate) temperature, we usually identify a color change to determine how long precisely, (a lot of sword blades are tempered to blue) then it is quenched again to 'set' the temper. A blade can also be taken to a 'higher' temper which makes it harder at the expense of flexibility.

Some blades, like the katana, use differential hardening on the edge while the spine may remain tempered or even simple iron without a heat -treatment.

My understanding of the Katar is that due to the shape and length it was not requried to be as springy, and was hardened, like a razor or a drill bit or a file, to make it stiffer and harder-edged and better for armor-piercing. Some crossbow bolt tips and arrowheads were also hardened in this manner.



All I can find is Wiki, which is of course very shady stuff.... It says that points were often thickly reinforced to produce very stiff point for penetration.

A hardened point is also stiffer, less flexible, than a tempered point. It's a combination of the shape and the heat-treatment in ths case. There is an antique shop not far from my house which has several antique katar and I've handled some of them, they were larger than I expected though they vary greatly in size. Some of them are of wootz steel. You can tell that they are hardened, they are very stiff compared to my antique tulwar which has an excellent temper. The wedge-like shape of the katar would be ideal for piercing mail, I think, exactly the right shape you would want to spread and pop a rivet on a ring though I don't know of any tests that have been done specifically.



That would definitely made it better suited for penetrating stuff like mail, although very big hardness probably wouldn't be desired at all then.

Why do you say that?

G

[Spiryt]

Why do you say that?



Well, because obviously no matter what you do with steel, increase of hardness will cause brittleness. Without absorption of energy by deformations of surface, thing will start to break, chip to pieces.

If you have very stocky, reinforced point, then it's probably not such an issue, but it's still no point to make it such way though, as it's anyway not likely to deform.

So even though people were doing many amazing stuff, there are simply boundaries on a hardness scale that weren't crossed, as it simply had no point.

So my guess was that katars probably wouldn't be much harder than any other weapons, simply because most of them anyway shouldn't have been much harder.

Since you've stated that their tips were anyway very stiff due to shape, there would probably be no need to make harden them very much, instead of making them a bit more shock resistant...

Again, I don't know much about katars, or especially particular katars, so all those assumptions may be very well erase worthy of course.

[Silus]

Looking for stats on 475 kiloton thermonuclear munitions (21.6 times stronger than the Fat Man that was dropped on Nagasaki).

Edit: Damage, blast radius, ect. ect..

[Psyx]

Did you want that in d6s of damage?


there's a table half way down the page here that seems to be roughly what you need:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_nuclear_explosions

Much of the effectiveness depends on where you set them off: Airborne, ground-burst, or submerged/underground. Then there's the terrain: Natural depression/valley or flat. Weather (precipitation and wind) has a huge bearing on fall-out. Ground composition also makes a difference.

[Silus]

Did you want that in d6s of damage?


there's a table half way down the page here that seems to be roughly what you need:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_nuclear_explosions

Much of the effectiveness depends on where you set them off: Airborne, ground-burst, or submerged/underground. Then there's the terrain: Natural depression/valley or flat. Weather (precipitation and wind) has a huge bearing on fall-out. Ground composition also makes a difference.

1) Oh, any sort of damage I suppose. D6's are pretty standard, so why not?
2) *Screenshots the table to work out the math later*
3) A combination of airborne and ground-burst. Terrain is, well, Sigil.

[dsmiles]

I'm back with my firearms questions again. Can somebody point me towards a scientific comparison between black powder and gunpowder? Also between 14th century and 18th century firearms?

[Spiryt]

I'm back with my firearms questions again. Can somebody point me towards a scientific comparison between black powder and gunpowder? Also between 14th century and 18th century firearms?

How much science do you need?

Because Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder) Pedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smokeless_powder) has this covered quite well in many cases.

Generally even with relatively simple mixture as black powder is, there would be huge differences in use as soon as in 15th century. Different ratios of charcoal, sulfur and saltpeter would be suitable for different types and sizes of guns.

As for second part, it's really quite a broad question...

In 14th century, handgonnes, 'rusnicas', bombards and other simple form of guns would be used, and not used very widely.

In 18th century there were already many types of different guns, with few prevalent quite sophisticated methods of firing...

I can link to this site (http://www.musketeer.ch/blackpowder/handgonne.html) for nice research, reproduction and general recreation of early guns.

[fusilier]

I'm back with my firearms questions again. Can somebody point me towards a scientific comparison between black powder and gunpowder? Also between 14th century and 18th century firearms?

Technically speaking, black powder is gunpowder -- the terms are interchangeable. In fact black powder isn't necessarily black, that's the result of modern coatings. The confusion arises from the fact that most modern guns do not use black-powder and instead use smokeless powders.

Anyway, smokeless powders come in many varieties, but generally produce a more uniform burn than gunpowder. Gunpowder tends to explode, creating more pressure at the beginning which tapers off as the burn continues (I think). Weapons built for gunpowder, tend to use less of a charge when smokeless powder is used in them. Which would seem to indicate that smokeless powder is more efficient at generating higher pressures.

Gunpowder also comes in different forms: simple composition (meal powder), corned powder (grains), and round powder.

14th Century, and 18th Century firearms differ widely. At best, you may have a hand cannon in the late 14th century, but by the 18th you have flintlocks and rifles.

As spiryt pointed out, the particular ratios of gunpowder components changed over time.

[Kalaska'Agathas]

Might I ask what the difference between Corned, Meal, and Round powders is/was?

[fusilier]

Might I ask what the difference between Corned, Meal, and Round powders is/was?

Meal powder (also known as "serpentine"), is literally a powder, with the constituents mixed together. The constituents tended to separate during transport, and it was highly susceptible to moisture.

Corned powder is the familiar granular stuff, that is common today. It grew out of an attempt to make powder more resistant to moisture. It tended to be more powerful. Although meal powder could get similar power with an appropriate chamber shape (see the link about early guns that Spiryt posted).

Round powder is similar to Corned powder, but made using a different technique, and the "grains" are little spheres. I've seen some references to it, but I'm not sure how common it was.

[dsmiles]

Wow...that's...that's A LOT OF SCIENCE. Thanks, Spiryt, fusilier. That was pretty much just what I was looking for.

[Yora]

Black Poder is serious stuff. There's a documentary "Exploding the Legend" in which they go mythbuster style and recreate the setup for the Gunpowder-Plot in England. They did it on a military bombing range, and when they lighted a single small barell to see how the stuff actually behaves when measured with modern instruments, the explosion reached the maximum power that was allowed for the range.

And just this day, the office of the german chancelor got a pipe bomb made with black powder, it's still doing the job.

[Kalaska'Agathas]

And just this day, the office of the german chancelor got a pipe bomb made with black powder, it's still doing the job.

Those wacky Greeks I presume? I hope no one was hurt.

[Yora]

No, was found and safely defused.

Here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9oDBXLjQcE&feature=related)'s the documentary I mentioned.
This is the part with the gunpowder tests (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyJMOQcAjD0&feature=related).
And the final test with 36 barrels (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFytcsA9mU8&feature=related#t=1m33s).

I recomment watching it whole, it's really good.

[Norsesmithy]

Technically speaking, black powder is gunpowder -- the terms are interchangeable. In fact black powder isn't necessarily black, that's the result of modern coatings. The confusion arises from the fact that most modern guns do not use black-powder and instead use smokeless powders.

Anyway, smokeless powders come in many varieties, but generally produce a more uniform burn than gunpowder. Gunpowder tends to explode, creating more pressure at the beginning which tapers off as the burn continues (I think). Weapons built for gunpowder, tend to use less of a charge when smokeless powder is used in them. Which would seem to indicate that smokeless powder is more efficient at generating higher pressures.

Gunpowder also comes in different forms: simple composition (meal powder), corned powder (grains), and round powder.

14th Century, and 18th Century firearms differ widely. At best, you may have a hand cannon in the late 14th century, but by the 18th you have flintlocks and rifles.

As spiryt pointed out, the particular ratios of gunpowder components changed over time.
Pressure when talking about black powder and smokeless powder is a funny thing. Black Powder is classed as an explosive, so it will nearly always expand at a certain velocity, whether burned in the free air or contained in a firearm, whereas smokeless powder is a propellant, and will burn at different rates depending on how contained it is. So while blackpowder in a loosely contained or low power application (for instance, a simple pipe bomb) will generate more pressure than smokeless, smokeless is capable of much higher pressures than black powder in tightly contained systems. The general effect of this is that if you double charge a musket, you will, unless the musket is poorly constructed and has a rapidly tapering barrel after the chamber, mostly be OK, but if you double charge a smokeless powder firearm, you will mostly blow yourself up.

Smokeless powder also doesn't make a rocket worth a darn, because you either get a candle or a bomb.

[Spamotron]

In the Palladium combat system revolvers are +1 to hit over semi-automatics with an aimed shot because "revolvers have a smoother firing action." I strongly suspect that was made up on the spot to give players a reason to pick W.P. Revolver over W.P. Pistol. Is there any real basis for this rule at all?

[Norsesmithy]

Not particularly, a double action revolver has a heavier trigger than most striker fired or single action semiauto, and the difference in mechanical repeatability, while there, is so much smaller than the difference in mechanical repeatability of a person that it has no real effect on practical accuracy.

[Crow]

I cocked revolver does give the user less room for error than a full DAO pull, but then a revolver that isn't cocked has a huge pull too!

[Galloglaich]

Yeah I think doubleaction revolvers usually have more trigger pull than automatics, as a safety feature since most don't have safetys.

That was a very interesting point about black powder vs. smokeless powder, I wasn't aware of that.

I'm curious about very early gunpowder such as you see with Chinese fire-lances which seemed to have to be mixed before use...?

From the research i've seen, the early blackpowder firearms werre actually quite powerful at least at close range. The muzzle energy on a 16th Century musket is higher than an Ak-47, even one of those Czech style pistala "hand cannons" has more energy than a .357 magnum revolver. The biggest changes between say, the late 15th Century and the 18th in firearms I think were really in the locks or firing mechanisms. Touch-hole to match-lock is a huge step, match - lock to serpentine or wheel lock is a huge step, wheel lock to flint lock is another huge step.

The real practical difference was in how much training or 'culture' was required to raise effective troops. The Czechs had very effective gunners in the 15th Century using touch-hole weapons capable of holding their own in the open field and even making effective use of light howitzers (houfnice), but that required a high degree of 'gunpowder culture' and proved to not be very transferrable. The German and Hungrian armies which were successfully using gunners in the 15th Century (such as Matthew Covinus in Hungary against the Ottomans) were mostly hiring Bohemians. Everywhere else firearms were basically only useful in siege warfare, there just weren't enough people around with the expertise to use them efficiently. Guns were a bit like longbows, recurves or the really heavy crossbows, only certain people from certain places seemed to be able to handle them.

By the time the matchlock arquebus became well established in the late 15th / early 16th Century, it got much easier to start training people in a relatively short period of time to use these weapons, and pretty soon that was systematically organized enough that raising effective gun-armed troops became predictable, just a matter of time and money. That really changed the world.

G.

[fusilier]

If the revolver is single-action (or at least being used as single action), then the +1 aiming bonus seems reasonable. While I'm not familiar with the system, I suspect there is a trade-off in there somewhere (Automatic pistols are either quicker firing, or have larger magazines).

Chinese gunpowder was fairly bizarre, both in proportion of ingredients, but also they had other ingredients added. I'm not too familiar with fire lances, but if they were being "packed" with gunpowder, like a firework, then separation of components during transport may not have been an issue. (Compared to a large barrel of "loose" powder.)

Link to a website that has a chart comparing different gunpowder recipes:
http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~dispater/handgonnes.htm

[Galloglaich]

If the revolver is single-action (or at least being used as single action), then the +1 aiming bonus seems reasonable. While I'm not familiar with the system, I suspect there is a trade-off in there somewhere (Automatic pistols are either quicker firing, or have larger magazines).

Chinese gunpowder was fairly bizarre, both in proportion of ingredients, but also they had other ingredients added. I'm not too familiar with fire lances, but if they were being "packed" with gunpowder, like a firework, then separation of components during transport may not have been an issue. (Compared to a large barrel of "loose" powder.)

Link to a website that has a chart comparing different gunpowder recipes:
http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~dispater/handgonnes.htm

Yeah I've seen that... Roger Bacons initial recipe was more like the Chinese version, then it changed radically from the Medieval period into the Renaissance when they really started using guns.

Check out this video of a fire lance replica, it looks kind of marginal at first but it's really pretty impressive toward the end (keep watching past the first couple of shots, it get's interesting at around the halfway point). Notice how they are mixing the powder and resins etc. This is what very early firearms were like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMzZ3CPgMrg&feature=related

G.

[Fortinbras]

I recently saw a the film An Ungentlemanly Act about the Falklands Conflict which leaves me with two questions.

1. In one scene an Argentine APC is coming over a ridge and its under armor is clearly exposed for several seconds, long enough to take a shot. Would it be even with the realm of possibility for a bullet from the formidable FN FAL to punch through the under armor of an APC?

2. The Royal Marines in the movie wear their berets- in combat! I also saw a couple pictures of Royal Marines in BDUs with their berets. Is there a reason this isn't as crazy as I think it is? In other words, what the #$% happened to helmets?

[Yora]

The first question probably depends on the specific type of ACP used by the Argentines. Generally armored vehicles have the strongest armor on the sides and are more vulnerable at the top and bottom, where attacks are much less likely to occur. But there has always been the posibility of mines, so I doubt that there are many ACPs that leave the underside completely unprotected.
The punch of the FAL likely comes mostly from the 7.62mm rounds it uses, like the G3 and M14. While a powerful round, I don't think it could do much against even light armor.

From pictures I've seen, the british didn't use any kind of body armor back then. Apparently they also didn't wear helmets all the time, but I don't know if they went into combat that way. However even if they didn't, a patrol caught at suprise might not have time to get their helmets out and so fight the way they are. I can also imagine that the helmets back then weren't very good and if the argentines also used 7,62mm rifles, they would go through them like paper.
But not only leaving your most vulnerable body part unprotected, but even making that one part highly visible by waring a red cap seems awefully stupid.

[Norsesmithy]

Yeah, a military helmet of that vintage only protects against fragments. So if fragments aren't a serious worry, then a helmet is just unnecessary bulk and weight.

As for the APC, odds are pretty low of a FAL being able to knock one out, 7.62x51 is about the bare minimum threat worth armoring against, so an APC that doesn't protect a soldier from that is nothing more than a slow, maintenance intensive, fuel pig of a truck.

[Storm Bringer]

I would assume that a rifle round would be too low powered to penetrate even the underside of a APC, but maybe a .50 cal round or 20mm autocannon might have (if one were present)

as to wearing berets in combat, that likey stems form the fact the Royal Marines are 'ard as nails, and chose not to wear helmets and keep thier destintive green berets (http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_4sDK3codoaA/TIRAQdkvOeI/AAAAAAAAEW8/ig7CdM5OiBk/s1600/42Commando.jpg) (only the paras and the RMP wear red ones), either thinking the espirt de corps of the marines would be increased by the display, or that the Argentines would be intimidated by these clearly elite troops.

[Mike_G]

What Norsesmithy said. The helmet isn't going to stop an Argentine rifle or mcahinegun round. And it's heavy, it makes you sweat, and you can't hear as well. Recon patrols commonly went out in soft covers, the better to hear at night.

[PorkSoldat]

In late medieval Europe, when plate armor started to become extremely effective, why did heavily armored footmen abandon their shields and switch to large two handed weapons like zweihanders and poleaxes, instead of simply using a mace/warhammer and a shield?

I am under the impression that shields were extremely effective defensive tools throughout history, but I am also under the impression that in the late medieval period, when plate armor was reaching its apex, they were discarded as unnecessary, and people preferred to use two handed weapons when on foot, to better damage opponents wearing that heavy plate.

Also, shields may also have been less useful against high velocity missile weapons by this period.

But at the same time, I'm under the impression that maces and warhammers were remarkable weapons in that they were still effective even if your opponent was wearing mail + gambeson or late medieval plate.

The main disadvantage of the mace would be that it is less agile and able to parry, but given that the more agile weapons like swords couldn't really harm plate wearers effectively by this point and that the weapons which were effective against plate were also less agile and often precluded the advantage of a shield... it doesn't seem like you'd have much of a disadvantage at all in small scale combat if you picked mace and shield.

So why give up the (by almost all accounts excellent) defensive advantages of a shield in melee combat?

I must be missing something, because it seems like a heavily armored footman with a warhammer/mace and a shield would be at an advantage against footmen with almost any other set of equipment, but if that was the case, wouldn't they have been more popular, instead of non buckler shields almost dieing out and maces/warhammers being mostly relegated to use as mounted sidearms?

Or maybe they really would have been the best, except that nobody really fought in RPG scale (8 vs 12 etc) foot combat, so people were more interested in battlefield weapons with reach?

Where am I going wrong?

[Yora]

Late plate armor was really really good. Until guns appeared there was almost no way to crack these things in combat. The only way to get through was to use either very strong impact force or pierce through one of the few and very small gaps.
While a mace could probably hurt someone wearing plate armor, heavy momentum also means that you lose a great deal of speed and flexibility, which makes your attacks easier to predict and avoid. A good way to get into the gaps was by using a dagger, but for that you had to get into hand to hand combat and exposing yourself to the same threat.
Both poleaxes and two handed swords are quite useful in such a situation. With a two handed blunt weapon you can put quite some force into a blow, but still have some amount of control over it by using two hands on a long handle.
One very important way to use a two handed sword is by using a half sword grip, which essentially means grabing the middle of the blade with your secondary hand and using the tip like a short spear. You have good reach and can generate some impact force, but they are also amazingly fast and agile. And when an opportunity opens, you use the half sword grip to align the tip with a gap in the oponents armor and then push the blade through it.

[Spiryt]

Where am I going wrong?

By simplifying things way too much?

Different weapons allow you to do different things. Even in times when everyone were using shields, two handed axes and spears were used from time to time.

And "heavily armored footmen" or footmen in general, were fighting with polearms, with shield or without.

Mace or hammer could have been secondary arms, not primary, in short, which doesn't matter they weren't used.


While a mace could probably hurt someone wearing plate armor, heavy momentum also means that you lose a great deal of speed and flexibility, which makes your attacks easier to predict and avoid.

Don't see how mace would have much more "heavy momentum" than axe, or similar stuff.

Not to mention that most maces were pretty short and easily controllable.

[Kalaska'Agathas]

I was wondering where I might be able to get information on the Estoc, beyond what is available on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoc). Namely, I'm interested in the techniques of its use, and the time period in which it was popular. Also, I'd be interested in the 'genealogy' of the Estoc, what did the design develop out of, what did it develop into?

[Spiryt]

I was wondering where I might be able to get information on the Estoc, beyond what is available on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoc). Namely, I'm interested in the techniques of its use, and the time period in which it was popular. Also, I'd be interested in the 'genealogy' of the Estoc, what did the design develop out of, what did it develop into?

It's more than reasonable to assume that he had developed from various Oakeshott type XV, XVII or XX longswords - namely the ones that were pretty much focused only on thrusting, and estoc was "taking it to the extreme" - much longer blade, with robust, thick section.

There's not too much known about it, but certainly it was used by hussars and generally polish cavalry in 16th and 17th century.

Big photo (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Koncerz_Muzeum_Zagłębia.JPG)

It seems, that first ones were somehow akin to long, thrusting longswords, while later the ones like on the picture, with one handed grip, developed for horseback use as "mini lance".


EDIT: Here's more info (http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=313444&page=2) - in some shoddy english, mixed with other stuff, but quite interesting, it seems.

[Kalaska'Agathas]

That blade seems comically out of place connected to that hilt - I didn't even know there were single handed Estocs. I'm having trouble envisioning how it would be used, as a miniature lance, that is.

[Fortinbras]

What do people think of this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDkoj932YFo&feature=related

[Raum]

What do people think of this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDkoj932YFo&feature=relatedNot much. The History Channel is more about popular consumerism than history.

[Xuc Xac]

people preferred to use two handed weapons when on foot, to better damage opponents wearing that heavy plate.


Two-handed swords were useful as anti-pike weapons. If you have a shield and a one-handed weapon, you can't get close to a pikeman without getting skewered. With a two-handed sword and plate armor, you can walk up and stand just outside of the pike's reach and then smash the shafts of the pikes to turn them into splintered staves. Since you're covered in plate, those staves aren't very scary without the points on them. Against opponents with shorter weapons, you could use half-swording techniques to really apply a lot of penetrating power and kill the other guy (if he didn't do the same to you first).


Late plate armor was really really good. Until guns appeared there was almost no way to crack these things in combat.

The guns appeared first.

[Yora]

In that case "until guns became so common that wearing plate armor was no longer worth it". :smallbiggrin:

Not much. The History Channel is more about popular consumerism than history.
I'd rather say "aweful". All I know about swords is some stuff I've read and watching a number of different vidoes on the subject, but even I can point out lots of flaws with the "tests" they did.

[Psyx]

But not only leaving your most vulnerable body part unprotected, but even making that one part highly visible by waring a red cap seems awefully stupid.

No helmet of the time would have stopped a rifle round. Helmets are designed to stop fragmentation and the like, and artillery was a bit scarce on the islands. Plus the peaty soil really swallowed up fragments and rather muted the effects of fragmentation anyway - WP was the way to go.

Para berets aren't red. MPs' berets are red. Calling members of the Parachute Regiment stupid is far more stupid than not wearing a helmet in combat... :smallbiggrin:


but given that the more agile weapons like swords couldn't really harm plate wearers effectively by this point and that the weapons which were effective against plate were also less agile and often precluded the advantage of a shield... it doesn't seem like you'd have much of a disadvantage at all in small scale combat if you picked mace and shield.

A sword can certainly hurt a plate-wearing foe if you jab it somewhere poorly protected, via half-swording or similar.
The idea that any weapon that can threaten full plate armour is unwieldy is a fallacy. Two handed swords are VERY agile and elegant weapons. Poleaxes too are far from slow. Both are complete weapon systems that can be used in a massive variety of ways as well - not just by taking swings at people, like a mace.
Thus a foe in plate armour with one of these weapons is still going to have the edge over someone with a short-reach single handed weapon and a shield.

[Psyx]

IWould it be even with the realm of possibility for a bullet from the formidable FN FAL to punch through the under armor of an APC?

I also saw a couple pictures of Royal Marines in BDUs with their berets.

Probably not.

DPM, not BDUs...

[Yora]

I don't know if their technique is any good, but here's the idea of what we are talking about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmoSedeqrHo&feature=related

Here you can see the speed and agility that is possible with a longsword: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmUqhrcSkY4&feature=related
You also get a very good view on how the long handle is used as a leaver with the other hand serving as the leverage point. It's the same reason a staff or a spear can be very fast as well, and I assume it works almost the same for poleaxes.
I played Dragon Age yesterday and cringed when I took a closer look at a character using a two handed swords like a sledgehammer.

[firechicago]

What people are saying about the advantages of two-handed weapons is true and important, but I think it's just one side of the equation of the question of why shields disappear when soldiers start wearing heavy armor. The other side is that armor reduces the benefits of a shield.

Sure, there are a handful of things that a shield can do that a steel vambrace and gauntlet can't. And there are a bunch of things that the shield is better at. But a steel vambrace can still do most of the things a shield can do well enough while still leaving your hand free to wield a two-handed weapon or grab your opponent's weapon or just stick your thumb in your opponent's eye. The point is that armor doesn't make a shield useless, but it reduces the net benefit of the shield.

It's worth noting that the two examples I can think of* where shields survived into the 16th century were both used by troops who were relatively lightly armored, and had no armor on their arms.

*(Spanish rodeleros and the Scottish targe, which may have been used as late as the Jacobite rising of 1745-6)

[fusilier]

Two-handed swords were useful as anti-pike weapons. If you have a shield and a one-handed weapon, you can't get close to a pikeman without getting skewered. With a two-handed sword and plate armor, you can walk up and stand just outside of the pike's reach and then smash the shafts of the pikes to turn them into splintered staves. Since you're covered in plate, those staves aren't very scary without the points on them. . . .

This was a Landsknecht technique that was countered by the use of cheek-pieces running for up to 3 or 4 feet behind the pike's head.

[fusilier]

What people are saying about the advantages of two-handed weapons is true and important, but I think it's just one side of the equation of the question of why shields disappear when soldiers start wearing heavy armor. The other side is that armor reduces the benefits of a shield.

Sure, there are a handful of things that a shield can do that a steel vambrace and gauntlet can't. And there are a bunch of things that the shield is better at. But a steel vambrace can still do most of the things a shield can do well enough while still leaving your hand free to wield a two-handed weapon or grab your opponent's weapon or just stick your thumb in your opponent's eye. The point is that armor doesn't make a shield useless, but it reduces the net benefit of the shield.

It's worth noting that the two examples I can think of* where shields survived into the 16th century were both used by troops who were relatively lightly armored, and had no armor on their arms.

*(Spanish rodeleros and the Scottish targe, which may have been used as late as the Jacobite rising of 1745-6)

Interesting discussion. As firechicago pointed out, shields did not die out completely, and in the 16th century were still common with swordsmen, typically in a "target" style of shield. Unfortunately, I lack the knowledge to comment much further, although I still see shields in use throughout the 15th century.

[Galloglaich]

In late medieval Europe, when plate armor started to become extremely effective, why did heavily armored footmen abandon their shields and switch to large two handed weapons like zweihanders and poleaxes, instead of simply using a mace/warhammer and a shield?

I am under the impression that shields were extremely effective defensive tools throughout history, but I am also under the impression that in the late medieval period, when plate armor was reaching its apex, they were discarded as unnecessary, and people preferred to use two handed weapons when on foot, to better damage opponents wearing that heavy plate.

(snip)
So why give up the (by almost all accounts excellent) defensive advantages of a shield in melee combat?

Or maybe they really would have been the best, except that nobody really fought in RPG scale (8 vs 12 etc) foot combat, so people were more interested in battlefield weapons with reach?

Where am I going wrong?

I think that is actually a good question, and there are complex answers to the various nuances, but the truth of the main question is that while most of the points you raised were true, they weren't 100% true and full sized shields never really went away. The difference between the Renaissance and the centuries before it are that the improvements and lowered cost of armor and the technology of weapons improved sufficiently that shield walls of men throwing javelins and then pushing spears at each other were not the only option. The battlefield got more complex.

But you still do see shields appearing very frequently in medieval art depicting period battles throughout the 14th, 15th and 16th Centuries. Some examples

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/The_battle_of_Poitiers.jpg
http://www.vallenajerilla.com/berceo/rioja-abierta/batalladenajera.jpglarge image
http://houseasgard.com/asgardpic/armorh/gulfwars-3.jpghttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/04/Tinchebray.jpg/300px-Tinchebray.jpg

The truth is in the majority of the period artwork depicting battles you will see some kind of shield.

I think there was only really slight decline and the type of shields used changed.

Heavy cavalry (knights, chevaliers etc.) switched to a small heater type shield made of steel. Better to have a small amount of coverage that could stop a lance or a heavy crossbow than a large shield which couldnt. Gunners and crossbowmen switched to the large pavise as we well know. Heavy infantry switched to something we call the 'mini-pavise', a medium sized shield shaped and build the same way as a pavise, probably because of it's enhanced capability against high-energy missiles. The old style roundshields and kyte shields were sufficient to stop javelins but were not very good protection against heavy crossbows, firearms, composite recurve bows or longbows, so the design changed.

So you start to see a lot of shields like this, apparently pioneered by the pagan Lithuanians

large image
http://www.mokykla.lt/upl/Image/katalogas/stendas.jpg
these spread throughout Central Europe in the 14th-15th Century. They weren't used much in England or France so most Americans never heard of them, but you'll see them in museums, casltes and artwork all over Central and Northern Europe.

You also see the rise of the target and the 'targe', with multiple different variations. The Scotts made their version famous targe a key part of their very effective war-panoply well into the 18th Century,

http://www.rabbies.com/newsletters/images_12_08/prestonpans%202.JPG

But they were also used throughout Europe including in England and France.

By the 16th Century steel roundshields called rotella became very important, Spanish rotella (sword and shield) men proved able to defeat pikemen and this became a primary troop type. Most of Cortezes army of Conquistadors, in Mexico including Beral Diaz who wrote the famous 'Conquest of New Spain', were rotelleros.

http://www.thearma.org/Manuals/NewManuals/CapoFerro/10001131.jpg
http://www.therionarms.com/reenact/therionarms_c773_model1.jpg

Some reasons not to use shields, included the requirement of two hands to use various missle weapons like longbows, heavy crossbows spanned with stirrups, or arbalests spanned with jacks and winches (which were almost always accompanied by a large pavise sheild), recurve bows and firearms, all of which required two hands to load. Another was the very long spear (pike), using a spear with a shield makes it harder (not impossible, but harder) to use a really long spear like a pike, or a spear with a meat cleaver on it (like a halberd). So the armor allowed you not to use a shield and certain weapons made going without it appealing. And of course the wonderful two-handed sword, but as a primary battlefield weapon that was always pretty rare.

But a shield still did provide valuable extra protection and shields still played an important role on the battlefield, particularly for pioneeers and assault teams (in which smaller teams would be fighting, like in a DnD game) for skirmishers, for certain types of heavy or even light shock-infantry (like Scottish Highlanders and Catalan Almogavars) and for cavalry. You could say the shield remained alongside the single-handed sword, which also never went away. The longsword was an excellent weapon but it was not the only weapon by a long shot, and they require a lot of training to use well. Messers and falchions and single handed cut-thrust swords were actually more common especially among common soldiers.

One other point. A sword is almost always better than a mace of a war hammer, because it is so much more versatile and can cause injuries much more efficiently through cutting, slicing, piercing or bludgeoning, and because it is so much harder and more unpleasant to take away from somebody. You got to try to remember, very few people you would encounter on a battlefield had full armor, a lot of people had some armor. But it's more efficient to go around it even with a weapon like a hammer or a mace, and I think the dagger did remain the number 1 armor-piercing weapon all through the Medieval and Renaissance period. If you are a knight you may very likely be using your sword for leverage to throw a fully armored opponent down and move on to the next enemy so that common soldiers behind you can finish them off with daggers, that is what you often see in the artwork.

G.

[Elves-as-People]

What do people think of this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDkoj932YFo&feature=related

Not entirely fair. They didn't compare their efficacy in mowing down the innocent, which is also an aspect of warfare.

[fusilier]

Thanks Galloglaich for another excellent, and explanatory post. (Although possibly the most surprising thing I learned was that Lithuania was pagan at that time. :-) )

I have a somewhat tangential question: Italian Renaissance armies typical reference shield-bearers, often in conjunction with crossbowmen. However, there's often almost no more information about them supplied, and I was curious as to how exactly they were equipped and their function in battle. I just picked up Osprey's Condottieri 1300-1500 but haven't had a chance to read it yet.

[Psyx]

^
Medieval Total War 2's expansion pack allows you to bring Christianity to them the hard way, too!


As regards shield-bearers, it's not really my area of expertise, but I believe that they also acted as a loader (perhaps carrying an additional piece), bore the pavise, and probably carried more ammunition (because you can never have enough).

[Galloglaich]

^
Medieval Total War 2's expansion pack allows you to bring Christianity to them the hard way, too!

Of course in reality after two hundred years of struggle the Lithuanians converted to Christianity on their own terms when they merged with Poland in 1387 (baptised by water rather than by blood as one of their chieftains put it) and ultimately defeated the Crusaders, rather than the other way around, Though it's true all the other pagan Baltic tribes were converted 'the hard way' and basically annihilated.

But take a look at a map of Lithuania in the Renaissance some time, it's an eye-opener, they were one of the most powerful nations in the history of Europe. They made good use of heavy infatry like the guy in the large image above (who is in fact kitted out as a 14th Century Lithuanian heavy skirmisher) for close-in fighting, but their main military arm was light cavalry which they managed to use so effectively they could contend both with the armored heavy cavalry of the Teutonic Order and the horse-archers of the Mongol Horde.



As regards shield-bearers, it's not really my area of expertise, but I believe that they also acted as a loader (perhaps carrying an additional piece), bore the pavise, and probably carried more ammunition (because you can never have enough).

I think that is probably right, though sometimes the term refers to sword and shield men too, there is a famous panel from The Triumph of Maximillian showing a troop of very well kitted out landsknechts with mini-pavise shields and large langen messers who are listed as 'shield bearers'.

G.

[Galloglaich]

here is the image

http://therionarms.com/reenact/com339j.jpg

[Yora]

Thanks Galloglaich for another excellent, and explanatory post. (Although possibly the most surprising thing I learned was that Lithuania was pagan at that time. :-) )
The history of medieval eastern europe is usually neglected to an almost criminal degree. The poles and lithunians were a major power in europe for many centuries, and I think at one point even the most powerful in the entire region. But all we remember them as today, is getting conquered and devastated by the russians, germans, and austrians again and again.

[Kalaska'Agathas]

What sort of arms and armor (beyond the Rotella) would the Rotelleros have been equipped with? What tactics did they use, especially for defeating Pikemen?

[Storm Bringer]

Thanks Galloglaich for another excellent, and explanatory post. (Although possibly the most surprising thing I learned was that Lithuania was pagan at that time. :-) )

I have a somewhat tangential question: Italian Renaissance armies typical reference shield-bearers, often in conjunction with crossbowmen. However, there's often almost no more information about them supplied, and I was curious as to how exactly they were equipped and their function in battle. I just picked up Osprey's Condottieri 1300-1500 but haven't had a chance to read it yet.

Based on comments in several osprey books and assorted other works, it appears that a professional (ie mercenary) Renaissance crossbowman was, in fact, the leader of a small team of four or five persons. while he fired his crossbow at the enemy, he'd be protected by a man carring a Pavise, or tower shield (image) (http://img113.imageshack.us/i/hussitecrossbowmanandshhf0.jpg/). he'd also have two or three blokes loading crossbows (a rather lenghty process for the high power ones) for him, which let the whole set up match the rate of fire of a longbowman. A crossbowman was paided more than a contempory longbowman, but was required to support several retainers

I have that osprey book, which i found quite intresting.

[Karoht]

All the Osprey books are awesome. Great resource, truly.
Sadly, not books I can afford at the moment. But highly recommended by armor and weapon smiths, other reinactment groups, or just students of the martial art (WMA).

[fusilier]

What sort of arms and armor (beyond the Rotella) would the Rotelleros have been equipped with? What tactics did they use, especially for defeating Pikemen?

I'm not entirely sure myself. They would at least have had a helmet, and probably a breast-plate and maybe tassets. It's also possible that they had some arm protection. Mail and leather are other options too.

As for tactics, I've heard that there was a tactic of using light infantry to dive under the pike heads, and approach the pikemen's legs. Once past the first line of pike heads, pikemen in the rear ranks probably had trouble depressing the pike low enough to attack someone on the ground (as they tended to crowd together during the "push-of-pike" phase). The pikeman's option would be to drop his pike and pull out his sword, but now he is dealing with a swordsman with shield, and the pikeman is without shield (typically, I believe well armored pikemen in the early 16th century sometimes had shields that allowed them to still use their left hand). A few halberdiers mixed in with the pike ranks could probably offset this tactic.

I suspect that in a pitched European battle, the swordsmen were rarely used on their own.* Even as late as the middle of the 17th century sword and target men would be posted in front of pike formations, and lead a close combat assault. Probably these men were used in a similar fashion. If the opposing pikeman dropped his pike to draw his sword, he may find himself at a disadvantage against the pike formation backing up the swordsman. At this point it's just supposition, but possibly they tried to create a no win situation for opposing pikemen: hold onto the pike and be cut-down by a swordsman, or drop the pike, and be stabbed by an enemy pikeman.

* It's possible in the early 16th century they were used on their own, and defeated pike formations by themselves. I seem to recall that adding halberds to the pike formations was a response to this tactic.

[fusilier]

All the Osprey books are awesome. Great resource, truly.
Sadly, not books I can afford at the moment. But highly recommended by armor and weapon smiths, other reinactment groups, or just students of the martial art (WMA).

Osprey books are concise, and very well illustrated. However, they are sometimes too concise, and I find they should not be relied upon too heavily - sometimes they make pretty big mistakes. Nonetheless they are usually very good resources to have around.

[Galloglaich]

Osprey books are concise, and very well illustrated. However, they are sometimes too concise, and I find they should not be relied upon too heavily - sometimes they make pretty big mistakes. Nonetheless they are usually very good resources to have around.

I find that they are very hit and miss, they are all done by different authors and cover periods with widely available amounts of research, some are really mostly just guesswork especially some of the older titles, and some are just poorly done. They are gradually improving across the board though and some of them are excellent, at their best they really give you a good overview and launching off point for further research. I really reccomend the recent books on the Gallowglass and the Teutonic Order for example.

And if you can't afford them, quite a few Osprey books are on Google-books now and you can also find most of them in a good library.


G.

[Spiryt]

Osprey books are concise, and very well illustrated. However, they are sometimes too concise, and I find they should not be relied upon too heavily - sometimes they make pretty big mistakes. Nonetheless they are usually very good resources to have around.

Yeah, things that are way too far fetched interpretations of ruuuusty stuff or simple period art, or a bit fictional stuff appear a bit too often... But generally they're fun.

[Moose Man]

what is the length of a large greatsword?

[fusilier]

I find that they are very hit and miss, they are all done by different authors and cover periods with widely available amounts of research, some are really mostly just guesswork especially some of the older titles, and some are just poorly done. They are gradually improving across the board though and some of them are excellent, at their best they really give you a good overview and launching off point for further research. I really reccomend the recent books on the Gallowglass and the Teutonic Order for example.

And if you can't afford them, quite a few Osprey books are on Google-books now and you can also find most of them in a good library.


G.

I would generally agree with this sentiment. For example, the old Men-at-arms book covering the Mexican-American War is pretty poor when it comes to the Mexican side of things (which is not unusual). However, a more recent Elite book: Santa Anna's Army, is the result of new research, and access to Mexican military archives, and is the best resource I know of for that subject.

On the other hand, their Men-at-Arms book about the Italian Army in WW1 (a relatively recent title), muddles up the field artillery to the point that they make a rather ridiculous claim that most of the artillery designs were "obsolete", when in reality they were slightly more modern then their German counterparts. Although I will admit that the Italian field artillery was complicated.

[Galloglaich]

I'm not entirely sure myself. They would at least have had a helmet, and probably a breast-plate and maybe tassets. It's also possible that they had some arm protection. Mail and leather are other options too.

As for tactics, I've heard that there was a tactic of using light infantry to dive under the pike heads, and approach the pikemen's legs. Once past the first line of pike heads, pikemen in the rear ranks probably had trouble depressing the pike low enough to attack someone on the ground (as they tended to crowd together during the "push-of-pike" phase). The pikeman's option would be to drop his pike and pull out his sword, but now he is dealing with a swordsman with shield, and the pikeman is without shield (typically, I believe well armored pikemen in the early 16th century sometimes had shields that allowed them to still use their left hand). A few halberdiers mixed in with the pike ranks could probably offset this tactic.

I suspect that in a pitched European battle, the swordsmen were rarely used on their own.* Even as late as the middle of the 17th century sword and target men would be posted in front of pike formations, and lead a close combat assault. Probably these men were used in a similar fashion. If the opposing pikeman dropped his pike to draw his sword, he may find himself at a disadvantage against the pike formation backing up the swordsman. At this point it's just supposition, but possibly they tried to create a no win situation for opposing pikemen: hold onto the pike and be cut-down by a swordsman, or drop the pike, and be stabbed by an enemy pikeman.

* It's possible in the early 16th century they were used on their own, and defeated pike formations by themselves. I seem to recall that adding halberds to the pike formations was a response to this tactic.

I think this is pretty accurate overall.

To add to this a little, from what I've read, what happened was as pike and shot warfare evolved, armies got bigger but more poorly trained and more poorly equipped. Armor declined dramatically in quality as the size of armies increased sharply starting in the mid 16th Cenutry, it became iron instead of steel requiring much thicker armor to be worn to be of any use against guns, and that meant troops increasingly quit wearing it. Pikemen were not used offensively so much to attack with the way the Swiss and Landsknecht units were, but more and more just as a static defense for musketeers and cannon (to protect them against cavalry)

What is really significant to what you said is that the proportion of Halberds and Zweihanders declined sharply since these required extensive training and were only useful some of the time. The pikemen were trained in pike drill so they maintained formation and didn't break under fire and went where they were supposed to (the same marching drill we still get taught in modern army boot camp) but they had little hand to hand training and were no longer recruited from militias or the kind of rough edged element of soldiers in the 15th Century and before, many were just simple farm boys. Raw recruits.

So your Rotelleros are actually on the old 13th-15th Century model of mercenary soldiers; usually highly-trained and / or experienced fighters, veterans who got their start fighting as skirmishers. Theyusually had some armor often a breastplate or a mail haubergeon (and the armor they do have is of good quality), plus a gambeson, an open helmet, and a really nice essentially bullet-proof shield. They are not heavily loaded down, these guys are quick, mean and aggressive, they attack the pike formation as fusilier said, rolling udner the pikes and getting among the pilkemen who now have almost no real hand to hand combat guys (very few halberds and most of the pikemen themselves don't know how to fence and many don't even carry swords, or wear armor)

As fusilier said, the solution was to increase the proportion of halberdiers, since a halberd was pretty effective against a sword and shield even without a lot of training, and it also stimulated more soliders to spend time learning to fight, getting certified by the Marx Bruder or the Freifechter in Germany or (if they could afford it) by a fencing salon in France, Italy, or Spain.

But ultimately guns kept getting better and hand-to-hand combat remained on a slow but steady decline, ending with the bayonetted muskets and rifles.

And the truth is, beyond this sort of tactical overview, I don't know that much about the individual kit or tactics of rotelleros, I'd like to know more.


G.

[Galloglaich]

what is the length of a large greatsword?

In Medieval times, about four feet; by the late Renaissance (16th Century), the Motante (in Spain and Portugal), the Spada a Due Mani (in Italy and also in Germany under a diffeent name), and the Claymore are all up to about 5 feet long.

You also at the same time get the zwiehanders and flamberge infantry swords which are up to 6 or 7 feet long.

G.

[Spiryt]

what is the length of a large greatsword?

Eh, for short answer, that depends on what you mean by "greatsword".

Longest medieval longswords would generally be about 140 cm, although it's really LONG, 125 - 130 cm long would be already large.

Now, some later medieval/renaissance swords, like rather famous claymores (actually those are even later than renaissance) could be around that length regularly.

16th century bihanders/zweihanders could be slightly above 2 meters in length in some instances.


That's speaking about practical, martial weapons, not bearing stuff, of course.

[Matthew]

Heavy cavalry (knights, chevaliers etc.) switched to a small heater type shield made of steel.

As far as I understand it, heaters were generally made of wood, but what is the evidence for steel heaters and what period(s) are we talking about? I know Islamic cavalry made use of round metal shields, and of course metal bucklers are well known, but are there any surviving examples of metal heaters outside of specialised tournament gear?



I think that is probably right, though sometimes the term refers to sword and shield men too, there is a famous panel from The Triumph of Maximillian showing a troop of very well kitted out landsknechts with mini-pavise shields and large langen messers who are listed as 'shield bearers'.


http://therionarms.com/reenact/com339j.jpg

I suppose the frequency with which shields appear as part of the military can result in designations of "shield-man" or "shield-bearer" to distinguish such men from the bulk of an army that is not carrying a shield, or as it was occasionally in the ancient world, a particular sort of shield.

I always find it interesting that skirmishers and other light infantry, such as Roman velites, would carry smaller shields than their "heavier" contemporaries, since one would think such men would see more ranged action than the heavy infantry and have need of a large shield. I can only imagine it must come down to mobility, and perhaps when not confronting massed ranged weapons that is more important for defence in any case.

On the general subject of "why did shields go out of fashion?" (which comes up here again and again) I would also add that as armour got better it was increasingly necessary for weapons used to overcome it to be wielded in two-hands, and under those circumstances it seems the more frequent decision was to give up the shield. This question also often gets expanded to Japan as an example of a military tradition that eschewed use of a personal shield, but did make use of a sort of pavise.



what is the length of a large greatsword?

As others have mentioned, a sword designed for two-handed use could vary in blade and total length a very great deal. A lot depends on what you mean by "great sword", as that is a term that might be used in both a technical and general sense, but basically there are no really standard lengths, just ranges and even those can be quite misleading for the other properties of such a weapon (such as its weight). If you are thinking of the D20/3e "great sword" (and that seems likely, given the context of this forum) then probably 5' blade length and 12" hilt and guard would be a reasonable average, to judge by the illustration in the book. If by "large" you mean the D20/3e definition of a large-sized great sword, I would only be guessing. :smallbiggrin:

[Galloglaich]

What sort of arms and armor (beyond the Rotella) would the Rotelleros have been equipped with? What tactics did they use, especially for defeating Pikemen?
I think there is a detailed account of the arms and armor they wore in Conquest of New Spain by Bernal Diaz, who was himself a Rotellero.

IIRC a cut-thrust sword, a gambeson, a morrion helmet, a rotella, and a dagger.

Better equipped men had a mail shirt or a cuirass or half-armor.

He goes into a lot of detail about how they fought the Aztecs and other Native American tribes, but that doesn't tell us much about how they fought in Europe.

G.


EDIT: I thought it would be on google books but it's not, here is a link on Amazon though

http://www.amazon.com/Conquest-New-Spain-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140441239

[Kalaska'Agathas]

I think there is a detailed account of the arms and armor they wore in Conquest of New Spain by Bernal Diaz, who was himself a Rotellero.

...

He goes into a lot of detail about how they fought the Aztecs and other Native American tribes, but that doesn't tell us much about how they fought in Europe.

G.


EDIT: I thought it would be on google books but it's not, here is a link on Amazon though

http://www.amazon.com/Conquest-New-Spain-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140441239

I'll have to pick that up.

Would they literally roll under pikes? That seems an awfully dramatic (though understandable) move to rely on.

http://www.thearma.org/Manuals/NewManuals/CapoFerro/10001131.jpg

I see this image comes from Capo Ferro - are there any more where it came from?

[Galloglaich]

I'll have to pick that up.

Would they literally roll under pikes? That seems an awfully dramatic (though understandable) move to rely on.

Yeah it sounds kind of crazy, but that is the description I've read. Only in history books though I've never read a first hand account other than Bernal Diaz, like I said I don't know that much about Rotellero I'd like to learn more. I'm better on the 15th Century than the 16th.



I see this image comes from Capo Ferro - are there any more where it came from?

There is a little bit if Marrozzo that I know of, I don't know which MS off hand. I think a few of the other Bolognese Masters as well, usually short sections. There is an interesting illustration in a Marrozzo MS which shows a guy with a rotella and a sidesword, and what looks like several cut-in half spears all around him.

G.

[Galloglaich]

I have a question for y'all... does anyone have any data on the cost of gunpowder (in period currency, livres, ducats florins, kreutzer, marks etc.) from the 14th - 16th Centuries? Any data would be appreciated.

Also can somebody summarize the principle functional variations of gunpowder within that same date range? Before corned powder did gunpowder just have a shorter shelf-life or were there other problems?

G.

[Storm Bringer]

I always find it interesting that skirmishers and other light infantry, such as Roman velites, would carry smaller shields than their "heavier" contemporaries, since one would think such men would see more ranged action than the heavy infantry and have need of a large shield. I can only imagine it must come down to mobility, and perhaps when not confronting massed ranged weapons that is more important for defence in any case.


while reading a book on the Roman army ( think the book was just called "the Roman Army", i read one ecplaniation for this, which ran somthing like this:

a skirmisher, in a skirmish line, is able to duck dodge and weave to make himself a hard target. missle weapons of the time were slow enough that it was possible to dodge after fring/throw off someones aim. thus, they could use a small blucker shield for close combat, and rely on evasion at range.

a heavy infantryman, in the battle line, hasn't got room to dodge. he's hemmed in by men left and right of it, so he needs to wear heavy armour and carry a big shield, so that he can weather the skrimish fire and push though into contact with the enemy main line.

[Yora]

I don't think dodging was really a factor. Rather skirmishers needed to be very fast for hit and run attacks. Rush in, hurl lots of stones with slings and be out again quickly. Armor would only slow them down in that role, but if you happen to get into close range combat, a shield is probably the best piece of protection you can get to defend against swords. Not that it would do any good against heavy infantry, but it's better than nothing and relatively easy to carry.
Though keep in mind, that this is only based on taking a look at skirmishers equipment without any actual data to back it up.

[Psyx]

The history of medieval eastern europe is usually neglected to an almost criminal degree.

Frankly: You're lucky that anyone whose attended history lessons in the US has even heard of Lithuania!


What sort of arms and armor (beyond the Rotella) would the Rotelleros have been equipped with? What tactics did they use, especially for defeating Pikemen?

Part of a combined arms formation in the Tercio. Not a bad primer:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tercio
Also search for 'pike and shot'.



I see this image comes from Capo Ferro - are there any more where it came from?

Yeah... look up 'fight manuals' and the names of a few of the famous names in fencing such as Agrippa. It's suspected that Michaelangelo might possibly have penned a few plates for Agrippa's manuals.


I don't think dodging was really a factor. Rather skirmishers needed to be very fast for hit and run attacks.

I think both. A large shield is a pig to run with. And it's far easier to simply step to the side to avoid a thrown missile than it is to use a shield to block it - of you have room. Why move a shield when you can move yourself?

[Raum]

Frankly: You're lucky that anyone whose attended history lessons in the US has even heard of Lithuania!True but very sad considering Poland and Lithuania combined were able to dominate Europe for some time. The US education system is like the History Channel IMO...can't present anything obscure, critical, or controversial. :smallmad:

[Psyx]

History classes have limited time and scope. They focus on (hopefully) what's relevant, nationally. Lithuania and Poland might have been influential, but that's not a very relevant lesson subject for most students in C21 America. The time would be much better spent looking at the foundations of a current super-power in order to understand the culture, for example. Although the American education system does seem to focus massively on its own history and pretty much neglects the rest of the world!

[Yora]

Im in Germany and we and the Poles have a very long shared history. But still everyone around here knows we invaded them in 1939 and did horrible things to their country and then they kicked all germans out in 1944, but barely anything else. We also screwed them over some centuries earlier together with Austria and Russia, but that's really everything.

[fusilier]

I have a question for y'all... does anyone have any data on the cost of gunpowder (in period currency, livres, ducats florins, kreutzer, marks etc.) from the 14th - 16th Centuries? Any data would be appreciated.

Also can somebody summarize the principle functional variations of gunpowder within that same date range? Before corned powder did gunpowder just have a shorter shelf-life or were there other problems?

G.

I'm not sure about where to find gunpowder costs. Guilmartin's Gunpowder and Galleys may have some information pertaining to the 16th century, as he did an analysis of the increasing cost of operating a galley, but I'm not sure if it included gunpowder -- once slaves were introduced, the main cost was bread, which spiraled upwards over the period. Recently, on this thread, there were some links posted to early black-powder sites that may lead to more useful info.

Serpentine powder has several problems: 1. It's more susceptible to moisture. Which is one of the reasons ships only slowly adopted cannons. 2. The constituents which make up the powder will separate during transport. So it was typically mixed on the spot. 3. It is typically less powerful than corned powder. The explanation for this is that corned powder has more surface area to burn more efficiently. However, using an appropriate chamber can overcome this issue.

There's also the issue of correct proportions of ingredients, but what effects that has on the efficiency of the powder isn't entirely clear. I remember looking at an American Civil War artillery manual, and it stated that the proportions used by the army was close to the ideal (i.e. modern formulation). But, when used for blasting purposes less saltpeter was used, and some target-shooters and hunters preferred to use more saltpeter. *shrug*

[Raum]

History classes have limited time and scope. They focus on (hopefully) what's relevant, nationally. Lithuania and Poland might have been influential, but that's not a very relevant lesson subject for most students in C21 America. The time would be much better spent looking at the foundations of a current super-power in order to understand the culture, for example. Although the American education system does seem to focus massively on its own history and pretty much neglects the rest of the world!Poland and Lithuania are far more central to current events than most realize. I’m going to avoid discussing specific current events or politics and just mention some trends and how they relate to history. I highly recommend researching them yourself if you’re interested in the current geopolitical scene.

NATO has become an over-large alliance without a mission, the EU is showing itself to be far less monolithic than people thought, Russia is asserting itself as a regional hegemon again, and Germany is showing itself to be nationalistic rather than Euro-centric. The only current world power is preoccupied with the middle east and facing challenges from the far east. This leaves central and eastern Europe between the growing power of German and the newly assertive Russia.

The northern European plain is wide open with no natural barriers. This has made it a constant battle ground. Whether it’s Russia attacking west, Germany going east, or France going north, Poland and the surrounding states were the road to conquest. Throughout history, the only time Poland (and much of Eastern Europe) hasn’t been a battleground has been when they’ve been able to project power beyond their borders.

Jozef Pildudski (Polish general post WWI) is an interesting study. Not only did he stop a Russian invasion in 1920 but he proposed an Intermarium alliance of Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, and surrounding countries as a method of protecting themselves from aggression and, possibly, projecting power into other states. Such an alliance is unlikely and hasn’t happened since the Galicia-Lodomeria kingdom of the 14th through 16th centuries. But, it is intriguing given modern geopolitics…

<frustrated rant>
History is cyclical. Much of it is guided by geographical imperatives which change with glacial slowness - if they change at all. Know history!
</rant>

Sorry for the rant. :smallredface:

[fusilier]

Gunpowder information:

The Earliest Shipboard Gunpowder Ordnance: An Analysis of Its Technical Parameters and Tactical Capabilities, by John F. Guilmartin Jr. In The Journal of Military History Vol. 71, No. 3 (Jul., 2007), pp. 649-669

". . . but the exact proportions are not critical, for the chemical and thermodynamic decomposition reactions are remarkably robust, and seemingly major variations in the proportions make little difference. More important than the proportions was the quality of the ingredients, particularly saltpeter. The saltpeter in modern black powder is potassium nitrate. By contrast, as Gerhard Kramer has shown, that in the earliest European powder was made according to the original Chinese methods and was thus mainly calcium nitrate, with some potassium and manganese nitrates. That is significant, for in contrast to potassium nitrate, calcium nitrate is highly deliquescent, that is, it readily absorbs atmospheric moisture . . . In naval service, atmospheric moisture was a problem with potassium nitrate gunpowder; it must have been unmanageable with calcium nitrate powder."

The change to potassium nitrate powder seems to have occurred around 1400, but knowledge of the process spread slowly.

(Retrieved from JSTOR)

Corning:
"Since the decomposition reaction spreads more rapidly from grain to grain than within the grain by a factor of about 150, corned powder develops its propulsive force far more quickly than a tightly packed charge of dry-mixed, or serpentine, powder. Gunners were slow to exploit this advantage, not least of all because fast-burning corned powder could cause guns designed for serpentine to explode. Perhaps more to the point, the inspiration that led to corning had nothing to do with ballistic performance. In its earliest form the process involved pressing the moistened powder into small cakes or lumps to reduce surface area exposed to atmospheric moisture in order to extend shelf life. Before use, the lumps were broken up into crumbs which, serendipitously, allowed the decomposition reaction to proceed more rapidly."

A precursor to the process can be found in 1411, and a fuller description was given in 1420.

----
They still seem to be mixing the powder on the spot in the mid 1400s -- possibly, as pointed out above, guns were still being made for serpentine powder.
----

This was the only reference to the historical cost of gunpowder that I could find on JSTOR, and it's not very helpful (it's translated into 1911 US Dollars).
Notes on Cannon-Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries by Charles E. Dana
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society
Vol. 50, No. 199 (May - Aug., 1911), pp. 147-167

"The price of gunpowder in the fourteenth century seems to have been almost prohibitive. Assuming that my figures are correct, which is more than doubtful, as there is no real standard of value, the price was, in money of to-day, rarely as low as twenty-five dollars, and quite possibly, occasionally, as high as fifty dollars a pound; now it costs a quarter of a dollar or less a pound. These prices rapidly decreased with the systematic collection of saltpeter."

Note from this website, concerning the "high cost of gunpowder":
http://www.deremilitari.org/resources/articles/rogers.htm

"131. For example, Jean Bureau expected to spend 2,200 l.t. to purchase powder in preparation for the 1443 campaigning season. Contamine, Guerre, 666."

Unfortunately, while that last reference uses period currency (I'm not sure which), it doesn't list how much powder was purchased.

For the 14th and 15th centuries, I would try to track down information about sieges, and see how much they spent on powder. For the 16th century, I can confirm that Gunpowder and Galleys does have that information, but I don't have the book in front of me at the moment. I need to go back to the library this weekend, if I remember I will try to check it up.

-----------------------------------
Ah ha! Getting closer:
This book http://books.google.com/books?id=fNZBSqd2cToC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22History+of+Greek+Fire+and+Gunpowder%22&source=bl&ots=VmOd07tr2D&sig=bCx6KTbVJn_OsMN6S2sPvftnQGA&hl=en&ei=tPriTKykFIi2sAO8lKlm&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CCEQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

It's only available as a preview, but on pg. 111 it states that gunpowder in 1375 in England cost 50 pounds per pound!! (And it further states that in 1865 it a pound of powder would have cost 7 pence). It also breaks down the costs of the components during the 14th century on the same page.

[Yora]

<frustrated rant>
History is cyclical. Much of it is guided by geographical imperatives which change with glacial slowness - if they change at all. Know history!
</rant>
My mother, who studied theology, once explained the entire 8,000 years history of south-west Asia as this: "Every couple of centuries a horde invades the region from the central asian plains, destroys the local empire, and creates its own, only to be conquered by the next invasion a couple of centuries later."
The last ones were the turks in the 11th century and since then hordes composed of light cavalry have fallen out of fashion.

[Stephen_E]

<frustrated rant>
History is cyclical. Much of it is guided by geographical imperatives which change with glacial slowness - if they change at all. Know history!
</rant>

Sorry for the rant. :smallredface:

It isn't just that history follows cyclical patterns, but that what is now is based on what was.
The foundations of present day societies comes from the past, and by the past I mean the past of everything that formed the present day society.
Thus the History of the US starts in England, Europe, Rome, Greece
and earlier.

The same with all the other colonial countries.

Stephen E

[Raum]

Yes....and no. :smallwink: There are certainly residual influences from colonial powers, no denying that.

However, geography matters a lot. Poland has been the site / path of battles through centuries because it's a plain with few natural boundaries. The only time they've been secure is when they've pushed territorial claims out to better natural boundaries...or when they've been conquered by a larger power. Conversely, England has the sea as a border...as long as they can maintain control of it. So sea power is an imperative. Russia doesn't have good geographical defenses either, but they do have depth. They consistently try to add to that depth by controlling or conquering surrounding countries. Italy is extremely defensible - lots of mountains. But they have very little arable land for farming, they're resource poor. China is an 'island' - surrounded more by impassable mountains than by water. Their primary issue is an internal power struggle between a poverty stricken interior and outward looking coastal areas. The interior has the population advantage while the coast has the economic advantage.

Granted, I'm oversimplifying. Hard not to when boiling it down to a couple of sentences. But geography is an imperative which drives politics!

[Fortinbras]

Does anybody have any good sources- film clips, pictures, essays etc.- on how warriors (mounted and dismounted) armed with a round shield and curved sword would have fought?

Also how would a foot soldier employ a longsword against a warrior armed as mentioned above?

[Galloglaich]

Im in Germany and we and the Poles have a very long shared history. But still everyone around here knows we invaded them in 1939 and did horrible things to their country and then they kicked all germans out in 1944, but barely anything else. We also screwed them over some centuries earlier together with Austria and Russia, but that's really everything.

Germany and Poland were also intermixed and allied on many levels, And both Germany and Poland participated in the Baltic Crusades. Almost all the major Polish cities were either founded by German citizens or had large German (and German-Jewish) populations which had been invited in, and the German cities of Prussia rebelled against the Teutonic Order in the 15th Century and joined Poland, under whom they remained substantially German culturally and prospered for centuries.

Poland fought aggressive wars against Germany and visa versa but they both allied against the Mongols, the Turks as well as the Russians. In fact if it hadn't been for a Polish heavy cavalry charge in 1683 (the last major charge that I know of of what were essentially still something like knights in shining armor) Germany would probably be Turkish today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vienna

I agree with the others that Poland and Lithuania are actually both much more relevant to current events than most people realize and their being left out of US history (like so much other critical European history) is really pathetic.

G.

[Galloglaich]

he proposed an Intermarium alliance of Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, and surrounding countries as a method of protecting themselves from aggression and, possibly, projecting power into other states. Such an alliance is unlikely and hasn’t happened since the Galicia-Lodomeria kingdom of the 14th through 16th centuries. But, it is intriguing given modern geopolitics…

Er... Polish Lithuanian-Commonwealth 1569-1795 ...? (it also included most of the Ukraine)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Lithuanian_Commonwealth

G

[Galloglaich]

Does anybody have any good sources- film clips, pictures, essays etc.- on how warriors (mounted and dismounted) armed with a round shield and curved sword would have fought?

Also how would a foot soldier employ a longsword against a warrior armed as mentioned above?

The Sikhs still practice this as a martial art called 'Gatka', it's as big as Kendo with them. Some Sikhs have friendly relations with HEMA practitioners in England and there is a little bit of crossover. They use different weapons but the principle one is the small round shield and the tulwar (saber). They were principally mounted troops historically and their fencing style is derived from cavalry (and is the source of some of the leaping you see).

This is an excellent overview
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHtqGaR31Z8

Here specificially some saber and buckler

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojhDTRbq3EA

I own an antique tulwar you have to use them differently from a regular sword because of the disk-pommel, you have to step when you cut and cut with a bent arm, more from the shoulder and the elbow and not the wrist.

G

[Galloglaich]

Yes....and no. :smallwink: There are certainly residual influences from colonial powers, no denying that.

However, geography matters a lot. Poland has been the site / path of battles through centuries because it's a plain with few natural boundaries. The only time they've been secure is when they've pushed territorial claims out to better natural boundaries...or when they've been conquered by a larger power. Conversely, England has the sea as a border...as long as they can maintain control of it. So sea power is an imperative. Russia doesn't have good geographical defenses either, but they do have depth. They consistently try to add to that depth by controlling or conquering surrounding countries. Italy is extremely defensible - lots of mountains. But they have very little arable land for farming, they're resource poor. China is an 'island' - surrounded more by impassable mountains than by water. Their primary issue is an internal power struggle between a poverty stricken interior and outward looking coastal areas. The interior has the population advantage while the coast has the economic advantage.

Granted, I'm oversimplifying. Hard not to when boiling it down to a couple of sentences. But geography is an imperative which drives politics!

Poland was very stable for a very long time though, far longer than the United States. They were a very powerful nation, they also had a very stable political structure which I think is part of why the lasted as long as they did but also part of why they were eventually 'partitioned' between Germany and Russia. Their system was kind of unique.

G.

[PorkSoldat]

Thanks for the help with my earlier mace question, very nice to get such thorough responses.

Now for a shorter and possibly dumber question:

Did they ever use any sort of hand guard on a mace? I haven't seen it.

For example, a smaller version of the rondel guard on the Ahlspiess, placed right above the area where you grip the mace would offer a little hand protection and it doesn't seem like it would slow things down or get in the way.

Otherwise it seems so easy for something to slide down the shaft and hit you in the fingers.

[Spiryt]

They're definitely not unknown on hammers, in many shapes and sizes, but haven't seen any on maces AFAIR.... Example (http://www.myarmoury.com/albums/displayimage.php?album=13&pos=125)

Aside from balance/line/spiffiness :smallwink:speculations, I would guess that changing the grip on your mace freely, could have been considered important, many armored ho... I mean reenactors seem to use them like that sometimes.

That's speculation as well though.

[Raum]

Er... Polish Lithuanian-Commonwealth 1569-1795 ...? (it also included most of the Ukraine)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Lithuanian_CommonwealthOops, yes. :smallredface: I mistakenly used the kingdom's name under the Hapsburgs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Galicia_and_Lodomeria).
Poland was very stable for a very long time though, far longer than the United States. They were a very powerful nation, they also had a very stable political structure which I think is part of why the lasted as long as they did but also part of why they were eventually 'partitioned' between Germany and Russia. Their system was kind of unique.While they may well have been stable longer than the US, that's not saying much. The US has only been stable for ~150 years (less). Not very long when you think about it in historical terms.

[Galloglaich]

Really the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth goes back to 1387, that is when they were linked by marriage, they were close allies or at worst very briefly feuding siblings from that point on. It just didn't get it's official name and organizational framework until the 16th century.

So it's really more than 400 years which is longer than most political systems have lasted, and I think with a few brief interruptions Poland and Lithuania were pretty stable and prosperous through almost that entire time (though it got bad at the very end)... due to their political structure they didn't suffer under the kind of tyrranical kings you would see in Ancient Rome or even contemporaneous England or France through that long of a time period, there were no Polish Caligulas or Tiberius or Henry VIII.... nor was it ever successfully invaded by foreigners until 'The Deluge' in the 1650s. Which isn't bad considering where they were situated as you pointed out.

I think there is something of a myth about Eastern Europe in general; we in the US anyway tend to think of Eastern Europe as really the Balkans... Hungary and Romania. These places were routinely overrun. But we tend to expect muddy gypsies ruled over by ruthless Vampires living in castles on inaccessible crags.

I was kind of amazed the first time I walked into a beer garden in Prague and saw all these beautiful blonde girls relaxed and friendly over their superb beer, with a few of an almost perfectly preserved beautiful Renaissance city behind them, far older in fact than most of the architecure you see in Paris or London for example. I should have known better but I was really amazed by the beauty and calm prosperity of the place.

As for the amount of time the US has been around, yes it's small, but it impresses us yanks because it's all we really know.

G.

[Storm Bringer]

Really the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth goes back to 1387, that is when they were linked by marriage, it just didn't get it's official name and organizational framework until the 16th century. So it's more than 400 years which is longer than most political systems have lasted, and I think with a few brief interruptions Poland and Lithuania were pretty stable and prosperous through that entire time, and didn't suffer the type of upheavals and social disorder which routinely took place in many other nations around Europe not to mention the rest of the world. Which isn't bad considering where they were situated as you pointed out.

I think there is something of a myth about Eastern Europe in general; we in the US anyway tend to think of Eastern Europe as really the Balkans... Hungary and Romania. These places were routinely overrun. But we tend to expect muddy gypsies ruled over by ruthless Vampires living in castles on inaccessible crags.

I was kind of amazed the first time I walked into a beer garden in Prague and saw all these beautiful blonde girls relaxed over their superb beer, with a few of an almost perfectly preserved beautiful Renaissance city behind them, far older in fact than most of the architecure you see in Paris or London for example.

As for the amount of time the US has been around, yes it's small, but it impresses us yanks because it's all we really know.

G.

their is a saying, which i think says something about the different mindsets of english and american people:

To an englishman, a hundred miles is a long way

To an american, a hundred years is a long time.

[Galloglaich]

The craziest and most interesting thing about Poland in this period is their widespread belief at the time that they were actually Sarmatians

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarmatism

which affected their libertarian leaning politics, their dress, their fighting style and their social structure immensely.

G

[Galloglaich]

their is a saying, which i think says something about the different mindsets of english and american people:

To an englishman, a hundred miles is a long way

To an american, a hundred years is a long time.

That's a good one :)

G.

[Storm Bringer]

I heard it expressed in reletation to horror stories, actaully. the author was writing about how the very different nature and history of england and america affect local horror fiction. In the US, its easy to set the story in a isolated country town or simmilar, where the heros are several hours form the nearest possible help.

You can't really do that in england, as the countryside is just too populated. even on foot, you'd never be more than a hour or so form the next nearest community.

however, england has a recorded history streching back to roman times, while americas only goes back to the 1600s or so. this means that english authors tend to make 'cursed' sties which were cursed back in the dark ages, or draw on one the many local legends that date back hundreds of years, while the american authors go either for "salem witch hunts" or "urban legands" of events less than 50 years old, depending on wether the story is set on the east or west coast.

[Galloglaich]

Hence the need to go to Poland,

although the early history of this country could be pretty hair raising and interesting, as you see in films like 'Black Robes', 'Last of the Mohekans' etc. and more or less low-budget horror films tacked on to their genre like Ginger Snaps Back (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginger_Snaps_Back) and Ravenous (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravenous), both of which got good mileage out of it. It was actually a pretty scary time and place.

The English do occasionally hit paydirt with a good local legend like in The Lair of the White Wyrm (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lair_of_the_White_Worm_(film)) a terrific camp horror film from the 80s which was based on a Bram Stoker book, which was in turn based on a great old legend of a Wyrm in England.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambton_Worm

The problem with Medieval and earlier films though, is that while the history is excellent, the film industries (and I would argue, the mass culture generally) of neither England nor the US can even come close to understanding it well enough to tell a half-way descent story, instead they make horrific debacles like that recent Robin Hood farce.

The only halfway decent Medieval films I've ever seen were actually Continental European, Polish or Czech, (which is part of what inspired my interest in those places). I think the only good Viking move was actually done by Hollywood, a bit dated and rather unlikely casting, but quite a fun film overall which I find holds up pretty well,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vikings_(1958_film)

Of course England does the King Arthur thing, they had that campy one from the 80s which was fun, but kind of silly.. I think I actually probably could sit through it again but only because of Helen Miren. How does that go again? Something lke anu nathrac lofar griethay. ...

G

[hamishspence]

Of course England does the King Arthur thing, they had that campy one from the 80s which was fun, but kind of silly.. I think I actually probably could sit through it again but only because of Helen Miren. How does that go again? Something lke anu nathrac lofar griethay. ...

This was Wikipedia's best guess:

Anál nathrach,
orth’ bháis’s bethad,
do chél dénmha.

[fusilier]

. . . .I think the only good Viking move was actually done by Hollywood, a bit dated and rather unlikely casting, but quite a fun film overall which I find holds up pretty well,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vikings_(1958_film)
...

G

I'm pretty sure I've seen this movie (a long time ago). Is this the movie where they made a very accurate replica of a Viking longship, only to discover that modern Swedes were much larger than their ancient ancestors and therefore the extras were too big to fit in the boat?

[Galloglaich]

ah helen...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJkE97L2mOk

G.

[Galloglaich]

I'm pretty sure I've seen this movie (a long time ago). Is this the movie where they made a very accurate replica of a Viking longship, only to discover that modern Swedes were much larger than their ancient ancestors and therefore the extras were too big to fit in the boat?

Yeah but they could climb walls with axes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wcD8RW6Leo

G

[Matthew]

This was Wikipedia's best guess:

Anál nathrach,
orth’ bháis’s bethad,
do chél dénmha.

Yeah, it is a kind of fakery, in that the phrase does not actually belong to any language, but it comes kind of close. If I recall, you can kind of decipher it with Old Irish maybe. Anyway, Excalibur campy? Maybe if by campy you mean AWESOME! :smallbiggrin:

[Psyx]

far older in fact than most of the architecure you see in Paris or London for example.

Next time there's a European war we'll capitulate, in order to save a few more buildings for tourists. Plus London did of course burn down in the not-too-distant past.



the film industries (and I would argue, the mass culture generally) of neither England nor the US can even come close to understanding it well enough to tell a half-way descent story, instead they make horrific debacles like that recent Robin Hood farce.

I'm pretty sure that people on the sets of films have an IQ sufficiently high to be able to read and understand a history book. Hollywood is not stupid. Hollywood produces movies intellectually suited to the target audience. Blame popular culture, rather than the film-makers. Television manages to put out some excellent historical dramas - i doubt then that some kind of lobotomy is required before moving to film.

[Matthew]

I'm pretty sure that people on the sets of films have an IQ sufficiently high to be able to read and understand a history book. Hollywood is not stupid. Hollywood produces movies intellectually suited to the target audience. Blame popular culture, rather than the film-makers. Television manages to put out some excellent historical dramas - i doubt then that some kind of lobotomy is required before moving to film.

If some of the stories about what "historical consultants" have had to deal with in the past on such films as Gladiator are to be believed, the truth (naturally) is probably somewhere in the middle. That is to say, Ridley Scott (or somebody like him) possesses the intellectual capacity to study history, lacks the will (or perhaps the time) to do more than skim the surface, and prefers spectacle over authenticity for obvious reasons (both personal and financial).

[Psyx]

Which is fair enough.

It's not just history that suffers in Hollywood. Make a car fan watch 'Fast and the Furious', a diver watch 'The Abyss'* or any hairdresser watch any actor EVER 'cutting' hair and you'll get derision for the technical take on things. Hollywood makes spectacles that 95% of the viewers are happy with. Sometimes it physically hurts to watch films get it so wrong (I speak of 'Braveheart' specifically here.), but generally... just take it as light entertainment.

After all, we all play a game where 'warhammers' consist of massive lumps of stone on a stick without getting too upset about it.




*And don't get me started on the oval diving masks used in every film, that no diver has actually worn since the 1970s...

[hamishspence]

Yeah, it is a kind of fakery, in that the phrase does not actually belong to any language, but it comes kind of close. If I recall, you can kind of decipher it with Old Irish maybe.

The Wikipedia version of the phrase was it after the assumption was made that it was Old Irish- and that the sounds approximately correspond to a translatable Old Irish phrase:

Serpent's breath,
charm of death and life,
thy omen of making.

When I've seen it on TV, the subtitled spelling tends to be slightly different from that though.

It was written phonetically on Wikipedia as:

[aˈnaːl naθˈrax, uːrθ vaːs beˈθud, doxˈjeːl ˈdjenveː]

[herceg]

"
I think there is something of a myth about Eastern Europe in general; we in the US anyway tend to think of Eastern Europe as really the Balkans... Hungary and Romania. *These places were routinely overrun. *But we tend to expect muddy gypsies ruled over by ruthless Vampires living in castles on inaccessible crags.

G.

First, please get your facts straight:
Balkan (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b6/Balkan_topo_en.jpg/657px-Balkan_topo_en.jpg)

Then, come see with your own eyes the difference between usual expectations and reality :)

[Matthew]

Which is fair enough.

It's not just history that suffers in Hollywood. Make a car fan watch 'Fast and the Furious', a diver watch 'The Abyss'* or any hairdresser watch any actor EVER 'cutting' hair and you'll get derision for the technical take on things. Hollywood makes spectacles that 95% of the viewers are happy with. Sometimes it physically hurts to watch films get it so wrong (I speak of 'Braveheart' specifically here.), but generally... just take it as light entertainment.

Indeed. In my own experience I have noticed that any history program that deals with a subject I happen to know something about is insufferably bad, whilst every one that I know nothing about is intriguing and informative... I am assuming that is not simply coincidence. :smallbiggrin:



After all, we all play a game where 'warhammers' consist of massive lumps of stone on a stick without getting too upset about it.

In my case, that depends what you mean by "too upset"... :smallwink:



The Wikipedia version of the phrase was it after the assumption was made that it was Old Irish- and that the sounds approximately correspond to a translatable Old Irish phrase:

Serpent's breath,
charm of death and life,
thy omen of making.

When I've seen it on TV, the subtitled spelling tends to be slightly different from that though.

It was written phonetically on Wikipedia as:

[aˈnaːl naθˈrax, uːrθ vaːs beˈθud, doxˈjeːl ˈdjenveː]

That sounds about right; the below is a message somebody showed me on the subject last time this came up. I have forgotten where it is quoted from, but I am sure Google can find it.



The mystery of Merlin’s Charm of Making is, alas, no longer a mystery. Although Merlin and Morgana both pronounce things differently from each other, and even Merlin has two sounds which to me sound like phonemes but which must be allophonic, I get the following from the Charm of Making in John Boorman’s film Excalibur:
/a'na:l naθ'rax, u:rθ va:s be'θud, dox'je:l 'djenve:/

It’s certainly not Welsh. It looks very much like an attempt at Old Irish. (One wonders where Boorman got it.) Following is the best I can do at reconstructing reasonable Old Irish from it. It is probably a defective reconstruction. I have normalized to Modern Irish orthography to indicate lenition.

In Old Irish
Anál nathrach, orth’ bháis’s bethad, do chél dénmha

In Modern Irish:
Anáil nathrach, ortha bháis is beatha, do chéal déanaimh

In English:
Serpent's breath, charm of death and life, thy omen of making.

anál nathrach = breath of serpent
orth’ bháis ’s bethad = spell of death and of life
do chél dénmha = thy omen of making

anál fem. -á stem ‘breath, breathing’
nathair fem. -k stem ‘snake, serpent’ g. sg. nathrach
ortha fem. -n stem ‘prayer; incantation, spell’, from Latin oratio
bás masc. -o stem ‘death’ g. sg. báis
ocus conj. ‘and’ here shortened to 's
betha masc. -t stem ‘life’ g.sg. bethad
do prn. ‘thy’ Usually unstressed
cél masc. -u stem ‘omen, augury, portent’
dénumh masc. -m stem ‘making, doing’ g.sg. dénmha

Modern Irish would have the -is in bháis as a /sh/ sound, but it might not have been so palatalized in the Old Irish period; and the nonpalatal ’s of ‘and’ ought to reinforce that. The third part of the charm could also be dochél dénmha ‘an evil omen of making’, but that suits the sense badly. The word do ‘thy’ is usually unstressed in speech but what can you do...

Note that Merlin says dénmhe, which ought to be dénmha; perhaps there is some sort of ‘incantation register’ in which a final vowel can be altered in this way.... In any case, I am less than happy with the third part of this. I'd like to have seen an imperative or hortative, but verb-first syntax precludes even dénae, the imperative of do-gní (from which the verbal noun dénumh is formed), which anyway doesn’t have the nominal formative -mh.

I would be interested in hearing from specialists in Old Irish as to their opinions of this. There are other possibilities for the retro-translation, and indeed the use of a Latin loanword, given the context, is problematic.

[Psyx]

Indeed. In my own experience I have noticed that any history program that deals with a subject I happen to know something about is insufferably bad, whilst every one that I know nothing about is intriguing and informative...

It's disappointing that there are few documentaries which delve beyond the basic. Many are excellent primers, but poor for those with any existing knowledge. Saying that, the BBC's recent solar system series was excellent.




In my case, that depends what you mean by "too upset"... :smallwink:


The thing that comes after ranting and right before the arrest warrant.

[Galloglaich]

I'm pretty sure that people on the sets of films have an IQ sufficiently high to be able to read and understand a history book. Hollywood is not stupid. Hollywood produces movies intellectually suited to the target audience. Blame popular culture, rather than the film-makers. Television manages to put out some excellent historical dramas - i doubt then that some kind of lobotomy is required before moving to film.

I disagree. I think Hollywood has made quite a few excellent WW II movies, 19th Century Westerns and Civil War films, even excellent quality films set in the early days of the Colonies in the 17th 18th Century. And most of these did quite well financially in spite of the stupidity of the audience. They have also made sophisticated sci fi and horror films. All of these are of course very rare, but they are still done well from time to time.

Yet they* have not managed this even once that I know of with historical films set in the Migration era, Middle Ages or Renaissance, I think because they actually don't understand the history. In fact I'm not even sure what history book you can find it in, what I've learned had to be gleaned from many many disparate sources. I don't think it's very accessible actually.

G.


*Similarly the British film industry has made many excellent films set in Victorian times and even a few going back to the English Civil War, but I haven't seen anything of good quality set in a time before that, unless you goo back to films made from before WW II (all the Eroll Flynn films etc.).

[Galloglaich]

After all, we all play a game where 'warhammers' consist of massive lumps of stone on a stick without getting too upset about it.


I don't :smallcool:

G.

[Galloglaich]

"

First, please get your facts straight:
Balkan (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b6/Balkan_topo_en.jpg/657px-Balkan_topo_en.jpg)

Then, come see with your own eyes the difference between usual expectations and reality :)

My apologies, that was written very clumsily. I was trying to say 'the Balkans, and Hungary and Romania" and I know it's not vampires and gypsies... (though I did used to think that growing up) though these were the regions which were (mostly) overrun by the Mongols and the Ottomans, though they also fought back very effectively and saved the rest of Europe in the process.

By way of redemption, let me also say the Balkan coastlines of what used to be Yugoslavia has the finest beaches in the Med (according to Jacques Cousteau among others) dotted with pristine Medieval towns

http://divers.proline.lv/pic/croatia.jpg
http://christinebednarz.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/croatia.jpg
http://ego.thechicagoschool.edu/s/843/images/editor/dubrovnik%202.jpg

and Northern Greece has the most incredible monestaries in the world

http://www.dilos.com/dilosimages/image/thesaly/mete_01.jpg
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/98jan/images/outcrop.jpghttp://blog.ratestogo.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/meteora-monastery.jpg

G.

[Karoht]

I disagree. I think Hollywood has made quite a few excellent WW II movies, 19th Century Westerns and Civil War films, even excellent quality films set in the early days of the Colonies in the 17th 18th Century. And most of these did quite well financially in spite of the stupidity of the audience. They have also made sophisticated sci fi and horror films.

Yet they have not managed it even once that I know of with historical films set in the Middle Ages, I think because they don't understand the history. In fact I'm not even sure what history book you can find it in, what I've learned had to be gleaned from many many disparate sources.

oooh, I take it you weren't a fan of Kingdom of Heaven then?
Actually, I was rather impressed with the special features of the DVD. It had an option where captions would appear on the bottom of the screen and fill you in on the "textbook" history related to a given scene. It acknowledges a few screw ups (some creative license), but I would still rank it highly for it's attempted authenticity. Not 100%, but somewhere around the 80% mark if I'm not mistaken.

[fusilier]

I'm pretty sure that people on the sets of films have an IQ sufficiently high to be able to read and understand a history book. Hollywood is not stupid. Hollywood produces movies intellectually suited to the target audience. Blame popular culture, rather than the film-makers. Television manages to put out some excellent historical dramas - i doubt then that some kind of lobotomy is required before moving to film.

You're on to something here. I saw a documentary on PBS that was asking if Hollywood was racist. The answer was effectively yes, but actually no. It was a reflection of the audiences preferences, and the "bean-counters" desire to maximize profits. They interviewed a bunch of people, including a director, to whom they posed a hypothetical buddy comedy movie. He said he would direct it with two well known black actors or actresses, but it would only make *half* as much as the same movie with well known white actors. The artists (directors, actors, etc.) typically want to do these kinds of movies, but getting the producers, the people with the money, to back it is difficult.

Part of the reason we don't see many historical dramas coming out of Hollywood is because they don't typically do as well.

One of the best WW2 movies ever made (in my opinion) is Tora Tora Tora -- it did poorly in the US, but well overseas. Gettysburg and Glory are good Civil War movies. I actually worked on the recent Alamo, and it was ok -- their claims during filming about showing the event from both sides obviously didn't pan out.

WW1 movies out of Hollywood have generally been pretty poor after WW2 (Paths of Glory being a notable exception).

Nevertheless, historical dramas don't do well in the US, and they haven't for sometime. I think there is a sense that history can be made "sexy" by jazzing it up with special effects, a la Flyboys (*ugh*). But frankly, I don't think those movies do any better than if they stuck more closely to realism, and actual history -- it's just that they can sell the movie to the producers in that fashion.

[Psyx]

Part of the reason we don't see many historical dramas coming out of Hollywood is because they don't typically do as well.

It's - I think - why the BBC has such a fearsome reputation for quality period drama: They don't have to worry about advertising revenue or overly much about viewing figures. Once you remove that from the equation, there's nothing to stop there being 'good' and accurate TV/film made. However, the film industry is all about big piles of cash, so will always be a reflection of culture, except in the case of 'vanity' pictures financed by those who are already successful, such as 'Schindler's List'. Although 'Braveheart' and 'Waterworld' were pretty vain AND pretty dire, but I think that says more about the Producers/Directors than anything else.

America 'has' to do better as regards the American Civil War, WWII and Westerns because the audience is intimately familiar with them. Hollywood can crucify world history though, and the domestic audience never notices.


WW1 movies out of Hollywood have generally been pretty poor after WW2 (Paths of Glory being a notable exception).

Again - and please don't take offence - that's because the US population doesn't really know a thing about WWI, so factual content goes round the U-bend! Heck... it took you guys a couple of years to even realise there was a war on, didn't it? :smallamused:



Nevertheless, historical dramas don't do well in the US, and they haven't for sometime.

It might come around again. TV/film trends reflect culture. Apparently vampire films do well in recession times - hence the current glut.



I think there is a sense that history can be made "sexy" by jazzing it up with special effects, a la Flyboys (*ugh*).

And indeed 'Pearl Harbour'.

[fusilier]

It's - I think - why the BBC has such a fearsome reputation for quality period drama: They don't have to worry about advertising revenue or overly much about viewing figures. Once you remove that from the equation, there's nothing to stop there being 'good' and accurate TV/film made. However, the film industry is all about big piles of cash, so will always be a reflection of culture, except in the case of 'vanity' pictures financed by those who are already successful, such as 'Schindler's List'. Although 'Braveheart' and 'Waterworld' were pretty vain AND pretty dire, but I think that says more about the Producers/Directors than anything else.

Right. If a director has clout and a lot of money, he can do the occasional: "I want to make this, and I don't care how well it does in the box office" movie. The director's clout usually means it won't do too badly either. If it wasn't for the fact that Ron Howard wanted to make the Alamo movie, it probably wouldn't have been made.



Again - and please don't take offence - that's because the US population doesn't really know a thing about WWI, so factual content goes round the U-bend! Heck... it took you guys a couple of years to even realise there was a war on, didn't it? :smallamused:

No offense taken. :-) As far as most Americans are concerned WWI is simply the war that numerically preceded WW2. This hasn't always been the case, and with the 100 year anniversary of The Great War approaching, I'm hoping it will get more attention.

[Galloglaich]

Some other good US WW II films: Kellys Heroes, Cross of Iron, When Trumpets Fade, The Thin Red Line, Tora Tora Tora, The Dirty Dozen, the Great Escape (based on an English book about an English prison escape) and Catch 22, and The Eagle has Landed.

Best UK WW II film was I think The Longest Day (based on an Irish book), A Bridge Too Far (based on another book by the same Irish author), The Bridge over the River Kwai, and The Guns of Navarrone

I think the best WW II aviation film was the Dark Blue World which was Czech, the best naval film hands donw was Das Boot which was German. I'd also give the German (Austrian) film Stalingrad honorable mention, and the excellent though brutally realistic and very creepy Soviet era Russian film Come and See

@ Psyx I think you have a point, that part of it is a matter of what the audience will let them get away with, but I also think that more accurate better researched films actualy do better, if for no other reason than an historical plot (even modified or moved around in time) holds together better than one invented from whole cloth, especially if the author is not himself some kind of master historian. Almost all of the films listed above for example were box-office hits, I think they all made money.

And it still doesn't explain why they haven't really done any good pre-17th Century period films in England since the mid 20th Century, since presumably the English don't think 100 years is a long time.

G.

[Galloglaich]

oooh, I take it you weren't a fan of Kingdom of Heaven then?
Actually, I was rather impressed with the special features of the DVD. It had an option where captions would appear on the bottom of the screen and fill you in on the "textbook" history related to a given scene. It acknowledges a few screw ups (some creative license), but I would still rank it highly for it's attempted authenticity. Not 100%, but somewhere around the 80% mark if I'm not mistaken.

I'm afraid not, it was a good effort, with pretty good costumes, kit, and set designs, a promising start overall (even a tiny little bit of HEMA at the very beginning), I was into it for the first act, (like a lot of period films, even the recent Robin Hood debacle) but it broke down by the second half of the film, I think due to a poor overall understanding of the nuances of the history. Yes the Crusaders power was waning, but no they were not the utter incompetent buffons the film seemed to make them out. And Jersusalem was not defended by the Orders etc. because it wasn't considered a well defensible city, not because they were so utterly weak Saladin could brush them aside like flies.

They really couldn't decide what the Crusaders were doing there in that film, they made Saladin seem so superior and the arab cavalry so much better, (I couldn't tell why he backed down in that first stand-off ... given that we didn't even see a single realistic lance charge the Crusaders seemed toothless) it kind of made the plot not hold up, you couldn't understand where this tension was coming from between Baldwin and Saladin. I think maybe they were trying to be a little too PC. Saladin would have been more interesting with a few more warts.

In general, when it comes to these earlier eras, I think Hollywood has trouble with the gray areas. They also tend to put villains in uniforms which I find annoying. Especially when those uniforms are armor that doesn't work!

Speaking of which, this film was a case of the technical details (that armor works for example, or what lances are) underrmined the overall plot (these were strengths of the Crusaders, without which their position in the story didn't make much sense, at least not to me)

G.

[Karoht]

I'm afraid not, it was a good effort, with pretty good costumes, kit, and set designs, a promising start overall (even a tiny little bit of HEMA at the very beginning), I was into it for the first act, (like a lot of period films, even the recent Robin Hood debacle) but it broke down by the second half of the film, I think due to a poor overall understanding of the nuances of the history. Yes the Crusaders power was waning, but no they were not the utter incompetent buffons the film seemed to make them out. And Jersusalem was not defended by the Orders etc. because it wasn't considered a well defensible city, not because they were so utterly weak Saladin could brush them aside like flies.

They really couldn't decide what the Crusaders were doing there in that film, they made Saladin seem so superior and the arab cavalry so much better, (I couldn't tell why he backed down in that first stand-off ... given that we didn't even see a single realistic lance charge the Crusaders seemed toothless) it kind of made the plot not hold up, you couldn't understand where this tension was coming from between Baldwin and Saladin. I think maybe they were trying to be a little too PC. Saladin would have been more interesting with a few more warts.

In general, when it comes to these earlier eras, I think Hollywood has trouble with the gray areas. They also tend to put villains in uniforms which I find annoying. Especially when those uniforms are armor that doesn't work!

Speaking of which, this film was a case of the technical details (that armor works for example, or what lances are) underrmined the overall plot (these were strengths of the Crusaders, without which their position in the story didn't make much sense, at least not to me)

G.


I especially enjoyed their portrayal of Saladin as a cultured and intelligent leader. That much I liked.

The tension between Baldwin and Saladin, as well as Saladin's withdrawl, I attributed to previous encounters, along with a sort of friendship or understanding between the two. Neither wanted bloodshed, for whatever reasons they had. At least, that was the impression I got directly from the film.

Passhendale I thought was an awesome WWI movie, particularly because it focused so much on the home front, and it's war scenes didn't make the allies out to be super competant professional badass heroes. It made most of them out to be scared pantsless and thrown into a meat grinder. Thoughts on that film?

[Kalaska'Agathas]

I'd also like to hear the opinion of Gallipoli. I find it to be very similar to Das Boot actually, in how emotionally draining it is to watch. I also found it interesting because my Great-Grandfather Joseph fought there (with the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, I think).

[Galloglaich]

I especially enjoyed their portrayal of Saladin as a cultured and intelligent leader. That much I liked.

I did too but I think they made him a bit too nice, almost a saint. It was a little bit two-dimensional.



The tension between Baldwin and Saladin, as well as Saladin's withdrawl, I attributed to previous encounters, along with a sort of friendship or understanding between the two. Neither wanted bloodshed, for whatever reasons they had. At least, that was the impression I got directly from the film.

On a personal level, it kind of worked, but it would have made more sense if it also was buoyed by some real world actual parity between their forces; i.e. if the Crusaders didn't seem to be totally outclassed.



Passhendale I thought was an awesome WWI movie, particularly because it focused so much on the home front, and it's war scenes didn't make the allies out to be super competant professional badass heroes. It made most of them out to be scared pantsless and thrown into a meat grinder. Thoughts on that film?

I don't think I've seen it, I'm going to have to look that one up. That is the kind of war-film I like, that is how Trumpets Fade and Thin Red Line were. And both versions of "All quiet on the western front" which were both excellent (I like the old one better though)

G.

EDIT: Haven't seen it, it looks good, I put it on my Netflix queue as 'saved', it's not available yet.

[Galloglaich]

I'd also like to hear the opinion of Gallipoli. I find it to be very similar to Das Boot actually, in how emotionally draining it is to watch. I also found it interesting because my Great-Grandfather Joseph fought there (with the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, I think).

Personally I thought that was another great war film. Was it Australian or English?

G.

[Kalaska'Agathas]

Australian.

[Karoht]

I did too but I think they made him a bit too nice, almost a saint. It was a little bit two-dimensional.Artistically, I could see where they were going with it. It was to demonstrate a constrast. I found Saladin almost an example of Knightly behavior, contrasted by Knights everywhere in the movie being signifigantly less than ideal Knights, and the main character being propped up as a moral beacon, or the ideal Knight. Tiberius actually said something along the lines of 'there is no room in Jerusalam for a perfect Knight.' So if you think of Saladin as a contrast to the majority of the Knights, it makes Young Baron of Ibelin actually look like a match for his enemy, and makes him look like a hero, rather than just another soldier/knight.



On a personal level, it kind of worked, but it would have made more sense if it also was buoyed by some real world actual parity between their forces; i.e. if the Crusaders didn't seem to be totally outclassed.Oh I agree. Though I took that as the Crusaders/Templar were outmatched because they were fools go march out into the hot desert and fight an army perfectly at home in the desert which is well hydrated and rested.




EDIT: Haven't seen it, it looks good, I put it on my Netflix queue as 'saved', it's not available yet.Enjoy. It was made here in Alberta where I live. The Military Museum of Calgary (Formerly the Museum of the Regiments) had a major hand in the movie's creation. I don't know how factual it truly is (80%-95% is my estimate) but I know people who worked on the movie, particularly in costuming as well as horsemanship, so I have a measure of how much effort went into 'getting it right' in this film. I'll be very sad if it turns out to be off the mark, but I'm not a WWI buff so I couldn't say really. It was extremely well received by the surviving veterans, so far as I heard tell.

[fusilier]

What I appreciate the most about the original "All Quiet on the Western Front" movie is the depiction of battle. It's the only WW1 movie that I've seen that shows the front line being over-run, the attack failing to take the second-line (the support trench), and the defenders counter-attacking to regain their front line.

That is my understanding of how most battles on the Western Front worked out. The front-line could usually be taken (as it was the most beat up by artillery), but the second-line usually held out, and provided the basis for a counter-assault that was usually successful.

This wasn't always the case, and there are examples where even the front line held, but it was common on the Western Front.

I've heard a lot about Paaschendale, but haven't seen it yet either. Joyeux Noel was good, although there were some minor technical mistakes (French with 1915 Berthiers, and the Germans with a MG 08/15).

[Galloglaich]

Did you know all the actors in the original "Alls Quiet" were WW I veterans?

[fusilier]

Did you know all the actors in the original "Alls Quiet" were WW I veterans?

I had heard that. The extras in Paths of Glory were mostly *German* WW2 vets. (They wouldn't let them film the movie in France).

[Joran]

I have a question for y'all... does anyone have any data on the cost of gunpowder (in period currency, livres, ducats florins, kreutzer, marks etc.) from the 14th - 16th Centuries? Any data would be appreciated.

G.

I have Carla Rahn Phillips' Six Galleons for the King of Spain. She found invoices for the private construction and supply of galleons and has specific costs for everything, ranging from sails to rations. Unfortunately, gunpowder and cannon were the purview of Royalty, so she didn't have specific costs for gunpowder.

She did have costs from a planned expedition to Africa in 1577-1578 where the average cost of the ball, powder and fuse for each artillery shot was estimated at 2.9 ducados. She also has a quote of 4.2 ducados for each hundredweight of cannonballs, though it's unclear if this is the same time period as the previous estimate.

Her source for the gunpowder states that in 1633 a private manufacturer took over production of gunpowder from the Royal Monopoly. The source is I.A.A. Thompson's War and Government in Habsburg Spain, p. 234-255, but I'm unsure if there's an additional information there about the cost of gunpowder.

Hope this helps.

[Construct]

Did they ever use any sort of hand guard on a mace? I haven't seen it.European gothic maces could have extended roundels:
http://www.armor.com/images/pole193a.jpg

Indian maces could have more complete guards:
http://www.gnwtc.com/wea1251.JPG

[Fortinbras]

On history education in the US, I happen to be a high school student here and I think that you guys being a little unfair.

Last year we studied world history and spent three weeks on Judaism and Israel, three weeks on India, six weeks on China, six weeks on Africa, three weeks on Islam and the Middle East, that left us with less than a semester to study Medieval Europe, the Renaissance, The Reformation, The Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, World War One, and the rise of Communism and Fascism. That's still a fairly Euro-centric curriculum with out having time to study Eastern Europe in great detail.

Anyway, when I was in Europe last summer the Spanish and French teenagers I talked to said that they never learned anything but Spanish and French history.

[Caustic Soda]

@re History Education:

IIRC, my history lessons in high school never really went further abroad than the Danish West Indies (now US Virgin Islands), or mention of the occupation under WW2. And during elementary school I had four years about hunter-gathering stone age and 5 about WW2. Most of what I know about the history of eastern Europe comes from Europa Universalis :smallredface::smallsigh:

[Raum]

On history education in the US, I happen to be a high school student here and I think that you guys being a little unfair.

Last year we studied world history and spent three weeks on Judaism and Israel, three weeks on India, six weeks on China, six weeks on Africa, three weeks on Islam and the Middle East, that left us with less than a semester to study Medieval Europe, the Renaissance, The Reformation, The Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, World War One, and the rise of Communism and Fascism. That's still a fairly Euro-centric curriculum with out having time to study Eastern Europe in great detail.It was some time ago, but I came through the US education system also. :smallwink: Honestly, I had no idea how little they taught, even in the "advanced placement" courses until much later. Part of the problem is highlighted by your post. Three weeks is what, fifteen hours of instruction? That's not enough time to even hit the highlights of regions with thousands of years of history. What it can do is introduce you to areas of interest which may spark further research on your own.

Another issue with many historical textbooks, and presumably the classes, is simply how they present things. Too many boil down to a list of places, names, events, and dates. Too few touch on the geopolitical imperatives, the trends and cycles, the 'why' of history. Good teachers do, but I'd like to see more of that in the textbooks.

[Fortinbras]

My point was that teachers have to cram an enormous amount of information into a very small amount of time, we studied all that stuff, and just scratched the surface as you said. what I was trying to show was that a. American students study plenty of history from outside the us and b. there is a ton of it so yeah Poland and Lithuania might not get a lot of attention and that doesn't make the whole system pathetic.

[Dienekes]

My point was that teachers have to cram an enormous amount of information into a very small amount of time, we studied all that stuff, and just scratched the surface as you said. what I was trying to show was that a. American students study plenty of history from outside the us and b. there is a ton of it so yeah Poland and Lithuania might not get a lot of attention and that doesn't make the whole system pathetic.

This is a problem in the subject more than anything else. Our schools, rightfully I think, want to keep the students well rounded so they can learn what they enjoy and carry on from there. It's the same with mathematics for example, what they teach in high school is rather simplistic and easy, but that's expected, the concepts must be learned before more in depth analysis can be reached.

History is similar. Like math (or just about any course really), history is a highly complex subject. It is literally the culmination of human experiences from as far back as we can gather until now. There is no possible way that a course can get into any real meat of this in high school. It's just not going to happen, and there is little reason for it to. You will learn some concepts and major events though that can be built on in college and beyond. And that's ok. The goal of high school courses are to get your feet wet and prepare you for the path ahead. While it's been a few years since I was at high school I thought overall my teacher prepared me fairly well.

Sure there are things I wish they'd touch on more, but that's always going to happen. I do think, in general, the school system is improving it's curriculum (however slowly) and really that's all you can ask for.

[Stephen_E]

Yes, what I'd like to see done more with history teaching isn't "US history" "European history" but more about how something that happened at 1 place affected things 100 years later and half way around the world.

Many years ago their was a TV series called "Connections" by James Burke IIRC.
It looked at how inventions and discoveries didn't spring forth from the fertile mind of a single person, but were the result of a sequence of incidents and discoveries, often over years or even centuries.

Wonderful series.

Stephen E