[Jesse Pointen]

(5. Damn Thing Sting like hell and cant be removed in battle making them a killer way of killing the target.

Are you serious? Have you ever shot anything? Getting shot stings quote a blessed lot, and it's a lot easier (and more sanitary since you don't have to dig around) to remove an arrow than a musket ball.)



Ok yeh mabey removing a bullet is harder as it is in you... but do not forget an arrow is hanging out of you and you cant remove it as it will result in massive loss of blood.. Also when the arrow is in deep... it tend's to cuase alot of pain when you move around... but a bullet is in you it doest cuase more damage it just sits in you until it roll's out or a doctor gets it out...

Also i must add i do use Bow's alot and i have little to do with firearm's but i do anjoy crafting musket replica's and putting them up on a wall for show.

[Chad Arnow]

[Thomas Watt]

OK. I have a link to one of the military libraries I haunt, but cannot yet find the original source (I hadn't realized how much "stuff" I had collected. Info is kind of like blades... nice to wield once in a while).
http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/html/bookshelves/resmat/resmat.html
(The above link takes you to the U.S. Army Center for Military History. All of this material is publicly available and is a wealth of reports, histories, etc.)

I guess the point I was trying to make is that massed firearms might not yield quite the 100% total of possible "rounds downrange" that one might hope. That is in no way to be construed as suggesting that in my opinion an equal number of archers arrayed against musketeers would fare very well. Even the relatively slow velocity of the older firearms is offset by the size of the round.
The firearm provides a knockdown hit.
And while the older weapons didn't create the mass of tissue destruction that modern miltary rifles do (this is intended to maim and overwhelm the enemy's ability to care for the wounded), the large bullet mass will either shatter any bone struck (rendering a limb useless) or if striking the abdominal cavity, set up the victim for death from infection.

And I apologize for not having my previously mentioned sources at hand. I think it may have been from the Command General Staff College library, with my copy on my other computer.

[Elnathan Barnett]

A couple of points:

-When I was at Jamestown a couple of years ago, the interpreters said that matchlock ammunition was made to much finer tolerances than later flintlock ammunition, trading rate of fire for accuracy. Ergo, it is helpful no know what type of "musket" one is talking about, since it can apply to those big matchlocks fired from rests, those snaphaunces/Jacobean guns built along similar lines but fired without a rest, to "Brown Bess" and her cousins of the 18th and 19th centuries. American Civil War rifle-muskets are a different beastie.

-There is no real way of measuring the power of bullets, particularly those fired from muzzleloaders, in a way that reflects real-world experience. Jesse is right, somewhat, in that in some methods of measuring bullet energy muzzleloaders and blackpowder firearms don't do very well - the .22 LR has about the same ballistic coefficient as the .45 roundball, while in terms of kinetic energy, the .30-30 is more powerful than the old .45-90 blackpowder cartridge. However, the .45-90 will go clean through a 2000 pound buffalo and drop it cleanly, while the .30-30 is considered somewhat underpowdered for a 150 pound deer...

-If IIRC, the British troops in India said that it was more demoralizing to be shot at by archers - when they could see the arrows coming - then being shot at by firearms. Of course, they were familiar with firearms, while taking archery "fire" was a new experience...

-It is worth noting that the American Indians, when given the opportunity, embraced the flintlock with such enthusiasm that they pretty much forgot how to use bows, at least in the East. Note that this was both for hunting and for war, so I don't think that it was completely the result of the belief that guns had magical powers behind this phenomena.

-Concerning the accuracy of bows, bear in mind that arrows have to be matched to individual bows for best results. Were military issued arrows carefully matched to individual archers? I suspect not. If we are talking about dedicated snipers, remember that there was a funny old weapon known as a rifle, that dates back as far as 1500, and shows up from time to time, even in the English Civil War, as a sharpshooter's weapon. They were shooting at a 42" mark at 805 feet at one match in Basel, Switzerland, in 1605, offhand. Thats, what, about 260 odd yards?

I have been around awhile, but this is my first post, I think.

[Caleb Hallgren]

[Shayan G]

I too have often wondered at what motivated a transition from the amazingly designed and undeniably efficient composite bow to the musket (which later on, of course, would have its own amazing designs and efficiency). More specifically, I've always wondered at the slowness of the transition to the musket in Iranian history. I think these are the main reasons (for Iran anyways):

Part of the reason is cultural-- the nomadic style of warfare (centered on the composite bow) had worked for millenia, and the slow-loading and (as they perceived it) inglorious arquebus or matchlock didn't provide much incentive to the mounted warrior. The lack of speed relative to the composite bow would severely compromise a method of battle based on mobility and maintaining a constant barrage against the enemy to demoralize and confuse them. For this reason, the armies with a nomadic cultural background were notoriously slow to adopt the musket, e.g. the Northeastern Turkmen, and farther north and east, the Uzbeks.

Later, though, with increased accuracy and production, the musket finally provided a defense against the previously unstoppable mobile horsearcher. I think, ironically, that the reason for the popularity of the musket later on in the East was due to the amazing efficiency of the other forms of combat--much like the arquebus against the European knight, it finally gave the little guy a way to defend against a warrior with a lifetime of training and a fierce reputation.

Here's an article on the history of firearms in Iran, which has some interesting hints as to why the transition occurred there...
http://www.iranica.com/newsite/articles/v9f6/v9f626a.html
It's generally a great intro to firearms in Southwest Asia, though the article only devotes one paragraph to Nader Shah, who revolutionized Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian warfare and firearms technology. Strangely, some of his innovations merged the mobility of nomadic armies with the punch of firearms--the most notable is the camel-mounted cannon, which was devastating to the Mughal infantry and elephants alike.

Here's the most relevant portion:

[Jesse Pointen]

Matchlocks are a pain in the hind.. as you cannot let water anywere near them or you'd put out the wick... and flintlock have been heard to fire after getting drentched.

[David Evans]

[Bjorn Hagstrom]

[Darryl Aoki]

[Shayan G]

[Randall Moffett]

Unless submerged for long duration of time under water a bow should not be altered by water. They do seem to produce a fair number of painted bows. According to a York ordinance from the 1st part of the 15th the bows were to be inspected prior to painting indicating it was completely covered with it so one could not see under it.

Bow strings would be kept dry until needed so unless the battle lasted a large amount of time, unlikely but possible does not seem a huge issue. There are indication of wind adversly inmapcting arrows but few about bows.

I would think most composite bows would be sealed as composite crossbow prods were to counter the humidity and water to avoid that problem.

RPM

[Eric Myers]

Linen bowstrings can absorb water, which adds to their weight, which in turn can reduce the energy imparted to the arrow . I don't remember how many fps loss this translates too, but I don't think it's much. Gut and leather strings (mostly used for crossbows in Europe), on the other hand, stretch when they get wet, which affects their performance quite a bit.

[Shayan G]

[A. Jake Storey II]

[Ben Sweet]

Jesse Pointen

[Elnathan Barnett]

Caleb,
yes, .45 is definitely not representative of musket calibers. As a matter of fact, it is considered by some to be a "small game or target" caliber. I brought it up because 1) it still a bigger caliber than a .22 long and has significantly more power, and 2) because that is the caliber that the .22 was compared to in my source, The Complete Blackpowder Handbook. Incidently, this small, marginal-for-big-game caliber is capable of punching through ploughshare blades (1/8" tempered steel) at 60 yards with 60 grains of 3Fg. Thats the closest thing I have to an armor-piercing test.

Incidently, Robert Held's Age of Firearms contains a number of quotations from a fellow by the name of Sir Roger WIlliams (IIRC), written in 1590 about, among other things, the relative usefulness of bows and muskets. As well as the points already brought up here concerning power and ease of use, Williams points out that anyone who can stand up can fire a musket, whereas a sick bowman is severely compromised in his usefulness. At the end of a long campaign or with sickness in the ranks, this could be a crucial difference. Also, a musketeer can fire from behind a parapet or other cover without exposing over half his head, whereas an archer needs more space.

Jesse,
I can't say from experience, since I use a patched ball in my flintlock, but a smoothbore with wadding would not be difficult to clear. There is a sort of double corkscrew called a worm that screws on the end of the ramrod ("wiping stick) - pulling the wadding and and dumping the ball (loose-fitting, remember) would be a simple task. Then run the worm back down the barrel and twist it back and forth a bit to loosen the wet powder, dump the powder, and, if it really needs it, run a bit of tow down the barrel on the end of the to dry everything out and reload. Say, two minutes, tops?
A bit of advice - don't rely on popular histories to gain an understanding of the efficacy of early firearms. I can't tell you how many times I have run across "facts" about the flintlock that are contradicted by everyday experience. I can only assume that the situation with matchlocks is worse, since there are so many fewer people that shoot matchlocks. Early firearms are usually underestimated in "serious" (i.e., non-Hollywood) popular culture.

[David Evans]

[Jesse Pointen]

Well yes some matchlock musket's were able to go in the rain but they were coated in oil or lantern fuel.. but when the wick got completly soaked they had to replace the wick...

[Darryl Aoki]