Lonbow vs. Crossbow

I root for the longbow. They were wicked against the French in the Hundred Years War.

I'd say the battle for Crecy answers that question. Crossbows tended to have more punch and ranch than a longbow may have had, but the difference maker lies more in the rate of fire. An English longbowman was expected to be able to fire six well-aimed shots in a minute. That rate of fire is easily beyond the rate of any useful crossbow of the era. At Crecy the English fielded about 5000 archers. That's roughly 30,000 arrows per minute, which is more than enough to make up for the difference in piercing. As a result the English archers dominated the Genoese Crossbowmen.

My vote is for the longbow: an excellent combination of piercing power, range and rate of fire.

I agree. The longbow remained a staple of English forces until the gunpowder-era. if the crossbow was more effective, it was have succeeded the longbow before firearms. And how odd those battles must have been; an unceasing hail of arrows accompanied by the earth-shattering roar of bombards... a fellow couldn't get a break against those bloody English!
Although, by the 1500's, and definitely by the 1600's, the longbow was phased out by the far-less efficient muskets/harbequeses... a strange phenomena. Perhaps the increased amount of armor worn by  the common foot soldier (steel breastplate and steel helmet, largely); but Ben Franklin stated that had the colonials used longbows instead of rifles they could have won the Revolutionary war far earlier, and I see some sense in this; higher rate of fire than any musket (by a long shot!), greater accuracy, greater range, enemy troops wearing no armor... makes sense, I figure.
Cheers

Both are bad. My vote goes for composite bow, of course  (but it's not on the list)  

Originally posted by Sarmat12 Both are bad. My vote goes for composite bow, of course  (but it's not on the list)

dude we can't all have the composite bow


I vote for teh long bow


I wonder what would happen if you made a composite bow same size as a long bow

Recently saw on the history channel (what else is new, eh?) a comparison between the longbow and composite, hunnish, bow. Both were models. Some type of speedometer thing timed the arrows. The Hun bow was faster by a few mph. To top it off the narrator also explained that his model was, most likely, not be as powerful as the real thing.

Originally posted by Paul OK there two blokes in heavy platemail running at you.   If you have a crossbow, you shoot one, hope he's either wounded or dead, you then drop the crossbow and run like crap from the other.   If you have a longbow, you shoot the one on the left half a dozen times, then the one on the right half a dozen times. hope they're both wounded or dead, otherwise drop the bow and run like crap.   If you have a composite bow, you just drop the bow and run like crap.

Edited by Illirac - 13-Nov-2007 at 16:41

Originally posted by Illirac the problem of the longbow is that the soldiers were traind from when they were young and it was hard to replace them...insted the crossbow could be used by a farmer and could kill anyone

Could but they were not.

Crossbowmen were typically professional mercenaries with high pay. They usually could afford to have two assistants or apprentices and several crossbows. The assistants would reload and carry the pavise and other supplies leaving the crossbowman to do the actual shooting.

Military crossbows - the ones that could equal or exceed the longbow in penetration power - were expensive and limited by the number of craftsmen with the mechanical skills to create the winching mechanisms used to draw the prod.

Typical crossbows, used for hunting etc, had a simple drawing mechanism consisting of a stirrup at the end of a crossbow and a hook used to draw. They could not achieve the same penetrative power as longbows without a winch. The prod is very short, usually around two to three feet, and cannot release energy as efficiently as a six foot staff. A winch overcomes this problem by a vastly greater input of force into the draw, but without a windlass mechanism of some sort, a crossbow does not have the penetration of a longbow.

For instance, a crossbow that pulls 200lbs actually only imparts as much force to its shot as a longbow that pulls 80lbs. In the period in which Crecy was fought, crossbows averaged around 100-120 lbs draw, while longbows averaged 80-120 lbs. By the time of Cortes' conquest of Mexico, steel arbalests could achieve 5000lbs of draw! But they hadn't been invented in the time of the Battle of Crecy.

In that era, crossbows' main advantages over the longbow were not penetration or range, but the fact that they could be kept cocked without any exertion on the shooter's part. This meant they were ideally suited for sniping during sieges, but they were not very useful in field battles.

Edited by edgewaters - 13-Nov-2007 at 17:47

I think you guys are confusing recurve bows with composite bows. Composite bows are just any bows made with composite materials. Many types of composite bows are inferior to self-staff bows, and composite bows were widely used in Europe prior to the appearance of the longbow. Recurve bows are a different thing altogether. Most of them happened to be composite, but composite bows are not necessarily recurve.

i vote for the crossbow for the same reason i would prefer muskets over bows. as for Pauls comparison, well out of the three the composite bow is the fastest and in terms of penetration ranks between crossbow and longbow. the only advantage of the longbow is the long range and rate of fire (compared to x-bow). the longbow only prooved deadly against unarmoured or mail-clad opponents. the hail of arrows is like a rain of razor blades. the longbow has no decent penetration power, at least on short distances.