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Subject: America's Worst Enemy in History
mongyu    1/2/2008 8:16:10 AM
The title says it all: Who do you think has been the greatest enemy ever to threaten America? My vote goes to the British hands down. No other country ever came as close as the British to physically ending the United States in our history. The Germans and the Japanese were formidable in their own right, but neither [or even both] could reasonably invade the United States. The Soviet Union had the theoretical potential to destroy the United States, but I think everyone agrees that this was not a practical capability in the way the British Empire's ability to take Washington DC was. The Soviets were a dangerous enemy ideologically in the way it could convert adherents in America, but they never out-did the British who successfully supported a rebellion in the United States by funding, arming, and giving moral support to the Confederacy. So what country would you choose?
 
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Herald12345    The rather stupid one in which you cited an arrow penetration into target straw bales, cretin.   1/16/2008 12:17:52 PM
since the 5.56/45 by accident, or design, is a tumbler that unloads work into the plastic resistant [straw bale] target; I don't see where your cited "example" was on point.

Now then if you want to know why weapon effect KE calculations are important I direct you here. Read it, LEARN, and stop being a moron.

M-4 comes in last.

Herald



 
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Ehran       1/17/2008 11:43:27 AM

since the 5.56/46 by accident or design is a tumbler that unloads work into the plastic resistant [straw bale] target I don't see where your "example" was on point.


dude is it your initial reading thats the problem or the retention?  I never said anything about straw bales?
long bow trumps lightweight bow which trumps 5.56 which in turn trumps low velocity musket ball at penetrating sand bags.  this just demonstrates that your KE comparison was simplistic.
 
your argument that arrows don't penetrate plate well is true enough but given the paucity of plate armour in an ECW army seems irrelevant.

 
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Herald12345    Sandbag is even worse as an energy absorbing medium for a tumbler.   1/18/2008 12:58:25 AM
and don't call me dude, cretin.

I haven't been a dude, since I went to work for a living.

Herald

 
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Ehran       1/18/2008 11:56:47 AM

and don't call me dude, cretin.

I haven't been a dude, since I went to work for a living.

Herald


try being civil once in a while dude.  if you freely insult others you can hardly whine about getting some back.
 
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Herald12345       1/19/2008 7:12:38 AM
With your track record of competence, Ehran, thus far exhibited, the only way you are qualified to call anyone "dude" is if you could surf. Can you at least surf?

There you'd have me. I can't surf if my life depended on it.

Herald

 
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ker    Bow v. Gun   1/19/2008 5:14:11 PM
There is a danger in contrasting weapons based on the weapons absolute performance with out regard to the skill of the operator.
 
I would content that if the humans using them were skilled to the point of getting max effect out of the weapon the bow is superior to the muzzle loader.  Rate of fire and hit probability being the largest advantages. 
 
Muzzle loaders advantage is that it makes a better club. (Utility of bayonets is a subject I will leave alone.)
 
But skill is not ever equal and rarely maxed out.  Guns displaced bows because guns preformed better with relatively untrained troops.  And the club thing.  Napoleon wanted troops to fire once (create a smoke screen) and charge. 
 
Think about a group of Samara from the period when they were mounted archers or Mongolian mounted bowmen for the days of the Golden Hoard.  They would be extremely useful on a American Civil War battle field.  First to hunt and kill enemy horse. Second to harass artillery when it was limbered up and moving.  In emergences they could gallop by at skirmisher ranges and trade fire with infantry (preferably when the enemy was surprised or worn out).  They could change battle outcomes.
 
High skilled bowmen were always a tiny % of the population that bread them.  Life long training is expensive.  Napoleons draft relied on lots of men with mostly on the job training.  For that the bow had the wrong learning curve. 
 
Now lets all go see the Rambo movie.
-----------------------------------------
Worst enemy.    Brits.  Then the South is the "war of Northern aggression."  I think that a lot of Brits didn't really want to beat us for philosophical reasons.  We were their cousins and just a logical extension of the magnacarts.  Thank God the magnacarta and blast furnace were both invented by the same people. German wouldn't have given away the empire like the Brits.  But the Germans didn't spread like the Brits so didn't have space and depth and resources.   
 
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paul1970    Wicked Chinchilla   1/29/2008 5:01:59 AM

Having watched a documentary on Longbows a soldier did not need full plate to be protected.  Yes, full plate provided nearly complete protection until excessively close range.  I have seen studys however where good chainlink armor with leather armor/padding underneath did provide protection.  Much of the arrows penetrative power depended upon where it struck in the links. 
 
 
sorry for late reply... I have been away.
 
some protection, probably quiet good for combo armour.... but the battlefields of Britain and France were littered with the bodies of people wearing chainmail and padded leather.... so what protection it gave them was clearly not enough to overcome the range, accuracy and shear numbers of arrows that come in from a longbow force. later battlefields are littered with dead wearing plate... and there are a fair few rich and famous who could afford the best lying there next to joe blogs in his cheap stuff. even mighty Joan got pierced deep by an arrow into her plate and you can bet that was good quality stuff and not the common maa stuff....
 
Cranfield tested penetration against plate armour. enough power to dent at 80m, puncture at 30m, and go right through padding into flesh at 20m... so if you are in full plate then you can 'hope' to get close and just 'pray' that you don't have someone aim at you on the last full on pelt... oh, and hope that they didn't dig ditches and put stakes down to give them that extra time to loose off another 4 at you...  :-).
 
 


This is not to say I personally would rather be in plate than chainmail, but just pointing out that plate was not a requirement.

Not knowing much about the battles concerning Longbows aside from the big ones like Crecy and what not, I would like to know something.  Just how often in battle did Longbowman aim directly, horizontally, and within short range at a closing enemy?  Theory is one thing, but if I were a fairly lightly armored longbowman being charged with now friendly infantry I would be backing up or looking for help long before the enemy was within a few dozen paces of me.  Archers were peasants, not hardcore professional soldiers.
 

 
 
aiming horizontally down the eye line is only done when the target is getting close, in which case he gets the full wack right where the archer aims for... be it the man or the horse. I am no 'professional' archer and only fire twice a year or so when I am back home for the Sheffield fair and Rufford shows but I can shoot straight and hit a single target at about 50m. Herald and another mentioned shooting bows so they can also tell you at what range they are basically aiming eye on.
 
archers may have been "peasants" but these were "hardcore professional soldiers". they are not what you might generally assume when seeing the word peasant. they are hardly a horde or rabble of unwilling men levied for show and slaughter.... they were yeoman class people trained very well to do the job. those that went to the continent were volunteers and the best men from each raised band.
 
and as for what they did when charged by the enemy... you mention the big battles....
 
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paul1970    Britain in ACW   1/29/2008 5:05:10 AM
 
for Britians role in ACW...
 
Great Britain and the American Civil War by Ephram D Adams
 
 
Paul
 
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paul1970       1/29/2008 9:53:22 AM

Two points.

1. The French never quite got it about Swedish artillery+Swedish cavalry charge=dead Tercios or Landknechts.
2. A few of those old Roundhead reformers served with Gustavus, so it was first hand from the great Swede himself and not from the French, that Cromwell's bunch picked up on the cavalry charge.

James Graham is it?

Since the heart of his army during the Covenanter troubles was Irish Catholic infantry and Highlanders, would this be a trick question?
 
Herald

1. neither did the Swedes....   :-) their own tactics had evloved from Swede to "German" by the time of the ECW. then go and look at what it was like at the time of WLA and GNW.
2 those roundheads adopted tactics used by the royalists... that Rupert actually used at Edgehill (he even put the infantry in Swedish formation but that was the only time it was used as itself was dated by then)... they copied him not the Swedes. now you can say he copied the Swedes.... but they directly copied him.
 
James Graham... not a trick question... I asked what you thought about the accounts of his men using longows?
 
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paul1970    H goes of at a tangent... again.   1/29/2008 10:01:04 AM

Why don't you refer to the reply I gave to Ehran or the data Tercio just supplied?.

That kinetic energy calculation is important if you understand that plate that STOPPED a bodkin head arrow was unable to stop a musket ball, and know why.

You just sort of flounder around there, don't you?

Like shooting a flounder in a barrel. {I love puns!]

Herald



and for about the 6th time we come back to the original question... HYW versus ECW.... you keep avoiding this trying to waffle on about smash this and ke that.... it is irrelevent.
 
the ECW chaps don't wear full plate and are less well protected than early HYW armies. then it is fairly obvious what the longbow will do to them. it will do at least the same as it did to the HYW armies....   faster, more accurately and at a greater engagment range than the musket can do.... 3 things that you have failed to address......
 
pray tell how accurate you think the musket was? at an individual or at a massed target?
 
 
Paul
 
 
 
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