Hi it's Tod of Tod's workshop here. Earlier in the summer a bunch of us got
together and we made a film. Will, Toby, Joe and myself made arrows vs. armour;
medieval myth-busting. Basically the concept is to take the classic test that
we all see, which is a breastplate and shoot it with a longbow and see what
happens. This film generated a great deal of interest and a great deal of
comments. So we are coming back now to address some
of those comments. They come in broad bands, so I'll just address the
broad bands rather than any specific comment. So we are going to start by looking
at arrows. So first up, there are a lot of comments saying why didn't you use
Bodkins? We can only assume from that, that people meant needle bodkins. Now
needle bodkins are an earlier style of arrowhead that were predominantly used
against maille as far as we could tell and fabric armors. So they have a 60, 70, 80,
millimeter long narrow spike on the end. Really they'd sort of more or less
fallen out of use by the time of Agincourt. Short bodkins; plate cutters
as they're often called, those are what we assume to be used against plate armor.
That is what we use now. If you imagine a cold chisel for cutting steel, you don't
use a chisel which is like a wood chisel with a very fine point on it; it will
break. So what you use is a cold chisel. It's got a broad angle on it; an obtuse
angle and that is what allows you to get a cutting edge. Not as good, but a cutting
edge and it stays intact when it strikes something. That's the idea anyway.
Although you can see from the picture of our arrowhead, that it deformed.
But again the original that's shown below it, also deformed. So you know, like
for like. But what we were using were appropriate bodkins and they're based on
a Museum of London find from about a decade before Agincourt. Now another
point that was made is the arrows all break, they all break behind the head
and that loses the energy, so you're losing the maximum amount of energy that
you could have, that's carried in the projectile. You're losing it because it
breaks and the shaft goes away so you're not carrying the energy off and into the
target. That is true, that is undoubtedly true, however the arrow shafts that we
were using were both Mary Rose ones, the arrowhead that we
were using was based on a Museum of London one and the two fit together basically
perfectly. They're meant to go together and yet they broke. So you can ask the
question. "Well why did they break?" because you're not imparting the maximum energy.
Well what you could see from that film, is that when it strikes, it explodes and
it's shards go in different directions. Some of that was slipping up towards the
neck; the V on the breastplate stops that, but again if it hit your arm
and shattered and some of that was driven under your armpit there
where again maybe your maille armour is not so good or it's not tightly fitting.
So there was a lovely response video actually from Metatron and I'd like to
say actually very good ones also from Schola Gladitoria and from Shadiversity,
but the Metatron made a really interesting point. Which is actually what
happens is you're shooting at a guy 50 meters over there the arrow strikes him
and explodes; it is a lower grade shrapnel the wood is not moving fast enough to
penetrate armor, but it will still go through eye sockets, it will still go
little shards into the breaths and sights. Things like that. It's gonna really annoy
the Knights on the other end and you're always going to be in fear of one of
those shards coming through your eye sockets so they really do have an effect.
So maybe the fact that they are breaking and exploding on impact is not such a
bad thing, not if you're pretty sure you're not going to get through the
armor anyway. It's a thought; maybe I'm right, maybe I'm wrong and later films
may come back for that. Now why were we not using steel for the
arrowheads because obviously if you're using wrought iron which is softer than the
steel breastplate it's never going to get through. Well never is a big word, but
I entirely get your point. The thing is we have no real evidence that they used
steel for these armour piercing heads. We wanted to rely on what we knew, we didn't
want to try and get through the breastplate at all costs. If there was
case hardening done on them and they could do it. If it was done on it, would
it provide an advantage? Well we tried and we didn't seem to find an advantage. We're
gonna have another look at trying to improve our case hardening technique and
try and get better at that see if it helps.
Toby has also had some discussions with Alam Williams the guy wrote "the knight
and the blast furnace". Now he is an expert in medieval metallurgy and he's done
work on bladed arrowheads that show that some of them do have steel blades welded
onto a wrought-iron socket. There is no
evidence as far as I know that they did that with plate cutters with short
bodkins, but Alan feels they might have done, so
we will probably come back and have a look at that as well because it references it
in old inventories that some arrowheads were steeled. We simply don't know what
that means; might be case hardened, maybe they had
steel points. We'll come back and we'll look at that.
Next up let's talk about the armor now we've been criticized because we chose a very high-end piece
of armor. Well it's not that high-end. I mean it's obviously good armour, it's
quite clearly good armour. It's steel, they were using steel at the time, but it's
not heat treated particularly well, it's not massively embellished, so it doesn't
strike me as being a very very high-end piece of armour not the best available by
any means. But also don't forget this particular thing of Agincourt, we were
looking at the longbow shooting the Knights on foot. Those Knights were not
just like random men at arms with like last year's breastplate, they were the
creme de la creme of French nobility. They had the best armour, so we needed to
choose a bit of armor that was you know pretty good. We also had good stats on
the Churburg 14 piece so we were able to replicate it with some accuracy, that
was also important for our aims within the film. Now the steel that we used,
again it would have been lovely if we had used a wrought iron based shear
steel. Time and importantly of course money, didn't allow that, so we had to use
the best facsimile that we could. Of course it's not exactly the same as the
wrought iron of course there might be soft spots and hard spots in a wrought
iron version of it, shear steel version of it, but it's the best facsimile we
could get and what we didn't do was choose a point seven and then heat treat
the hell out of it. We did what we told you we did, we used 0.5 percent and we've
effectively annealed it. We just let it air cool. People have asked why didn't
you shoot it from the sides because it was thinner. Yeah we would love to have
done but as it was, we had a full day of filming, we couldn't do everything. That
is gonna feature as part of further films that is without a shadow of a
doubt quite possibly the next one up. Now the last one which is very interesting
here when we're talking about the armor is how well did it
protect you. You had a breastplate, then you had effectively an
air gap because nobody's chest is that sort of globular shape, then you have the
maille and the arming doublet underneath. Now the arrow when it strikes, it carries
120 joules with it, 130 something in that area. That's the kind of numbers we're
talking about. That is spread over the whole chest. Now on a point on a point
loading hundred-and-twenty joules is without shadow of doubt enough to kill
somebody, but spread over your chest is it? does it knock you off your feet? Well
I would say no. A couple of short clips now; one is a guy who invented the soft
bulletproof jacket as far as I remember it in the early 1970s shoots himself
here with a .44 Magnum at point-blank in a soft jacket. Clearly he got bit excited
by the experience as he would, but he survived and he did it over 200 times
after that demonstrating his shirt. So blunt-force trauma?
I think he's probably frankly rather lucky to be alive, but through a steel
breastplate? I don't think it's really an issue. Another little bit of video
here from a bunch of Italians quite clearly crazy, once again shooting a
ballistic vest with plates in it with what looks to be from the sights an
AK-47 so I don't know what the numbers are; two and half thousand joules, two
thousand joules at point-blank and the guy sways backwards. Right he's not
flying through the back wall. Does it knock you off your feet? I'd say if you
get hit by an arrow, no it doesn't. Blunt force trauma being an issue to your body
even after 20 hits? I'd say it's not there. Make up your own mind. Let's talk
about the longbow, in the film Joe shot a hundred and sixty pound longbow now that
weight is a weight that he could shoot many arrows during the course of a day
which of course we needed for the filming, but the other thing that's
important about it, is as we said he can shoot a 200 pound bow. Why didn't we use
that? Well we didn't want to go through the armour all costs, that's not what it
was about. We had to choose equipment that was
representative. The Mary Rose bows seemed to be averaging about hundred and fifty
hundred and sixty pounds in draw weight, so that's a good place to start.
Yes it's a hundred years later but it's as good a data point as we've got. Did
some people out in the field there shoot 200 pound bows? probably
did if Joe can, some of them would have been able to, but as joe said he
can't do it for that long before it's you know it's gonna cause trouble for
him. The other thing is that 160 or so seems to be a bit of a sweet spot with
long bows that you can go beyond that but the efficiency starts to drop off, so
the sweet spot if you like, of work that the archer has to do, to work he gets out
at the other end. i.e. the ability to hit the knights seems to be around one
hundred fifty, sixty, seventy mark, so that's why we chose that particular bow
weight. The purpose of the test was to try and use real equipment, doing a real
job, so we could get an idea of what was going on and to use a two hundred pound
bow which doesn't really give you the returns and leaves you limited in other
ways, because you're unable to fight because you're too tired, we felt that
that was just an inappropriate thing and so we've stuck on 160 as a good weight.
that a longbow archer would have shot. Now there's also comments about his
shooting style because Joe has what you might think is a peculiar shooting style,
that he arches his back, he leans forward. Well as he explained, he needs to do this
this pose to bring in the different muscle groups to be able to draw the
bow because it is no longer just about the shoulder; he's got to use his back
and his lower back that is how you do these heavyweight bows. So you look in
the manuscripts and again and again and again you see the same kind of pose. Now
I know that there is always artistic license in medieval manuscripts but if
you see this again and again, you have to conclude that there's something
in it and Joe cannot shoot his bow in the modern way. I shoot longbow, I cannot
draw my longbow if I shoot it in a modern target way, I can do it if I shoot
it like Joe shoots it. Now if you are interested in that longbow actually that
heavy longbow archery that Joe's showing, go check his channel out because he's
got loads of videos showing him shooting different weight bows. Now it comes to a
few sort of more slightly random areas. One of the things that comes up again
and again why not use crossbows? Well I love crossbows, I make crossbows, you know
I've done lots of videos with crossbows. This film was not about crossbows. It was
about the longbow and the French Knights. Another day, another time, we'll look at
crossbows, but at the moment we have got plenty of meat to get our teeth into in
looking at longbows and how they affected the
knight's. People said "Ah, well if the knight was on a charging horse then he'll
be coming towards the arrow and that that would increase the velocity" Yeah
that's true and the thing is actually you may not realize it, but the 20, 25
miles an hour that the horse is coming is actually pretty significant when it
comes to the the energy that the arrow is carrying, so you could be talking
another twenty, thirty, thirty-five percent extra energy that the arrow has.
But we weren't looking at mounted Knights we were looking at men on foot.
So another day, another test, but that wasn't this one. But it would without a
doubt make it a difference and possibly a significant difference. The last
one of these real randoms was, "well if they didn't go through the armor how did
you win at Agincourt?" Well we didn't say it didn't go through the armour, we said
it didn't go through that breastplate, under these conditions. It's got to be a
data point. It doesn't mean that they didn't go through armour ever, it doesn't
mean that they didn't even go through low-grade breastplates, it means it
didn't go through that breastplate. So that comes to how did it happen? How did
these guys get hit? Well you saw how easily it went through the maille and the
fabric at the beginning, although not the best quality maille, it was pretty
convincingly straight through that lot. So it can go in under the armpits,
you saw how the splinters come up and under towards the neck, get knocked off the
V. Well if they are coming just above the V, there's no V to knock them out the way
and though splinters are going straight up into the neck. Do they pierce the
sights and the breaths of the helmet? There's all these things we simply do
not know. Did the longbows play a massive and significant part? Yes they did. Do we
know exactly the part they played? No we don't, but were they important without a
shadow of a doubt. Now the last aspect that I haven't yet mentioned, the
comments to do with the history of what occurred that day. Now that is much
better done by Dr. Tobias Capwell rather than Tod sitting in his field
next to his shed. It is not, and I make no bones about it, my area of expertise so
Toby's going to do a separate film about that, to look at exactly what occurred on
the day in what sort of stages and why we chose to go down the route that we
did. But my understanding is the ground was in a very wet condition, an early cavalry
charge was started, it was disrupted, the French then dismounted and
they came on foot and it was the ripping up of the ground by the cavalry and the
wetness that caused the French a great deal of problems, that was then combined
with the close-quarter flat shooting of the English as far as we understand it.
And then of course the archers and the men-at-arms went in and finished off
a lot of the French Knights with hammers, mauls, maces, knives and again we'll have
a look at how easy does a knife penetrate maille. You know we'll have a
look at these things but we were looking at a very specific context, so beyond
that specific context, I think we're best handing over to Toby. So we'll pick up
that one in another film. Hopefully that has clarified some of our
thinking behind the tests, about how we approached it, why we did it in that
certain way, why we kept that focus on one particular moment in time, but of
course it leaves the question of " what happens next?" because so many questions
were were unanswered. Does it go through softer or thinner armour? does it go
through the sides of the armour? does it go through a helmet? will it compromise
the sights and the breaths of the helmet? does the shrapnel go up under the neck?
what is the effect of the lucky shots? it just goes on and on. We really want to
address these films and there will be more of these medieval myth-busting ones
coming, can't tell you quite when, but they will be coming. Thanks for watching and I
hope this has been a useful supplement to the original film. If you haven't seen
it, go and watch it, it really is worth watching. Thank you