Crossbows

SWM wrote:If you are cocking and firing it from the hip without lowering it, then it cannot possibly be as powerful as a short bow.

Actually, it's a lot less powerfull. It almost useless against protected enemy at any sensible range.

SWM wrote:If it is fired the way you describe, it is useless for anything except short range suppression fire. The power, range, and accuracy are all way too low for anything else.

Historically, it was used usually in siege combat, not in the field operations.

You should ask yourself why "wonder weapons" like repeating crossbows were not common.

The advantages like rate of fire were at a price of mechanical complexity, decreased range and limited penetrating power. There was an ancient mechanical repeating catapult as well, and a replica built by the Mythbusters showed the issues with such a device; it was complex to build and repeatedly failed during the test (mostly the loading mechanism jammed).

The "Infantry Revolution" was predicated on simple to use weapons that allowed peasants and unskilled labourers to be pressed into the ranks and fight effectively. Crossbows (simple crossbows, that is) had many defects compared to the longbow, but effective longbowmen were the result of a lifetime of training: the commander of a castle garrison could hand out crossbows to the cooks and mount an effective defense behind the walls. Pike squares had a similar genesis, and firearms were even simpler to put in the hands of untrained men.

Knights in Europe were not very happy with this state of affairs, but politically they could not stop this. The Japanese were more successful; firearms were an important part of establishing the Tokugawa shogunate, but once the Shogunate was secure, importation and making of firearms was severely restricted, lest the peasantry use them against highly trained Samurai warriors.

Overall, while wonder weapons might look good on paper, you need to look at the historical context, and also the practical effects (issues like reliability, range etc.) to realize why they never were adopted in the "real" world.

Dilandu wrote:Seriously?

Their effective range is no more than 80 meters and the maximum is 120 meters. And their penetration power decreased rapidly.

The range of smoothbore musket, in salvo firing on the enemy formation (not the individual targeting) is about 150-200 meters. And their bullets still have the penetration power to kill the lightly armored or unarmored trooper.

Don´t let yourself be deluded by the myths of the "power of gunpowder".

Muskets could easily fire MUCH further sure, but what i said was EFFECTIVE range.

And effective range for muskets suck pathetically compared to how much power they put out.

For a very blatantly clear comparison, compare musketfire during the ACW with that of the Swedish military in late 17th century.

Compared to the number of shots fired in the ACW, the number of casualties are puny, and this is not early muskets, but later ones, quite good ones.

And normal ranges for musket fire was rarely much below 100m.

Swedish army of 17th century had as standard tactic to marsch up to less than 50m before it fired, taking fire at longer range while doing so, which was usually highly ineffective, and then firing a massed volley at as close as possible before the enemy was able to fire a concentrated volley of their own at close range. Most enemies broke down after one or two volleys at 30-10m.
While Swedish troops took nearly all the enemy fire at 50+m, which rarely caused more than few casualties.

Because it was found that effect of musket fire dropped off extremely quickly. Volley fire beyond 50m is of questionable use.
Volley fire beyond 100m is so ineffective you might as well try to hit the enemy by firing almost straight up.

Unless the soldier is an EXPERTLY trained marksman. And that is also very noticeable in regards to the ACW, where the few welltrained units were just about the only ones causing any real harm much beyond throwing range.

The reason firearms became common was that massproduction for powder, bullets and muskets are all possible. Bows and crossbows, arrows and bolts, all of it except certain types of metal crossbow bolts were craftsman only territory, vastly more expensive and extremely slow to produce.

Gunpowder in contrast was produced in bulk quantities.
Bullets could be cast even by individual soldiers over a campfire.

And of course, the sonic shock effect from massed fire against a troop, is not a small thing either.

Firearms also have better ability to punch through armour yes, but that is compared to repeating crossbows, compared to a heavy warcrossbow, it´s actually similar or inferior. Of course, those kind of crossbows were just as slow to load as muskets and far too expensive for a mass use weapon so never gained much popularity despite their superior "firepower".

And armour was still quite capable of protecting against musketfire.

Again i can use the Swedish army as an example, as its battles with Polish heavy cavalry(effectively knights) in the 16th century shows, muskets against knights is definitely NOT an automatically winning proposition. It was in fact more often than not a good way to loose badly and quickly unless you had pikemen very well lined up and ready to protect the musketeers.

Dilandu wrote:Really?

The musketeers army would just start to blast the enemy arba-repeaters formation from 200-250 meters, while the cross-repeaters would need to go at least to 100 meters to have any effect. During that, their number would decrease fast.

Now you´re talking myth not fact. Early firearms takes over 30 seconds even for an expert soldier to reload, over 2 MINUTES for a more average one.

At 250m, the effect of a musketvolley is going to be minimal. How far can you then advance in 2 minutes? I´m sure you can manage 75m. At which point the enemy can throw another ineffective volley at you.
Before they have reloaded again, they have an arrow from every crossbowman coming down on them every 1-2 seconds. At that point they´re sharkbait.
They may be able to get off another volley, but even at 100m, musketfire isn´t going to be all that effective on a per shot basis.
The fire from the crossbows is going to be even less effective. Per arrow. But they will fire at minimum 30 arrows per musketshot.

That is a lost battle.

And only an idiot general would ignore terrain and charge over an open field.
Or, like i already said as well, a bad situation.

Dilandu wrote:And even if the cross-repeaters would be able to close to 50-100 meters, they simply would not be able to do so much damage. Oh, they would shoot their bolts in fifteen second - but how many of them would hit the enemy in powder smoke of firearms battle even from 50 meters? And after they exaust their ammuition - what would they do after?

You realise that a crossbowman with a repeating crossbow will have several reloads with them? Each soldier will likely carry 60+ arrows, bundled in quick to load packets.

Again, the amount of damage done per arrow will be small, but 10 arrows will still likely do more damage than a single musketshot, and there will be 30-40 arrows per musketshot.

And you should also note that it was fairly common practise to make up for their low damage, by adding poison to the arrows.
They still penetrated enough to puncture the skin, even if they would not do much damage through armour.

And "what would they do after"? Uh, the same as those with muskets would? Early firearms had no more bayonets than crossbows had. The bayonet didn´t become common until mid-late 17th century.

And about powdersmoke? Eh you expect the musketeers to deal better with that even though THEY are the ones standing in the middle of it? And if there is smoke in between, well darnit, what kind of idiot general would not take the chance and maneuver unseen!

A smoke screen is actually a superb HELP for the crossbow soldiers, as they are already relying on large amounts of massed fire rather than aimed fire.

Personally i´d probably move the crossbow unit to either side or split them to the sides of where the musketeers are shooting.

But i don´t expect the musketeer general to be an idiot and put himself in such a position that the wind puts the smoke so that it blinds him.

SWM wrote:If you are cocking and firing it from the hip without lowering it, then it cannot possibly be as powerful as a short bow. A shortbow requires the strength of the shoulders to pull. Pulling back that lever at your hip will produce a fraction of the force used to pull a short bow, and over a much shorter distance.

You are not aware of what mechanical assistance can do to forces?

Please, you could make a crossbow with a loading mechanism like this that is at least 5 times the strength of a shortbow, by actually making it as heavy as a shortbow to load. Despite the LEVER interaction on the forces used.

Do check out just how much power you can get on a lever-loaded heavy crossbow of the more serious type. Hint, they can make the drawstrength of longbows look like toys.

SWM wrote:And firing from the hip like that would be no more accurate than an untrained gunman firing a pistol from the hip.

They usually had ways of aiming that were useful, so more accurate than "untrained gunman firing a pistol from the hip" for sure, but probably less than a "welltrained gunman firing a pistol from the hip".

Which of course wont matter all that much when you are effectively using a slowfiring machinegun.

SWM wrote:If it is fired the way you describe, it is useless for anything except short range suppression fire. The power, range, and accuracy are all way too low for anything else.

Effective range, 80-100m, max range 120+m(if you´re really good with high angle fire, you might be able to hit something at 200m).

If by short range you mean about 100m, sure. If not, then you´re wrong. Or forgetting that we´re not talking about individuals shooting at individuals, but ARMIES shooting at MASSED formations of soldiers.

SWM wrote:As an aside, I've seen archers with 80 pound recurve bows, and 18 inch draw, fire fifteen aimed arrows in thirty seconds--the same rate as your repeating crossbow.

Yes, but without the leveraction increasing your pull then the shooter needs the muscles for it. And how long time do you need to train to be able to do that repeatedly over the time of a battle?

The leveraction means you need only a fraction of the strength needed to use a bow with the same pull. It is also much easier to aim with a crossbow. With trained archers, obviously a good bow is vastly better by far.

But if you have 3-6 months to train a soldier? A repeating crossbow is then an excellent idea compared to a bow, if the recruit knows nothing of either.

Thucydides wrote:You should ask yourself why "wonder weapons" like repeating crossbows were not common.

The advantages like rate of fire were at a price of mechanical complexity, decreased range and limited penetrating power. There was an ancient mechanical repeating catapult as well, and a replica built by the Mythbusters showed the issues with such a device; it was complex to build and repeatedly failed during the test (mostly the loading mechanism jammed).

The "Infantry Revolution" was predicated on simple to use weapons that allowed peasants and unskilled labourers to be pressed into the ranks and fight effectively. Crossbows (simple crossbows, that is) had many defects compared to the longbow, but effective longbowmen were the result of a lifetime of training: the commander of a castle garrison could hand out crossbows to the cooks and mount an effective defense behind the walls. Pike squares had a similar genesis, and firearms were even simpler to put in the hands of untrained men.

Knights in Europe were not very happy with this state of affairs, but politically they could not stop this. The Japanese were more successful; firearms were an important part of establishing the Tokugawa shogunate, but once the Shogunate was secure, importation and making of firearms was severely restricted, lest the peasantry use them against highly trained Samurai warriors.

Overall, while wonder weapons might look good on paper, you need to look at the historical context, and also the practical effects (issues like reliability, range etc.) to realize why they never were adopted in the "real" world.

Finally someone who gets it.


Simple to use weapons that could be massproduced(without breaking the bank).

Although i have to note that while Mythbusters are fun and often good, they do NOT have centuries of knowledge behind them in the making of weapons.
I can almost guarantee, that if you gave them even just ONE year to tinker with the design, they could come up with something that was both reliable and very effective.

Also to be noted, repeating crossbows of the larger kind that were used as fixed or semi-fixed siegeweapons could be extremely effective. The pullstrength of a medium or heavy crossbow combined with a shot every 1-3 seconds is real nasty.

Their only serious drawback was the horribly fast degradation of the bowstring, even on regular repeating crossbows, the lever action was very rough on the string, but on those upsized ones, bowstrings would break really often, maybe as much as every few magazines of arrows.

And suitable bowstrings were not cheap.

Tenshinai wrote:

SWM wrote:If you are cocking and firing it from the hip without lowering it, then it cannot possibly be as powerful as a short bow. A shortbow requires the strength of the shoulders to pull. Pulling back that lever at your hip will produce a fraction of the force used to pull a short bow, and over a much shorter distance.

You are not aware of what mechanical assistance can do to forces?

Please, you could make a crossbow with a loading mechanism like this that is at least 5 times the strength of a shortbow, by actually making it as heavy as a shortbow to load. Despite the LEVER interaction on the forces used.

Do check out just how much power you can get on a lever-loaded heavy crossbow of the more serious type. Hint, they can make the drawstrength of longbows look like toys.

I have. I am an experienced archer, and have worked with a number of people who have built their own bows, arrows, and crossbows, including several who make and sell them. I do know what I am talking about, and you quite obviously do not. Those crossbows with levers that are more powerful than shortbows only work if you lower the bow and step in the stirrup at the end of the bow. Otherwise you simply cannot get enough mechanical energy into it. Which is why I suggested exactly that mechanism for a powerful repeating crossbow.

A short bow or long bow built for war requires the strength of the shoulders to pull. In addition, a typical archer would pull that bow through 18 inches or so. Stick out your left arm straight out from the shoulder to the left side, and turn your head to look down the arm. An archer would pull the bowstring from about the left elbow back to just under the ear. And that would be 80 pounds force or more for a warbow.

A repeating crossbow held at the hip cannot match that. First of all, without the strength of the shoulders, the archer could not possibly put as much force on the lever as he can put on a bowstring. Second of all, the arm of the repeating crossbow does not move through as much distance as a bowstring gets pulled. A bow is essentially a spring, and the energy stored in the spring (or bow) is the force times the distance pulled. A repeating crossbow has less force and less distance pulled, and thus has less energy.

SWM wrote:And firing from the hip like that would be no more accurate than an untrained gunman firing a pistol from the hip.

They usually had ways of aiming that were useful, so more accurate than "untrained gunman firing a pistol from the hip" for sure, but probably less than a "welltrained gunman firing a pistol from the hip".

Which of course wont matter all that much when you are effectively using a slowfiring machinegun.

SWM wrote:If it is fired the way you describe, it is useless for anything except short range suppression fire. The power, range, and accuracy are all way too low for anything else.

Effective range, 80-100m, max range 120+m(if you´re really good with high angle fire, you might be able to hit something at 200m).

If by short range you mean about 100m, sure. If not, then you´re wrong. Or forgetting that we´re not talking about individuals shooting at individuals, but ARMIES shooting at MASSED formations of soldiers.

SWM wrote:As an aside, I've seen archers with 80 pound recurve bows, and 18 inch draw, fire fifteen aimed arrows in thirty seconds--the same rate as your repeating crossbow.

Yes, but without the leveraction increasing your pull then the shooter needs the muscles for it. And how long time do you need to train to be able to do that repeatedly over the time of a battle?

The leveraction means you need only a fraction of the strength needed to use a bow with the same pull. It is also much easier to aim with a crossbow. With trained archers, obviously a good bow is vastly better by far.

But if you have 3-6 months to train a soldier? A repeating crossbow is then an excellent idea compared to a bow, if the recruit knows nothing of either.

You make much of the effect of the lever, and you are correct as far as you go. But you clearly do not understand how the lever works. Let us say that the lever gives a force multiplier of 6. Let us suppose that the hand pulls the end of the lever through 1 foot, pulling at 50 pounds. The lever pulls on the string at a force of 300 pounds--but it only pulls through a distance of 2 inches! You can calculate the energy stored in the string however you like--50 pounds times 1 foot gives 50 foot-pounds of energy, or 300 pounds at 2 inches gives 50 foot-pounds of energy. The lever gives an advantage to the force, but at the expense of the distance moved. The lever does not change the energy put into the system.