Got a Real World Weapons or Armour Question? Mk XII

[Spiryt]

Ok I think I see what you are saying.* What I challenge is the assumption that crossbow bolts all have better cross section to mass ratio. Something like a ballista bolt -- I wouldn't doubt. Those could be very big. But crossbow bolts, seem to have generally been thick and short. Whereas an arrow could be very long and narrow.

Uh, no all I was saying that Payne Gallaway was shooting heavy crossbow, with heavy bolts.

Heavier bolts, will have, comparatively, better flight characteristics than light ones.

Are you claiming that an arrow from a longbow is propelled with greater velocity than a bolt from a heavy crossbow? (The only stats that I can find show them being about the same ~55 m/sec, but I'm not sure if I can trust them).

--EDIT--
Just stumbled across this webpage:
http://www.thebeckoning.com/medieval...oss_l_v_c.html

It claims that bolts were typically lighter than arrows (significantly so). So that an arrow would certainly have a better mass to cross-section ratio! At anyrate, there seems to be a lot of contradictory data out there. ;-)

They don't claim that bolts were typically lighter, they just quote someone who used very light bolt for rather hefty crossbow.

There's no actual data here.

Experiment doesn't have any real details either.

All I can see that someone had used very heavy arrow for bow draw - about 16 grains per pound of draw, so achieved rather sluggish 40 m/s.

And achieved similarly sluggish result with crossbow with very light bolt, so probably something was low grade here, because results are very poor.

Are you claiming that an arrow from a longbow is propelled with greater velocity than a bolt from a heavy crossbow?

Well, no, nowhere did I claim something like that.

55 m/s is fairly typical for traditional bows and crossbow alike.

Exact performance depends on many things, beyond just 'longbow' and 'crossbow'.

Generally though, I think that crossbows could be pretty fast, because short lenght and thus pretty short distances to cover for arms, string etc. As far as maximal velocity goes.

Here those guys actually made somehow scientific experiments.

Their crossbows doesn't seem particularly successful, they admit that they don't really know enough sources, they quickly took significant set.

But they still achieved rather respectable 61 m/s or 200 feet/s.