A lot of people in the middle of the Bell Curve on this one
by PinguinGirl03
A lot of people in the middle of the Bell Curve on this one
by PinguinGirl03
31 Comments
This one is a pet peeve of me, so many people completely miss the boat on this one. One thing that is repeated again and again is that the main reason guns overtook bows is that guns were easier logistically and in training time despite guns somehow being worse weapons in terms of accuracy and range. The thing is that that is complete bollocks.
In actuality all sources of the time state that guns were superior in terms of range, accuracy and penetration and that this is the main reason they were preferred:
[https://bowvsmusket.com/2017/05/13/bows-didnt-outrange-muskets/](https://bowvsmusket.com/2017/05/13/bows-didnt-outrange-muskets/)
The inaccuracy of muskets is overstated. These are late muskets, but civil war comparisons between smoothbore muskets and rifled muskets showed that a smoothbore hit 74% of the time at 100 yards and 14% at 300 yards compared to 97% at 100 yards and 46% for the rifled musket. This means that even at 300 yards a volley of musket fire has a serious chance of inflicting casualties. (Practical battlefield accuracy is a different matter because of battlefield stress and a lot of troops having poor training)
[https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/iusburj/article/view/19841/25918](https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/iusburj/article/view/19841/25918)
Smoothbore firing accuracy demonstration:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfHJjcKyDYE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfHJjcKyDYE)
People also misunderstand the reason why smoothbore guns are inaccurate, it has nothing to do with “bouncing around the barrel, smoothbore guns are inaccurate because they bullet develops random spin in the barrel which causes the Magnus effect to alter the trajectory of the bullet. bullets from rifles spin in the axis perpendicular to the direction of travel, causing the Magnus effect to not alter the trajectory:
[https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/mcr/article/view/17669/22312](https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/mcr/article/view/17669/22312)
Training was a minor consideration, partly because peasant populations were already trained with bows anyway and they could do this in their free time. In fact early matchlocks were very dangerous to use for untrained troops and manouevres were more complex. In fact professional troops already trained on bows preferred muskets. One example is the Japanese during their invasion of Korea in 1592 where the Samurai requested to stop sending bows because they were useless and only send firearms:
>At first, King Sonjo and his officials and military commanders did not realize the importance of muskets, the major weapon of the Japanese army. That is why the king simply ordered the musket presented by the Japanese envoy to be put away in the state armory. A few years later, however, King Sonjo’s view of the new weapon radically changed. When Minister Kim Ungnam said that bows were superior to muskets in power, the king tried to correct him with this comment: ‘The power of muskets is five times greater than arrows’.
>The officer rode on a horse, and two soldiers from the post station walked by him slowly, holding the bridle of the horse. Hiding in ambush under the bridge, Japanese soldiers with muskets shot down the officer from his horse and cut off his head and ran off with it. Upon seeing this, our soldiers lost all their fighting spirit.
>After a short while a number of enemy soldiers suddenly emerged and started attacking us with ten or more muskets. The ones hit by the bullets were killed instantly. Yi immediately ordered the archers to counterattack using their bows, but their arrows fell far short of their target.
[https://bowvsmusket.com/2016/02/29/bows-vs-muskets-in-the-imjin-war-part-1/](https://bowvsmusket.com/2016/02/29/bows-vs-muskets-in-the-imjin-war-part-1/)
Where is this “a lot” of people, because I’ve never met a lot of them.
Guns were both better AND more logistically sound. Both making arrows and becoming good with a bow are time intensive endeavors. You can pump out bullets much easier and any moron can use a rifle somewhat effectively after like an hour of training. Though you certainly want more if you have the time.
Who has said this?
People in the middle don’t realize how difficult shooting a bow really is lol.
As long as supply chains keep chugging along, sure. Otherwise one can make a bow out of the woods.
The incredibly brief period of longbow ascendancy had far too great of an effect on the English National psyche and nobody even wants to acknowledge how much Crecy and Agincourt also relied on terrible French strategy
“better” is a pretty vague term – better at what?
There was certainly a period of time during which archers had some serious advantages that handgunners did not.
But the benefits of guns became greater over the years and the drawbacks became fewer so they became increasingly more appealing.
The more modern version of this meme is the low and high end of the bell curve as the use of air to air missiles in air combat and the middle as the use of guns/cannons in air combat
Everyone is talking about the longbow. No one’s talking about the Comanche. Mounted archers that were next to impossible to hit until the invention of repeating guns (though that was less to do with their bows and more with this horses.)
The Arrow TV seriws based on the DC comics drove me insane.
Man with bow standing in the open beats ten guys with machine guns.
Guns are far superior weapons because of their ease of use and plain power. A fully trained archer was far more dealdly for most of history however, but guns are still a better weapon. They definitely coexisted, like crossbow and bows, they had different uses, but there is a reason we all use guns now lmao
>only cause of logistics and training time
Yeah, that’s why they’re better.
Erm, who would think that
Also in the HRE at least, bows were hardly even used.
One thing is the middle, which you have given plenty examples of in replies -wether it really is 2/3 is a bit irrelevant.
But what are the dumb 1/6?
I mean there are too many saying “guns where bad – they replaced bows for other reasons”, and then there are your sources of guns actually being god, even from quite early.
But who are saying guns where better, but for completely wrong/stupid reasons? The lower 1/6?
“Guns were only used because of logistics” Oh, so they’re only better at the single most important thing in warfare?
Where am i because i dont care about logustics i just think bows have more aura.
Me watching a knights breast cave in after my stick and metal dinked off him due to my poor shot placement and variables out of my control
Who in their right mind believes this?
Imagine trench warfare with bows and arrows and Germans blitzkrieg with tanks but they gave old Hanz a composite bow
Honestly depends on where along the S-curve you are.
Easier to train, cheaper to train, faster production = better weapon. We can discuss effectiveness until we get bored but at the end of the day easy and fast are the exact reason why crossbow became popular
I mean at a certain point time, this debate is easely settled
> training time
If we both have weapons, and yours requires more training and effort to be as effective as mine, you have the worse weapon
Neither is true.
Guns overtook bows because of logistical reasons, but they were also better.
Bows are cooler. As a weapon a gun is vastly superior, but bows are still cooler
What kind of smooth brain is pulling weight for bows?
I’ve never even read of someone else having read of anyone ever saying.
Possibly a candidate for dumbest fucking meme of all time.
I don’t think this is how bell curves work
I feel like this argument has a better(but still small chance) if the comparison is longbows and crossbows