Leather Armor? (NO HOLDS BARRED!!)

[tlclark]

Again, assumptions and methodologies are everything.

let's do a thought experiment.

let's get a piece of plate armor and stipulate that it is of the highest quality for any given period.

Let's then shoot 1000 arrows at it, from every possible direction, angle and distance.

Let's then say that only 10 arrows penetrate the plate.

That's only a 1% success rate.

So therefore the plate is a success and we can declare arrows ineffective against plate correct?

Not necessarily. I've mentioned this before, but my brother used to design precision guided munitions. Many of his bombs were utlized for the first Gulf War. In the aftermath of the war action reports indicated that rougly 80% of all precision guided munitions missed their targets. At the time it was a minor public scandal. HOW could our weapons be so off! Back at the base, the engineers were popping champagne corks however. That was much better than they had predicted. Engineers expect a high failure rate, but compensated by VOLUME.

Let's go back to our hypothetical test which on first appearance seemed to show how good plate was.

Now consider it from a different perspective. How much would 1000 arrows cost compared to one set of plate armor? Even if the success rate was as low as 1%, It might still be a more effective strategy to outfit 1000 archers or 1000 pikemen than 100 knights. Longbows and arrows are much cheaper AND could be more effective that fielding a group of knights.

We employed just this same strategy in WWII. The German Tiger was the most advanced tank of the age, we cranked out 4 Shermans for every Tiger however, and despite it's smaller armament, range and firepower, 4 to 1 was pretty good odds.

Now whether this was a factor at Agincourt, I have no idea, but it relates to the whole question of leather armor. Our assumptions dictate how we interpret the evidence or experiments we make, but our assumptions could be totally wrong.

I think the assumptions that people have about leather armor are totally arbitrary or contemporary. Given that the evidence suggests leather armor, let's not try to shoehorn our assumptions into the evidence.

Travis