I'd Estimate a bow might be more more effective in Modern mans hands then in medievel mans hands due to the difference in nutrition. A medievel soldier aproaching the battlefield would probably be half starved eating something like hardtack or other grain product depending on the amount of soldiers on the battlefield he might have access to some raided vegtables, fruit, or meat. Not to mention the chances of a medievel soldier suffering a bout of dysintery or cholera would probably weaken even more his ability to use a bow. Hand the same man a weapon he just has to dump powder in and pull a trigger he'd be more effective, not to mention you could continue to ignore the conditions he spent his life in till your intellectuals realized it was the bad smells that spread diseases.
Musket instead of Bow and Arrow, why?
- Thread starter jay dogg
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Addicted Archer
Registered Member
Thersites said:
i agree. the musket was an easy weapon to use, and many of the yankee soldiers were farmers and peasants. they would have ahd to start at childhood to learn the ways of the bow. i know, because i've been doing archery for 3 years, and i have to say, it is a lot of hard work. it all just basically comes down to time and money.
This is true, but people get fed up with evil empires.
Without the shocktroops, the line would have never been broken.
You mustn't know too much about WWI history to make these claims
WWI was a paradigm shift in warfare, where new technologies far surpaced old tactics. For instance, rifles held far more bullets than muskets, and had a range of a mile or more. The Germans implemented the first chain-fed machine guns. Artillery & ballistics had gone a long way since cannon balls.
It was quickly discovered that if a defending army dug trenches, they were practically invulnerable to attack. With snipers, artillery and grunts with rifles for defense, and no armor to take the trench, it was extremely costly to directly assault the trench.
The only thing for the opposing army to do would be dig their own trench.
Of course, the generals and whoever wanted to gain territory, so they'd blow their whistle, and then all the grunts, with their CO behind them, would jump up and over the trench wall, to get gun downed by snipers, machineguns, and artillery.
The Brits wen 'up and over' at the First Battle of Yrpes until more than 50,000 British troops were dead.
I don't know who your Bill Slim is, but perhaps he should propose his idea to the Pentagon? I mean, why do we need artillery, airplanes, or tanks or any specialized group of soldiers?
In a perfect militarized world, everyone and everything would be top notch and thoroughly trained. Unfortunately, their are only so many available resources to train troop with, so training small elite groups to match up with grunt offensives is far cheaper than training everyone as elite.
Roman said:You mustn't know too much about WWI history to make these claims
The paratroopers divisions of Goring were the elite shock troops during WW2. They suffered heavy casualties in previously succesful campaigns. Goring still claimed that they were ubermenschen thought when the Russians were approaching berlin and claimed that 2 of its battalions could repel an entire Russian army. The truth was that the paratroopers had been seriously depleted by previous actions. Now the battalions were just filled up with ground personel and such. They justhad the equipment and looked the part. When the Russians started their offensive, they were the first to crack.
The same is true for all the other divisions that had been fighting at the Ostfront. They were all seriously depleted and their ranks if possible filled up with anything that was available. This seriously depleted the combat effectiveness.
Depleting all divisions of the best troops on a large scale seems hardly a sound idea. You will get a few smaller groups of excellent troops, but leave your main forces weak. Those are the forces that will have to endure counterattacks. Those are the troops that have to protect your ass.
bakersayshi
Registered Member
Wasn't one of the big deals about musket balls that when they struck their target, they flattened and increased in size, often shattering bones? I think that muskets, although innacurate were much more powerful than bows of any sort.
Only the survivors. The USSR collapsed for reasons that had nothing to do with the Baltic states or the Ukraine and the guerrillas there.Roman said:
It was never broken except by technological innovations such as tanks. It was the German line that was broken.
This had happened over the previous century. The US civil war, the Franco-Prussian war, the Boer war, the Russo-Japanese war all showed the effects of these military innovations.
The biggest change in WWI was the development of "the nation in arms" to its apogee: an entire economy dedicated to war, to manufacturing weapons to supply the armed forces to use on the enemy.
Again, the wars I cited above showed that. The big difference in WWI was that armies and states could fight under these conditions for far longer than anyone had imagined. The reason for the British and French making most of the assults after 1914 was that a tenth of France and almost all of Belgium was occupied by the Germans- the status quo suited the Germans. It was effectively what the germans would have demanded at peace.The Germans attacked in March 1918 partly because they had extra troops from the eastern front partly because the British naval blockade was having a cumulative effect which would soon destroy German ability to fight.
Fair description. Wrong battle First Ypres was a very costly German attack in November 1914.
Field Marshall Lord Slim. He defeated the Japaese in Burma in WWII. He didn't approve of elite units. He had no objection to specialists such as artillery etc. Standard army regiments were trained and successfully used as chindits- long-range penetration commandos- without creating elite units for that job.
The problem is that withdrawing the most able or dedicated troops from them often lowers the quality of ordinary units. The best men act as a leaven, setting an example to the others and raising other troops' self-imposed and self-expected standards.
charlesesl
Registered Member
Speaking of bows, I thought I might bring this up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repeating_crossbow
This repeating crossbow called Chu-ko-nu is pretty much the machine gun of crossbows.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repeating_crossbow
This repeating crossbow called Chu-ko-nu is pretty much the machine gun of crossbows.
Hey, I dont remember reading about that. Was it any good?
Do you recall there was a prototype machine gun made in I think the 16th or 17th century, that could fire round of square shot? The square stuff was for use against the Turks, allegedly it was more dangerous.
Do you recall there was a prototype machine gun made in I think the 16th or 17th century, that could fire round of square shot? The square stuff was for use against the Turks, allegedly it was more dangerous.
They had replaceable reservoirs which leaked or exploded, but even so, you'd think that rate of fire would outweigh the disadvantages.guthrie said:
The Puckle gun: i think it had a very complicated process: loading powder, inserting ball, adding primer... all done mechanically. It wasn't until metal all-in cartridges you could get effective automatic weapons.
The Puckle gun sounds like an early kind of revolver: There were nine prepared charges in a cylinder put onto the gun. You might have one or two men firing it, but you'd need a lot of people making up the cylinders.
Looking up the air rifle, it's even more puzzling that it wasn't used more widely and for longer. Besides rapid fire and better accuracy the other advantages were:
no fouling of the barrel- that was one of the biggest problems with early fire-arms, especially rifles.
no dependence on the weather. Early firearms often misfired in dry weather and were useless in the rain. It would be much easier to carry spare air reservoirs and pumps than to transport powder and keep it dry and stop it exploding. The US explorers Merriweather and Lewis took an air rifle to hunt with.
no smoke clouds: one reason why rifles weren't widely used- as well as the above- I think, was that early gunpowder gave off enormopus clouds of smoke. rifles were used by skirmishers, not in the line. On a battlefield it was impossible to see anyone until pretty nearly point-blank range. That's one of the reasons for withholding fire so long. Oddly enough, this might work both ways: people armed with air guns would be visible when their opponents were covered in smoke. Going back to the original subject: perhaps this was one reason for the decline of archery- the smoke of battle meant that archers couldn't see the opposing army to aim at them effectively.
Looking up the air rifle, it's even more puzzling that it wasn't used more widely and for longer. Besides rapid fire and better accuracy the other advantages were:
no fouling of the barrel- that was one of the biggest problems with early fire-arms, especially rifles.
no dependence on the weather. Early firearms often misfired in dry weather and were useless in the rain. It would be much easier to carry spare air reservoirs and pumps than to transport powder and keep it dry and stop it exploding. The US explorers Merriweather and Lewis took an air rifle to hunt with.
no smoke clouds: one reason why rifles weren't widely used- as well as the above- I think, was that early gunpowder gave off enormopus clouds of smoke. rifles were used by skirmishers, not in the line. On a battlefield it was impossible to see anyone until pretty nearly point-blank range. That's one of the reasons for withholding fire so long. Oddly enough, this might work both ways: people armed with air guns would be visible when their opponents were covered in smoke. Going back to the original subject: perhaps this was one reason for the decline of archery- the smoke of battle meant that archers couldn't see the opposing army to aim at them effectively.
if the enemy was making such big clouds of smoke then why even bother with bullets and arrows, they could shove some explosives on a catapult, or arm their men with swords and hide until the enemy had advanced enough to flank them, half of the enemy force iwll be dead by the time they look behind them
That wouldn't do much good- you couldn't see where you were firing with the catapult anyway.vslayer said:
Where would they hide? Swordsmwn weren't much use against cavalry. Certainly most of the soldiers in French columns never had a chance to fire and Kutuzof didn't allow most of his troops to load as it discouraged them from using bayonets.
PLus, catapults are hard to make and transport. there is a reason they were never used on the battlefield that I have heard of. Cannon werent really used on the battlefield until the latter half of the 15th century, when they were small enough and could be fired 2 or 3 times a minute with pre-prepared charges.
This concept is entirely flawed....being a shooter of traditional bows I know that the training of an archer for the type of combat in the civil war could be accomplished in a matter of days.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
The USSR collapsed because communism only works for small communities in which everyone really does regard everyone else as his brother, and is willing to work for the common good.
In a large community like a country, there are too many different factions who don't regard each other as brothers. Everyone sloughs off and assumes that the other people will do all the work. As a result, the economy produces a negative surplus, so the country slowly liquidates its wealth.
The Russians dissipated the modest surplus left to them by the Czarist government. When that was gone, they began annexing the neighboring countries, and dissipated their wealth. When that was gone, the economy began to collapse.
China (barely) avoided this fate by creating a system of their own that is a hybrid of communism, capitalism and Confucianism. They have absorbed everyone who tried to conquer them, including the communists.