
Were There Really Arrow Storms? - IntronExon
http://www.strangehistory.net/2018/02/10/really-arrow-storms/
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nrki
I 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)

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arkades
I 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.

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ghaff
Note 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
And 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...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2235150/Elite-
archers-drowned-aboard-Henry-VIIIs-flagship-9Mary-Rose-identified-RSI.html)

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Fifer82
Not 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.

~~~
beloch
Look up the Battle of Cannae, wherein Hannibal successfully encircled a force
of approximately 80k Romans and killed approximately 70k of them. This wasn't
bowmen vs infantry but, primarily, infantry vs infantry. The battle was
effectively won once the encirclement was completed, but killing people in
close quarter combat is an agonizingly slow process unless there's a rout.
Encircled soldiers can't rout. The slaughter continued until darkness, and
only after dark did the battle cease, leaving some survivors (night battles
were exceedingly rare in antiquity).

Imagine being in the middle of an army that is being driven into a more and
more compact mass of panicking humanity, knowing that you've lost and are
doomed to die, but that death does not arrive for, possibly, the better part
of a day! Livy reported of the Romans that, "Some were found with their heads
plunged into the earth, which they had excavated; having thus, as it appeared,
made pits for themselves, and having suffocated themselves."

I'd take one good charge and death by a storm of arrows over _that_ any day.

~~~
jrimbault
I actually thought of the Battle of Cannae during the episode of Game of
Thrones Battle of the Bastards.

~~~
netzone
Sure. I'm sure you think of it during most medieval show that has some sort of
warfare, some variation of it is almost always featured, though as far as I
know tactics similar to that had been used long before that particular battle.

~~~
walshemj
Encirclement Is very old tactics the medieval period actually used this and
much more modern tactics effectively combined arms warfare.

~~~
Scea91
Encirclement was just the outcome. What was really interesting to me in the
battle of Cannae was the feigned retreat.

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Someone
I 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.

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ksaxena
TLDR: Yes

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sdenton4
I was expecting - in this post-Randall Monroe world - a much more thorough
accounting of the amount of sunlight blocked by 5000 in-flight arrows.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Sounds like a great candidate for a What If submission.

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0xdada
Here 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.

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acct1771
Unless the flight paths converge at the end.

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Anderkent
When the arrow hits your face, you can no longer see the sun. Therefore one
archer is sufficient to blot out the sun.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
2 arrows.

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staunch
> _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
To 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.

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goldenkey
Actually..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.

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protomyth
a 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)

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snambi
The arrow storm is probably a myth created by war writers.

