You can actually see it there catching the wind!
Hi it's Tod from Tod's Workshop and Tod Cutler here and today we're going to be looking at the
battle of Towton and what happened when they tried to shoot with a following wind and into
a headwind. Lockdown Longbow has returned! Now here's the deal; this is a crossbow it is
not a longbow. I get it. But I nicknamed it the lockdown longbow because you know the beginning
of last year I found out it could shoot these medieval weight war arrows at the same speed
as my mate Joe Gibbs shoots them from his 160 pound yew longbow, that allows me, because I
can't pull bows like that, that allows me to do testing in my backyard or in a farmer's field
to find out what longbow arrows could do, would do, can do. Now I know I'm here at the trebuchet,
but that's because I have a fantastic open field behind me and the wind is coming right towards the
trebuchet so it's just perfect for me to use it as a shooting marker. So what happened on that day,
29th of March 1461. Little Yorkshire village of Towton. Well the Yorkists and the Lancasterians
were facing off against each other and there was a lot of wind, that we know from the accounts,
and so what happened was the Yorkists used it to their advantage and they shot with a tailwind.
The Lancastrians thought they were out of range and they weren't but their arrows landed short
apparently and then the Yorkists just shot and shot because they knew they couldn't run out of
ammunition, picked up the Lancastrians arrows, shot them back and the Lancastrians well they
then had to attack and it ended in a rout. Very bad day for them. We don't know how many people
died that day but the estimates are up up to one percent of the adult male population of England
died in that one day and that is extraordinary. So what I'm here to do really is just to find out,
can I get any truth out of this? So apparently according to weather, we're gusting up to 40 miles
an hour now so this is sort of blizzard territory, now a long way over there is my lockdown longbow
shield, it's about 300 paces out so I think it's time that we went and shot some stuff
and I've got these my trusty m2 lockdown longbow bolts, arrows call them what you will,
from Will Sherman. So let's go shoot some stuff! I'm going to load up now and then I'm going to
wait for a good gust and then we'll shoot. Now obviously I want to get the elevation right for
this and reasonably consistent anywhere between about 35 and 40 degrees will give us maximum
range, I've showed that on previous films, so let's wait for that gust and then we'll go.
And there it goes straight shot okay so that went a little left of the shield we're gonna go again.
Second one out.
A little bit right of the shield. Now this bow here is simulating around about 160 pound draw
weight longbow, now of course they were shooting into a snow storm, cold weather
now anybody who shoots a bow, a natural bow knows that the draw weight increases
in cold weather so I deliberately opted for the 160 pound simulator not the 125 pound simulator.
And that's the third one.
And down. Impossible for us to film, but what we're going to do is walk it out,
go see what we've got and then we're going to shoot back this way and measure the distance,
so i'll see you over there. Well this has already got interesting, I haven't shot this for distance
but I expected more than 200 meters and that's around about what we've got here and my two
other arrows are about 6 meters on either side of me actually, this is the one in the center
and now we're going to shoot with the tailwind and we're going to see what kind of distance we get.
This is getting interesting. Again I'm just waiting for some gusting and then we'll shoot.
uh well that's certainly flying right let's go again.
Oh that is long; right here's the last one, let's just wait for a big gust and we'll go.
You could actually see it there catching the wind. Right let's go see what we got. Well here, I am
on the other side of the trebuchet there's an arrow behind me there there's another one just in
front of me here, no idea where the third one's gone assume it went the same kind of distance,
now what was that distance? Well shooting into the wind it was about 200 meters,
shooting with the wind behind me it was a whopping 280 meters, that is one heck of a difference.
So when they're talking about Towton and the snowstorm and it made a difference to how far you
shot, yes it certainly could have done. Of course we got no idea what strength the wind was and
this was gusting high 40 but I think most of it probably about 25, maybe 30 miles an hour, but it
made a big difference. So is it myth about Towton well maybe, but it's also true. See you again.