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Well, this is going to bug me for the rest of my life.
Thanks.
Leithio i philinn!
Using modern english phrases to convey meaning to modern audiences is usually fine to me, as long as they don’t reference modern history or events. but what really pisses me off is movies like “The Great Gatsby” that take place during the 1920s and have JayZ and Lana del ray playing at a rich person’s party
Yeah, We Will Rock you wouldn’t have even been written during A Knights Tale, so unrealistic.
They owned it though in Knight’s Tale…
RoMeO aNd JuLiEt WaSn’T sEt iN CaLiFoRnIa
u rn
I never gave it a single thought. But now I have been cursed with this knowledge and will fly into a fury every time I hear it now.
But thanks anyway.
Correct term was probably “loose!”
Nobody was holding a ~90lb war bow at full draw waiting to hear “Loose”. Not possible.
Speaking of English longbow, the draw force could be a lot higher too, going upwardsof 130lb, and they were expected to shoot up to 70 arrows a battle at a rate of 6 per minute (at best).
I don’t think they’d struggle to hold an arrow for the initial volley, although I don’t expect they’d be drawn for as long as shown in movies to increase tension.
The slang term was “Fart in their general direction!”
They also aren’t speaking Gaelic.
Given the fact that any language used in such a movie is going to be wildly unlike the language spoken in the time and place of the movie, I think that’s a mild anachronism
Old English / Norman French etc would be practically incomprehensible to anybody.
There was an interesting TV show called Barbarians a few years ago where all the Romans spoke Latin but with Italian accents but they had the Germanic barbarians speaking modern German. Not sure if that would please anybody.
Yeah, or a sequence of “nock, draw, fire/loose/shoot” commands. Warbows cannot be held that long ffs.
More likely they didn’t shoot in volleys at all. When you can only hold the bow for a second or two even with lifelong training you can’t really have volleys.
Longbow maybe not but shortbow, recurve, etc can be held for a while if you’re willing to sacrifice accuracy.
How far apart does a group shot of arrows have to be before it’s considered separate shots v a volley?
We can have a rain of arrows then, right?
They wouldn’t shoot arrows up into the air, like in movies, because then you lose all the power of the arrow. They would be fired as direct as possible to give the arrow the most speed and thus the highest chance of piercing armour.
So, it wpuld be a drizzle of arrows then
Depends how far away the target is. Done some long range shooting before and sometimes you really do shoot up in the air because unless you aim up at 30-45° the arrow isn’t going to go far enough.
Yes, hence the “as possible”. I just mean, they wouldn’t fire into the air like they do in movies at like 70+ degrees.
You’d be shooting around 40-50 degrees for a 250yd shot. You want the best ballistic trajectory you can without sacrificing distance. Arrows, like bullets, travel in an arc so while they wouldn’t shoot directly up they would shoot at a fairly high angle for anything past 50 yds or so.
Last time I checked, rain drops didn’t come in volleys.
But, well, that was weeks ago, maybe it changed.
Yesterday they certainly did
Storm bands go brrrr
Yeah, that’s a point I tried to make, sorry for not being precise enough.
Why not? It just won’t be as tight as in movies
Here’s a great video of a well-trained longbowman shooting 160 and 210lb longbows (jump to 8 minutes). There is zero chance he’s “holding” the draw.
Same. Also hate when character says “touch and go” in pieces before airplanes
Why? Touch and go is a maritime term recorded back in the 16th century, for the keel touching the seabed briefly without running aground.
I have been lied to?!?
Immersion restored.
Thanks !
soulsLikeScreenshotImmersionRestored.meme
This is known as the Tiffany problem.
wait actually?
They messed this up in the first season of wheel of time, but they got better in the latest
I’ve read that the TV show was an abomination. Is it any good?
WoT can have anachronistic words since the 3rd Age, which the series is set in, is a regression from a high tech age. They could have carried the word over from having some form of ter’angreal gun.
Yea that absolutely makes sense, but if I remember right Robert Jordan did stick to loose in his battles. Idk, how much you have read but I believe that is what the “shocklances” are supposed to be in the scenes we get from the third age
Or that they’re holding the bow drawn for a long period of time, waiting for the order to “fire”.
Long bows averaged a 200lb draw weight. Try holding that for 5 minutes.
I know that modern bows with the radial cam thing have different hold vs draw requirements.
Not being a bow-knower, do the other sorts (long, recurve, etc.) Not have a similar thing that can happen?
Short answer: no, they don’t.
Modern compound bows use that cam to lessen the power needed to hold.
Older bows are like holding a spring extended, the further back, the greater the force needed.By modern I take it you mean compound bows. No other types of bow have that. The force you need to pull back is at its maximum when at full draw. The exact scale of 0-100% through the draw varies with different bow designs, material and even age as it can permanently deform with repeated use.
I mean, this depends heavily on the type of bow used (which is also largely the source of confusion) it’s common for archers who aren’t medieval war longbow archers to draw then aim because it’s a lot easier to do. And lower draw weight bows certainly did see use in war until plate armor became common enough to make them nearly useless in warfare.
Archers of the day:
Literally - you can pick out English longbowman bodies from the shape of their skeletons
Now I’m imagining a swole skeleton with buff bones
It’s mostly their twisted spine, as far as I’m aware.
I believe there are spurs to one side and right sided increases in density. But that article was a decade ago.
You just have to ruin everything, don’t you?
I “fire” traditional recurve bows and honestly it ends up being a lot of core, back, and your front side shoulder, but this image is funnier.
I guess also another thing that gets me is when they are fire from the hip, with no anchor point. You draw back the bow to the same spot every time, then move your bow hand to aim. Radically changing how you draw, while hitting precision shots at varying range is like John Whicking archery, but nearly everyone with a bow in movies can do it. And they almost never wear gloves on a bow that has to be hundreds of pounds of draw to go through armor. How are your fingers not worn to bone?
Also arrows are pretty custom depending on draw weight, tip weight, draw length, and there are various types. Where do these perfect arrows you need all come from, hrmmm Legolas?
I am now realizing I took this meme way too seriously, but I’ve already typed it up, so here we are.
Keep going I’m almost there.
I’m very into it
I never blamed the archer on the walls of Helms Deep. Waiting for the enemy to get all the way up to your walls was dumb enough, but waiting while having drawn your bow for what must’ve felt like ages for a human archer, is fucking rediculous. Terrible leadership.
You don’t want your archers to be excausted before the battle even starts, just so you can look really unbothered on top of your wall.
I admire you for holding the archery in LOTR to a high standard of realism even when the films feature a giant flying and levitating eye.
Fiction only really works when it takes itself seriously. If they just don’t follow any rules or logic then you know there’s no reason to care about what’s happening, because the author didn’t. In LotR the archery follows the logic from out world. Yes, there’s also magic and stuff, which all follows consistent rules in the universe. The magic does not effect the rules of archery. Maybe elves can be more agile with their bows, but it should still be grounded in the rules of their universe.
It’s a fantasy world, but archery there still works just like in real life.
Versimilitude is important. Self consistency. Just because you introduce one unrealistic element doesn’t mean everything else that is unrelated to it should be thrown out the window, too. The existence of a magical evil spirit entity doesn’t change how nonmagical humans would interact with everyday physics.
I agree, but it’s obviously done for the tension in the movie. It wouldn’t be as exciting, if the archers were just chillin’ while the Uruk-hai were charging. 😄
Sure, but you have to keep modern audiences in mind when making these films.
Props to the movies that shout the “Loose!” command
As I understand it, that’s still not very historically accurate. It was not really a thing for archers to nock and loose together like they do in the movies.
Actually, it worked pretty much exactly this way in the first stages of battle.
In the opening moves of a medieval battle, archers were essentially like the “creeping fire” that they used in World War 1; it’s purpose is to keep the enemy immobile behind their shields and unable to advance as fast as they would like. Your army can’t rush to take an advantageous position if they’re constantly having to stop and hide under their shields.
In WW1, in the Somme especially, the artillery would lay down what they called “creeping fire” to keep the enemy huddled in their trenches while their own soldiers advance behind the wall of firepower. Archers basically played the same role.
I’m imagining a teenage Henry Horne reading about longbow tactics and thinking “damn that’s pretty sweet” and then suddenly remembering it at the Somme and being like “awww yiss I’m about to blow these motherfuckers minds”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volley_fire Y’all really just make stuff up without even checking wikipedia huh? It wasn’t typically used in medieval Europe for bows beyond the initial volley, though of course initial volleys were still a thing. You didn’t just have elements of archer formations fire whenever they decided the range seemed right.
I made this comment in passing and prefaced with “as I understand it.” Always happy to be corrected.
You’re misunderstanding. War bows can’t be held, the bow is way too heavy to allow you to hold an arrow and loose it at will; drawing and loosing are two actions of a singular movement.
Volleys were used, but the similarity with the way they’re used with firearms only exists in the use of crossbows, which were invented specifically because they allow to draw and shoot in two motions (and also they require virtually no training compared to war bows)
I followed the cited source for the wikipedia claim, and it’s just a guy writing a paper and saying his opinion. He’s not citing anything deeper to cover his claim about an initial volley followed by targetting individual solders. Just because it’s in a paper doesn’t mean it’s right, or even well-researched.
Sure, it FEELS right, and that does have weight with living history and experimental archeology, but I worry that “feeling” is the only thing anyone is actually citing in this whole conversation, including Wikipedia.
Never really made sense to me, loose all the arrows at once and then give a break between volleys? Gives everyone a chance to hide behind their shield, and then advance when it’s clear. Unless volleys are perfectly timed between multiple rows of archers.
Random arrows flying constantly never gives the enemy a chance to feel safe since it’s a constant barrage, and there’s no wasted time for the archers needing to wait for the command to fire.
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I have shot a longbow, you can be pretty accurate given the target is a large group of people. Sure, I can’t realistically hit that guy there with the red hat. But I can probably got one of the guys near him.
If all the guys have armor and shields, the chances of hitting anyone in a spot that matters is a lot snaller
Well yeah, this is why you shoot more than 1 arrow.
Yeah, real warfare isn’t a good spectator sport. It’s chaotic, difficult to understand what’s going on, things take way longer or way shorter to happen than would make sense for a film, and it’s nothing like the orderly battles shown to us by Hollywood. The fog of war is a real thing. But that’s why they do it, because if they did it realistically it wouldn’t be very fun to watch.
Except if the movie is an anti-war one.
Yes indeed. Generation Kill is the only thing I’ve seen that got close to reality. I was in a unit that did exactly what was shown in that show, and for the most part they nailed it. They showed the confusion, stupid orders, lack of proper communication, the constant fatigue, and the crazy shit that just happens out of nowhere when you have a bunch of 18-20 year old testosterone rage machines running around with serious hardware.
This makes me want a chaotic locked wide shot of a old battle for at least a minute, to take it in
That’s why I use a staff and just unleash a huge lightning strike to destroy my enemies
That’s what a hammer is for, nerd.
I prefer a spear and magic helmet.
Always a classic as well.
Why not both?
Quite right and why make your fastest, best archers wait for your slowest ones?
Maybe, but each archer will only be able to have so many arrows. What good is an archer if he only had 20 arrows and fired them all, already? If command thinks they’ll need archer support for more strategic things, they may not want them firing off as many as they can quickly, even if the archer believes each arrow will hit its mark.
Archers were strategic weapons, not the main crux of killilng. They were used to do things like keeping an enemy division pinned down so that your cavalry can move around them or one of your own divisions can reach a more advantageous position. A well placed concentrated barrage could force an enemy to move in a direction that is more advantageous to you, etc…
They weren’t the primary means of killing people. They were the means of steering the battle where the general wanted it to go.
That’s an oversimplification. Skilled archers, especially in numbers, are a force to be reckoned with. For example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Agincourt
Or think of horse archers. The mongols used them to great effect, and the Romans lost 7 legions against them, despite their testudo supposedly being next to invincible against projectiles
Volleys do have their place, but mostly as a way to open the battle, and at long range. You are correct that that can often be used to provide breathing room for troop movement. However, once the fighting starts, archers usually start picking individual targets and fire at will
Yes. There’s no doubt that the English longbows were a force to themselves. They were lethal in piercing armour but they were still used in generally the same manner. To open up the battle by forcing the enemy to take a defensive stance and “thinning the herd” (so to speak) before your own infantry engages their forces.
Once the infantry engaged however, you didn’t want to be raining down arrows on your own men and so the purpose of the archers largely changes to a completely different purpose; controlling the flow of battle with strategic use of volleys.
And yes…the Mongols changed everything with their horse archers. There’s a reason a good part of the population is descended from Genghis Khan…
“But I came here to win :(”
What would the order (in the language of the day) have been, something as simple as “archers” or “archers, release”? “Release arrows?”
“Archers make ready” meaning they place the arrow in the bow but do draw, and possibly aim, might make sense.
I’ve heard release used in films so it is probably wrong too :P
We might never know, but they probably didn’t even do these commands anyway, it doesn’t make sense when you think about it. There would likely have just be a command to begin the attack and then each archer would loose arrows repeatedly at any target they thought they could hit.
It would be silly to make your fastest archers wait for the slowest ones.
Archers weren’t always on top of a wall. There might have been friendly infantry in front of them, and the archers firing above them into an advancing foe. You’d want someone who can see the range giving the order to ‘loose’ when the range was right, and then you’ll want to make sure they stop shooting so they don’t hit your own side. Can’t have the archers firing at everything that moves all the time.
You can aim your own bow, don’t need a spotter to range for you. I would assume it’s situational, start/stop shooting while individual volley commands may have existed they wouldn’t have been used as often.
No clue how accurate it is but I have heard some films use something like. Archers, Loose. In place as in let the bow string loose.
Nock, aim, loose
