How effective were slings against armored infantry?????

[hoplite14gr]

Probably Xenofon did not convert hoplites but peltasts.
Sergio I suggest you do research on the psiloi troops threads.
You will be surprised how tough and resilient light troops are epsially with terrain or fortification advantage.

Light troops are unapreciated and underplayed i most wargames and the public gets a distorted idea about them.
Kind regards

[Mithras]

I rarelt sling my lead bullets, but I sling ALOT of stones on the beach. I can tell you that chalk pebbles slung with great force about 60m (around 80 mph I've heard) explode into fragments when hitting another rock.

Slings are fantastic. Harder to gain accuracy with I grant you. But I can sling 100m to hit an area 6-10m across in a great ac so that the stones come into the target from directly above. Or I can sling at closer ranges, 60+ m at a great velocity in a flat trajecectory at eye level.

Love the sling

[M. Demetrius]

how did the ancients know that friction through the air generated heat?

By being on the receiving end, I'd expect. They couldn't pick up lead that was very hot, their fingers felt pain, like anybody else, and if it were very hot, it would damage the fibers in the sling pocket. If they got hot, it would be by friction with the air.

[Muzzaguchi]

Doh! It shows you have been here a long time when you repeat yourself (almost exactly) without even realising it.

I think someone was perhaps pulling Onasander's leg or that if you had lead bullets in the hot sun on the battlefield they could be very hot in their pouches and when they hit the enemy they would remain hot and so (using Herodotean rationalisation) this heat may have been explained by their flight.

Cheers

Murray

[P. Clodius Secundus]

Or to keep cavalry at bay.... or prevent archers from massing...

Lofted volleys could possibly keep a wall rampart clear while a unit advanced on it.

Lots of uses.

Add to that "keeping catapults from being deployed without at least a sturdy battleplate." Of course, if some advancement in catapult design allowed significantly greater rage than even massed slingers could achieve, then they might have been able to deploy them from the back of carts pulled by unprotected mules and return the favor. Masses of un armored slingers would make a juicy (literally) target for a 3-span bolt. Kebabs anyone????

[NeoSpartan]

Probably Xenofon did not convert hoplites but peltasts.
Sergio I suggest you do research on the psiloi troops threads.
You will be surprised how tough and resilient light troops are epsially with terrain or fortification advantage.

Light troops are unapreciated and underplayed i most wargames and the public gets a distorted idea about them.
Kind regards

thanks for the heads up... I'll check it out too.

[TITVS SABATINVS AQVILIVS]

To go deeper: The Physics of The Sling by George Alsatian

http://slinging.org/29.html

Apparently there are several authors who attest to the heating of lead via its flight through the air (Lucretius 6.306f and Ovid Metamorphoses 2.72ff and 14.825) (translation and observations from the Loeb

If so, can anyone tell me if the Ancients discovered the concept of heating through air-friction of not previously heated solids just empirically, by means of experiments, or what? The same old aliens' hint?

Valete,

[M. Demetrius]

There's nothing to discover and plan for. Think of it in the other direction. Somebody slung a bullet. It got hot due to relatively high speed and friction with the air. Someone said, "Hmm. How about that? Who'd have thunk it?" I don't think they'd quite nailed down the equations for thermal coefficients or anything like that.

They just used lead because it was available, really heavy, and easy to mold into things. They also used ceramics, and unfired clay, as well as rocks of appropriate sizes.

[geala]

I like the sling and I'm sorry to play again the bad boy but I have great doubts about the effectiveness of slings against armoured opponents.

First I would like to link this, it contains a few considerations of mine: http://www.romanarmy.com/rat/viewtopic. ... c&start=40

Sling bullets travel at a very low speed. The speed is roughly the same as that of arrows. I doubt that any significant heating can be achieved at velocities of about 50 m/s to 70 m/s; if so it has nothing to do with the weapons performance as hot bullets are no better penetrators. As blunt trauma effects are mentioned: modern aramid vests are also effective without shock absorbing devices. This against bullets which travel with velocities up to 400 m/s and have energies of 500 to 700 Joule. The hit may hurt like hell (if a person in a fight, full of adrenaline, feels the pain) but permanent injuries are the exception. Reportedly (I am not so comfortable with the source, the book "From Sumer to Rome") the US Army assumes an energy of about 800 Joule necessary to wound a soldier through the US kevlar helmet. The ancient helmets were of course far worse in performance but faced also only low energy threats.

The energy and momentum of sling bullets equals more or less that of arrows and javelins. The energy is so low (50 to 150 Joule, depending on the authors thoughts about sling bullet velocity) that severe wounds through armour are not to be expected. That a glandes could crash a scutum is highly unlikely; every javelin would have done the same then.

Except some more or less peculiar and anectodic reports from the ancient times (like that of the hot bullets penetration) I know only one incident when slingers seemed to be decisive against armour, at the battle of Eknomos 311 BC. The Balearic slingers are said to have used very heavy stones (a mnai weight), so perhaps they were really able to crush some aspides and helmets.

I have no data at hand but I remember that when numbers were given in the sources often the slingers were less frequent than archers. "Thousands of slingers" in any case are highly unlikely (at Eknomos 1000 Balearic slinger are mentioned afaik). May it be just for the reason that they would need a huge space to be deployed.

Of course sling bullets were effective against unarmoured parts of the body but were not a secret mass destruction weapon against armoured and/or shielded heavy infantry.

[Dan Howard]

I agree. The effectiveness of any missile against armour is over rated. People forget that the majority of any infantry soldier is unarmoured. There are plenty of fleshy targets even on the most heavily armoured hoplite or legionary.