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Were There Really Arrow Storms?
- ksaxena 9y agoTLDR: Yes
- sdenton4 9y agoI was expecting - in this post-Randall Monroe world - a much more thorough accounting of the amount of sunlight blocked by 5000 in-flight arrows.
- Insanity 9y agoI went in with a similar expectation actually. Would be interesting to have an idea of how much light'd fall on you if you were standing under the storm. I imagine you wouldn't really enjoy the sight whilst being under it though!
- PhasmaFelis 9y agoSounds like a great candidate for a What If submission.
- 0xdada 9y agoHere is my speculation: you cannot fit enough archers in the relatively small area from where they can still shoot at the same target and cover a significant portion of the sky with their arrows.
- morganvachon 9y agoSpeaking of, we haven't had a new What If in nearly a year now.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- probably_wrong 9y agoIn case you didn't read it, the "What if?" book has a couple pages dedicated to this exact question (not 5000, but "how many would it take to block the sun?")
- albertgoeswoof 9y agoTheoretically yes, the author just says it’s possible, but doesn’t present any evidence for it. There could be other factors that prevented this from actually happening in reality, eg the supply of arrows, the positioning of the archers, the strategy of attack etc.
- granitosaurus 9y agoIt could also be that burst arrow storms like this just weren't an effective strategy. What is easier to deflect: 1 minute of a bunch of arrows or a constant stream of arrows for 10 minutes? In other words an arrow marathon might have been much more effective than a sprint. Also what about accuracy? Surely aiming at some specific part of the infantry is more effective?
- amelius 9y agoPerhaps in reality what happened was that there, at certain moments, was one obvious target, and all archers pointed their arrows at that target. This created the illusion, from the p.o.v. of the target of an arrow storm.
- Spooky23 9y agoA significant portion of the English economy was devoted to arrow production and archer training. They made millions of the things and reused many. Quotas were assigned for production of both. There may be issues with some of the details of the stories. But many of those issues are more about our modern perception of what is being said. Interpreting the "darkening of the sky" as an eclipse like event is a perception problem. Nobody questions would question a contemporary account of German flak in WW2 feeling like a darkening of the sky from the perspective of a bomber crewman. The end results speak for themselves -- you can correlate the order of battle of the English from multiple areas and the outcome of major engagements and wars are known. If the arrows were less effective than described, the French heavy infantry and cavalry would have been considerably more successful.
- staunch 9y ago> The real problem is when we move from 1000 archers with light bows, to 1000 archers with heavy medieval bows... And ancient battles often had more than 1000 archers. Thermopylae probably had 5,000 professional archers. That's 25,000+ arrows in the sky, focused on one area. There's no question that it would block out the sun to some degree, but how much?
- pliftkl 9y agoTo the point of the article, having 5000 professional archers likely does NOT translate to 25,000 arrows in the air at once, but rather some number lower than 5,000.
- goldenkey 9y agoActually..per the article, hopefully the same one we all read, given the flight time of an arrow, there were likely at least 1 if not more than 1 arrow per archer, in the air at a single time. So at least 5000 but likely more.
- Fifer82 9y agoNot to take away from modern war, but Medieval times must have been really bad. I can't imagine being on the front line knowing I am probably about to be stabbed or hideously maimed at best. The march into a cloud of arrows which you can see coming in volleys would be absolutely miserable. I find it really hard to picture myself in that type of conflict. Yet, despite being no more clement, and that death is a constant, the idea of my D-Day craft opening up, and being raked with invisible machine gun fire is almost clinical in nature. Airstrikes and missles are so far removed from medieval battles, it would be fair to say that you can sit in a destroyer with AC and comfortably press a button while thinking what happens at the end of your book tonight before bed. I can imagine that, but not the guilt one may feel if any. What a difference distance makes.
- Quarrelsome 9y agoI think its less of a deal considering that you'd have consumed A LOT of propaganda building you up to that moment. Also warfare probably had good opportunities for social mobility compared to other pursuits.
- nrki 9y agoI recomment reading Bernard Cornwell's book Agincourt. It has some very interesting (and gruesome) reconstructions of battles with English longbowmen - from the point-of-view of the longbowmen. In the actual battle of Agincourt [1], ~5,000 archers and ~1,000 men-at-arms took on ~20-30,000 French infantry. As the ~5,000 archers could fire ~12 arrows a minute, with 72-100 arrows each, the French would have had 360,000-500,000 arrows hit their lines during the battle - 10 to 20 for each Frenchman. The article talks about the impossibility of shooting 10-12 arrows-per-minute, however it doesn't talk about how the English trained from childhood to fire a longbow - in fact, it was written into law for hundreds of years. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Agincourt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Agincourt
- arkades 9y agoI can’t really imagine it’s impossible to shoot 10-12 arrows a minute. I’m an amateur archer, with a preference for traditional, sightless recurve bows. At my entirely-amateur level, I can put an arrow in the target (though not the bulls eye) at 20 yards without pausing to aim - shooting by muscle memory - at a rate of 4-5 per minute. It’s pretty difficult for me to imagine someone with a lifetime of practice couldn’t shoot at least twice as fast as I can, with my roughly one year of practice.
- ghaff 9y agoNote though that the draw weights of medieval bows were way higher than a modern sport recurve bow. Estimates vary but go as high as 150 pounds--so maybe 3x typical bows used today. I don't have an opinion on how quickly trained from childhood archers could fire at the time but there was a lot of force involved.
- megaman22 9y agoAnd you can see the distortions on the musculo-skeletal system that pulling those heavy bows over and over for years inflicted on longbowmen from their remains. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2235150/Elite-archers-drowned-aboard-Henry-VIIIs-flagship-9Mary-Rose-identified-RSI.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2235150/Elite...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- snambi 9y agoThe arrow storm is probably a myth created by war writers.
- protomyth 9y agoa video on Agincourt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5cIzwaxKcM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5cIzwaxKcM (ok, the first 2 minutes are a little hocky but he also does some great Roman videos) and one one archery for reference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDQaJKpBWgY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDQaJKpBWgY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSq5GX0G3Co https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSq5GX0G3Co
- Someone 9y agoI don’t think they did, but if they used Time on Target (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_On_Target https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_On_Target), they could have created a localized peak of incoming arrows per second that is significantly higher than the rate of fire. I would guess that also would make it harder for defenders to dodge incoming arrows. Rationale: if you can see it, one incoming arrow is relatively easy to avoid, ten per square meter almost impossible. Also, the arrows would come in from different directions (the ones fired earliest almost vertically, the last ones fired almost horizontally), making it harder to see all arrows heading for you.