Talk:Bodkin point
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  Picture of the bodkin point needed |
Bodkin tipped arrows will penetrate plate armour by several inches at ranges anywhere up to 100 yards using an "average" longbow.
N Hotchkiss
Modern experiments demonstrating that these arrows will barely, or not at all, penetrate plate armour used a stationary target. In this scenario, the only force applied to the armour is that of the incoming arrow. In battle, however, the Knights wearing plate armour were moving forward at possibly 15 - 20 miles per hour. That speed, multiplied by the combined weight of the horse, rider and their armour, is a terrific force moving in one direction. Combine that force with the force of the arrow moving in the opposite direction, and you have a Total Force more than capable of penetrating the best French or Italian plate armour of the time. Therefore, these arrows, loosed from a standard Longbow, actually were the devastating weapons depicted in contemporary accounts of Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt.
This article could use a picture. The best examples I found were Hector Cole Arrow Heads and Hector Cole Type 9. They're lovely but copyrighted, although there should be examples from English museum collections somewhere. Maybe someone could ask Hector Cole himself if he would provide photos of his work under the GFDL that could be used with attribution. I don't have any experience with making such a request, but his site is Hector Cole Arrowsmith. --Quale 22:10, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Your physics if flawed. That the knight is a large heavy object moving forward doesn't add much to the equation. The speed only adds maybe 10% at best, and the problem isn't that the arrow doesn't have the energy to puncture the armour, it the design of a bobkin is wrong for the job. It is a long point of SOFT iron, these are NOT hardened steel (if they were, they would work well). This long soft shaft deforms on impact, and spreads its force out over a much larger area. Show me a modern test that 'proves' they could readily punch through armour, and you are either showing me cheap non period armour, or cheap non period arrows. Bodkins that would be used in war were most likely for the range, and somewhat simple means of production, and repairing them is also easier than a broad head. Any arrow that was used as an 'anti-armour' arrowhead would have taken a shape more of a modern field point. A very short point, that wouldn't bend and compress easily when hitting something. Reference to armour piercing should be changed to point out this hold over error.--Talroth 01:55, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
Maybe we can settle this argument by specifying meaning of "armour", particularly whether one means PLATE steel armour or CHAIN MAIL armour. A bodkin point (steel or iron), would be highly likely to penetrate chain mail, but any arrow, bodkin or broad head, hardened or not, was unlikely to penetrate decent PLATE armour, not least because it is unlikely to hit said plate at a perfect 90 degree angle. The bodkin will however find a gap in chain mail, independent of impact angle. What sorts of armour would be worn by the majority of of an oncoming army, particularly the foot soldiers? 125.239.189.172 02:00, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
- As I note below in the armour penetration section, bodkins will not penetrate mail armour. This conclusion is based upon tests conducted by the Royal Armoury at Leeds and also upon contemporary accounts. For instance Anna Comnena, Byzantine historian, comments that the Crusaders attacking Constantinople are invulnerable to arrows. She notes that some crusaders had as many as ten arrows sticking out of them and were unfazed by it. There are simply no contemporary accounts of arrows killing bunches of people. Individuals here and there? Without a doubt; even the best armour sometimes fails (especially given the level of QC available at the time). But there is simply no evidence, literary or experimental to support the assertion that bodkins regularly penetrated any kind of armour.
- It is simply not reasonable to assert that bodkins were armour piercing points. There are contemporary examples of armour piercing points, on lances and swords, so the Medieval smiths clearly knew how to make such a weapon. But the bodkin is nothing like a sword point. The sword point is hardened steel. The bodkin is soft iron. The sword point flares continuously outward from the point to buttress the point. The bodkin has a narrowed shank where it can bend or fail on impact.
- The burden of proof falls upon those who assert that the arrows were frequently lethal to armoured soldiers. In any armour. Mercutio.Wilder 02:15, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
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[edit] English arrows or mud?
English arrows or mud? I believe I saw a show on the History Channel which reviewed this battle. They did a study with the long bow and arrows used against french knights. Their study showed that the iron tipped arrows didn't penetrate the french steel plate armour. Instead their study showed it was the "sticky" mud on the battle field which slowed the knights and eventually falling them. The mud would stick to the surfaces of the armour where as "clothed" light armed troops which had no problems killing French nobles did not get stuck in the mud as bad. They were able to use daggers and such to stab the fallen knights in the arm pits, eye slits, and etc. So the study showed it was mud and not english arrows which defeated the charge.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Battle_of_Cr%C3%A9cy"
Are you talking about Crecy or Agincourt? It makes a difference, as plate armour technology did move on in the intervening years. Also, even though I would accept that by Agincourt, longbows had trouble penetrating plate armour, it seems wrong to ignore the effect of thousands of archers firing tens of thousands of arrows, some of which would surely find weak spots in armour, or wound less well protected soldiers, or kill horses, or knock people down. Approximately 80% of the English army at Agincourt was longbowmen, and the English were probably outnumbered 3-1; so if longbowmen were utterly useless, how on earth did the English manage to win the battle?
--Merlinme 20:27, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
Although the English army had roughly 80% longbowmen, they were still assumed to have daggers, mauls and other melee weapons. The documentary made an assumption that the french knights were most likely de-mounted enmasse rather then penetrated by the bodkin arrows. Following this, it also assumed that they got stuck in the mud (or slowed by it), as mud apparently 'sucks' harder on steel surfaces. The longbowmen, being dressed in cloth or leather armor, were much more maneuverable in this environment and outnumbered the encumbered knights. It takes little imagination to assume that the longbowmen proceeded to stab and/or capture the knights (which at the time often yielded instead of fighting to the death, hoping that they would be ransomed home). If I remember right, most of the knights died AFTER the battle, where the English army was ordered to execute all the prisoners they had taken. Hope this clears a few things up. Sybaronde 19:29, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
To back up what Sybaronde has said, the air tight metal boots, greaves, had the same effect as a rubber boot getting stuck in bog mud. Cloth shoes can simply be pulled out, rubber needs to be angled to remove the suction. Also, take into account that the battle (Agincourt) lasted hours, not the minutes it would take to get the arrows off (lets be generous and say archers had 100 arrows a piece, many documents state they can get off 6 arrows a minute, that means that the battle, if it were down to arrows should have lasted about twenty minutes.) Now, these Frenchmen were advancing through hard terrain, under heavy arrow fire, wet and cold, and then they come up upon an army of peasants. Now, this should seem like the French would have the advantage, but, the French attacked the English center, where the men-at-arms, the knights and the King were. At this point, the English would have fell in upon both sides of the French, as archers were arrayed on the flanks. Add to this that Henry forbade his soldiers to take prisoners until the battle was clearly theirs, and the French soldiers are going to be pretty scared, and so it is no real surprise that they then routed. Then, the English knights returned to their horses, which were fresh as they had not been used in the battle and pursued the French. This explains the heavy French casualties, and their rapid rout. Gculk 17:52 16 December 2007
[edit] Sewing bodkin
In sewing a Bodkin is a rod, traditionally of ivory or bone, tapering smoothly to a point. It is used to make eyelet holes in cloth without cutting.--Saxophobia 01:23, 7 August 2006 (UTC) Also a small steel rod with an eyelet allowing it to be used for threading elastic or ribbon through a hem.
[edit] Armour penetration?
The bodkin point was most likely not for armour penetration and besides mail armour has been shown to stand up to any contemporary weapon (see Talk:Mail_(armour)#Arrow_resistance). The only exception being arrows fired at very short ranges (such as < 30m). Bodkins were soft iron and broadheads were hardened steel. Mercutio.Wilder 08:02, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
In a thread myArmoury Dan Howard quotes a personal correspondence with a researcher at the RA on bodkin vs. broadhead.
As a metallurgist this is a question which interests me greatly. Some early studies were done by Peter Pratt and Peter Jones, involving a current member of RA staff but before he joined us. Some of these experiments are recorded in an appendix to Robert Hardy's book. However I have been concerned that the published version of these experiments used heat-treated steel bodkin points, for which we have no evidence. By contrast it would appear that other types of arrowheads: the compact tanged and barbed (London Museums Type 16), did indeed have steel edges/points welded to them and these were quenched and tempered. The metallurgical work is in progress but some of the information is due to be published by Ashgate in a collection of papers from the International Medieval congress, Kalamazoo (The volume will be titled de re Metallica). Unfortunately I haven't seen any results on the testing of such weapons. Hope this helps, David Starley PhD Science Officer Royal Armouries Museum Conservation Department So it wasn't bodkins that were hardened, but compact broadheads. Consider the following: 1. Many sources acknowledge that hardened steel arrowheads stood a greater chance of punching through armour than soft wrought iron. Yet, according to Dr Starley, the majority of hardened arrowheads found are not of a bodkin typology but of a compact broadhead typology - e.g. MoL Catalogue Type 16. Virtually all bodkins so far examined have turned out to be unhardened. 2. If you fire a bodkin type arrowhead and a broadhead arrow weighing the same weight from the same bow, the bodkin constantly outranges the broadhead. 3. Sir John Smythe recommended a fourth of each sheaf be flight arrows to "gall" the enemy at range. This is similar to the ratio of broadheads to bodkins found on the Mary Rose. All this suggests to me that the compact broadhead was intended to be used against armour at shorter ranges and the bodkins were intended to be used on the flight arrows described by Smythe.
Mercutio.Wilder 08:53, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Longbow vs Crossbow
The crossbow article and all scholarship I've seen indicates that the crossbow was more powerful than the longbow. Mercutio.Wilder 23:46, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
