Arrows against horse armour

[Erpingham]

Another in our occassional series on experiments shooting at armour.  This time arrows v. horse armour.  Actually, the article is a bit wider than that, because it looks at the capability of horses to carry armour and armoured riders and various factors which might limit the weight and type of armour.  The study also focuses on mail armour rather than plate, which may also interest cataphract fans. 

The author of the study goes down the tried and tested route of shooting arrows at short range (9m in this case)  and then noting the armour isn't very effective.  But then, at 9m, a charging horse is about a second from the archer so it would have been a cool headed or even fearless archer who'd be shooting a horse at that range (we have discussed charging horse simulators previously in the occassional series and getting the last shot away as the target closes even when its not trying to kill you is difficult).  Hitting the target at 25-50m might have been a more useful experiment.

Not also the author experiments with waxed arrowheads to improve penetration.

[Jim Webster]

Another in our occassional series on experiments shooting at armour.  This time arrows v. horse armour.  Actually, the article is a bit wider than that, because it looks at the capability of horses to carry armour and armoured riders and various factors which might limit the weight and type of armour.  The study also focuses on mail armour rather than plate, which may also interest cataphract fans. 

The author of the study goes down the tried and tested route of shooting arrows at short range (9m in this case)  and then noting the armour isn't very effective.  But then, at 9m, a charging horse is about a second from the archer so it would have been a cool headed or even fearless archer who'd be shooting a horse at that range (we have discussed charging horse simulators previously in the occassional series and getting the last shot away as the target closes even when its not trying to kill you is difficult).  Hitting the target at 25-50m might have been a more useful experiment.

Not also the author experiments with waxed arrowheads to improve penetration.

I suspect that at 9m, the horse is still going to hit you even if it's dead by the time it arrives. 

[lionheartrjc]

A horse might be mortally wounded, but it certainly doesn't die that quickly.  If it has any momentum and is going straight at you then your chances of survival are not good....

Almost seems pointless testing arrows at such short range.   Unless you are safely behind a row of stakes or barricade you are not going to get much of an opportunity to shoot at this range and any horsemen are likely to come up to a barrier and just wait to be shot at.  I would have thought a test at about 50m range would be much more meaningful. 

Horse armour must have had some benefit or else why would you bother ...

Richard

[Erpingham]

Horse armour must have had some benefit or else why would you bother ...

Richard

It's a general issue with these sort of tests.  They are done at short ranges to ensure hits on target but how does this reflect battlefield conditions, for which the armour was intended?  One might suggest the armour was to protect the horse from damage as it manoeuvered, and it relied on the enemy having neither the time to get close range shots off and perhaps their inability to stand and shoot at that range.  It may not even have been to stop arrows at all, but melee weapons.

[Ian61]

It's a general issue with these sort of tests.  They are done at short ranges to ensure hits on target but how does this reflect battlefield conditions, for which the armour was intended? 

Good points and I agree with the concept of momentum making this a bit of a drastic shot - I am not sure how steady I would be if a Rider is already that close and closing fast.

I also have some sympathy with the experimenters. Having run a.22 range for the cadets for many years on two occasions physics students persuaded me to help with momentum (?) experiments using air rifles. Now the problem with an old air rifle* is unless you are a very good shot you need the target to either be the size of the proverbial barn door or you have to get quite close. Both students took far longer getting their results than they had hoped and had to get much closer than their original methods called for.

*Before people correct me by telling me how good their air rifles are -  I know but these weren't!

[Ian61]

I should add the wax coating bit was interesting and of course our .22 lead bullets even today have a wax coating but I think that is as much to protect from degradation than aid penetration

[Chris]

Interesting and rather a coincidence, as I have been looking at Blore Heath (courtesy of Carl Luxford's article way back when in Slingshot  .

Not sure how many Lancastrian riders fell while crossing the brook and charging up the hill into the stakes, but my guess is that it was a good number of them.

Anyway, again interesting and thanks for posting about the study.

Cheers,
Chris

[Nick Harbud]

For those interested in 'practical' tests of archery, especially with the longbow, I recommend reading chapter 5 of "Secrets of the English Warbow". 

Mark Stretton details experiments with different types of cuirass mounted on a clothes line arrangement that could be winched towards the archer at various speeds to simulate a charging knight, hobbling varlet, etc.

FWIW, Ian's observation on the practical hit rate of air rifles and sundry other supposedly deadly accurate firearms is unsurprising and has been the subject of many books from S.L.A. Marshall "Men Against Fire" to Paddy Griffiths' work on various 19^th century tactics.  Of course, if one shares the view of the late Patrick Waterson then none of this will count for anything when weighed against some centuries-dead historian writing decades after the event.

Hope this helps.   

[Jim Webster]

Interesting and rather a coincidence, as I have been looking at Blore Heath (courtesy of Carl Luxford's article way back when in Slingshot  .

Not sure how many Lancastrian riders fell while crossing the brook and charging up the hill into the stakes, but my guess is that it was a good number of them.

Anyway, again interesting and thanks for posting about the study.

Cheers,
Chris

I wonder how many riders fell because of horses swerving and trying to avoid those horses that had been hit. If a horse gets hit and reacts by doing anything other than going straight forward at its current speed it's going to be an issue

[Erpingham]

Mark Stretton details experiments with different types of cuirass mounted on a clothes line arrangement that could be winched towards the archer at various speeds to simulate a charging knight, hobbling varlet, etc.

Mark Stretton's tests are those mentioned as having been discussed before.  You can also find a discussion of them on his blog

The line one is here
and the self propelled rig here.

[RichT]

It is the problem with many of these sorts of tests - they assume a hit, but the vast majority of shots fired (whether longbows or muskets or whatever), in actual combat, missed their targets. If you hit a target square on with any missile, against any or no armour, at a critical part of the anatomy, and with enough force and in enough time to stop its forward progress, then fine, but, 'if'.

As I expect we've discussed before (we've said everything before) at least a part of the function of armour isn't to stop missiles (or other blows), it's to make its wearer feel better (or in the case of horse armour, its wearers' owner feel better). And look better too of course. This doesn't make these penetration tests worthless, but they do need to be taken with several sackfulls of salt.

[Chris]

All excellent points and more food for thought . . .

With regard to Jim's observation, my guess is that the WoR cavalry formations were not armored like the cataphracts of old, so injured horses would be quite problematic and disrupt the formation that was already disrupted by the terrain and by the charge advance. As for riders knocked off their mounts but not wounded (stunned perhaps), again, I am recalling Agincourt.

It's also been discussed before - the more rapid rate of fire by trained archers/longbowmen versus flintlocks and so forth.

Cheers,
Chris

[Erpingham]

The key, to state the obvious, to the results of some of these experiments or even "some centuries-dead historian writing decades after the event" is your critical evaluation of sources.  From there, you can have a better idea of the weight to assign to them.  Many "tests" are skimpy on details or have flaws in methodology which make them less valuable.  There are plenty of details in this experiment to help assess its value.  I've already mentioned the short range issue.     A decent modern warbow archer should have been able to hit a target the size of a horse at 25-50 m with some consistency but the cost of a horse sized piece of reproduction test material would be prohibitive.  Then you have the issue of static target v moving target.  Also the geometry .  As Richard observes, the test is set up to hit square on, whereas plenty of shot would actually hit at various angles.  I think it would also benefit from a better understanding of horse anatomy and physiology to determine the potential effectiveness of some of these penetrations.  The author mentions the 9mm rule used to assess stab vests but this is based on minimum distance of vital organs to the skin surface in humans, not horses.  So in battlefield analysis terms, we might suggest the test has limited value but, when put alongside other experiments, does begin to paint a picture of what different armours were or weren't good for.

 

[LawrenceG]

Their 24 layers of 440 gsm linen had a higher areal density than a second layer of mail, which would have had a much lower thermal load. 

On the face of it, it would have made more sense to try 2 layers of mail and 6 layers of linen for their "immunity" test.

The range/accuracy/speed problem is "easily" addressed by shooting the arrow at a lower speed, appropriate for a longer range.

[aligern]

The French certainly thought that armouring their horses would better protect them against longbowmen. Arguably the provision of plate horse armour was part of tge suite of responses tgat made longbowmen irrelevant.
Roy