Is there any reason why you would use an English longbow over a composite bow? What's stronger?

Composite bows are stronger, smaller, lighter, and hit further. They were used by the Mongols to devestating effect against most armies. they are basicly better then longbows.

In what ways are they not as good though?

They're harder to make and require greater strength.


Historically, were longbows ever used in China? I've heard mention of Chinese longbow equipped soldiers before, but maybe it's a misnomer, maybe it's a larger foot-composite bow, I don't know.

As I said, Composite Bows are lighter then Longbows. They could be used by a cavalry as the Mongols did. The bow was made of the horn of some kind of animal i believe, so it the power it had could punch through armor further and better then a long bow could. Mongolian warriors usually had several of these bows and would pick off most of their enemies from a far. Parthian riders also used this bow against Roman Legions. Their bows were from breaking Roman formations, picking off so many soldiers that eventually the casualties became devestating.

umm...Zuo Zongtang....i asked why you would use the longbow OVER the composite bow

I answered your question
Longbows are easier to make and require less strength.

Chinese bowers used mostly cross-bows which was invented during the Warring states period..

I'm not a expert on this but i recall a few post i've seen concerning this...

1.Chinese trooped used both composite bows AND crossbows and different proportions even up till the opium war... it's a myth that chinese troop only used crossbows or mostly used crossbows... crossbows have more problems fireing in a arc and takes considerablly longer to load..(upside is that it's a lot easier to train to use and is stronge in terms of direct line pierce and it's more usable in cramped situations)

2.I think from what i've read the composite bow is superior to long bows in almost all respect... but both have around roughly the same piercing range (but composite have longer max range)... however composite bows came in a wide variety and the one used in that particular comparason (turkish composite longbow ) probably can't talk for all... for example calavry composite bows are considerablly smaller than the onces used by foottroops.. and thus it would be expected to not be as powerful in terms of range and power...

From what i've read english longbow acturally take more strength to pull not less than composite bows... which was why they needed to train so much to use it.

Ok, maybe I should jump in here. I own a composite bow and shoot regularly though I don't claim to be any good at it nor am I an expert in the types of bows but this is what I know. If there are any expert archers here, please do correct me if I'm wrong.

Longbows require length to build draw strength. The draw strength of a bow determines two things, the penetration power and the distance. That's why the English longbow was considered to be superior to their rivals, because they were taller than the archers themselves, ie. very powerful (they never met the Chinese recurve bow). Typical bows range anything from 30-80lbs but to reach 80lbs you'll need to be hercules to draw it and have really long arms.

The compound bow is a modern invention which uses pulleys and stuff to increase the draw strength of the bow with out requiring the archer to draw the full strength. This is favoured by women because the bow multiplies the force to allow for greater power. The typical bows can reach 50-80lbs.

The composite or usually called the recurve bow is what the mongols used on horseback. This bow is the standard weapon used by the Chinese, along with the crossbow. The recurve bow has the two limbs of the bow curved back to point forward. (see House of Flying Daggers, bow used by Takashi) The mongols were known to use recurved bows of greater than 100lbs draw strength. The advantage of the recurve bow is that it doesn't need to be as long as the longbow to reach the same draw strength so it can be compact enough to be used on horseback. The recurve bow is the bow used in Olympic competition and typical ranges are 40-60lbs. I use only a 36lb bow which is very light and would not be able to reach the max of 90m in competition. Even 50m would require some serious arc to reach the target.

Hope this helps.

Jieming
DragonSeedLegacy

Oops, realised I didn't answer the original question.

"Any reason why you would use a longbow?"

Well, I suppose I would use a longbow because it is traditional weapon and it's a much simpler bow to string. It the most basic form of bow. The bows used by really primitive aboriginal tribes are actually longbows which are not long. :-)

The composite/recurve bow is a technological advancement over the longbow.

Jieming
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DragonSeedLegacy

Just an information, the bow of Ghengis Khan is something like 1,6 to 1,7 m long. So, eithe he is very tall of he used a long-composite bow.

I'm not sure but there is probably 2 or more distinct types used by the mongols, a shorter version for mounted archers (with less range, sacrified for mobility) and a longer version for foot soldiers etc. My own recurve is 1.65m undrawn.

The English had special archers who were selected for their height and their strength to use the super long longbows. We are talking about westerners here so tall westerners would probably mean 1.9m above. They were trained to use longbows which were taller than the archers, at 2m above. That gave the English longbow it's penetration power, a great advantage as it could penetrate french armour. Henry V used this to great effect during the Battle of Agincourt against waves of french mounted knights.

The standard Chinese, or rather I should say the eastern bow was the recurve and didn't require specially selected large sized archers to use. The regular mongol soldier would have slaughtered the English. Only the English special super longbow squad would have stood a chance in matching the mongols.

In the latest movie King Arthur, the Samartian knights showed the superiority of the recurve bow over the Saxon longbow during the battle on the frozen lake. The Saxon bow couldn't reach the knights but the arrows shot by the Samartian recurve bows could reach the Saxon lines. I think the who thing about Saxons using crossbows and Samartian knights being the legendary King Arthur's knights a load of c#@p but they got the longbow-recurve bow comparison right.

Ghengis Khan, I don't know how tall he is but I would assume to be 1.6-1.7 m? That means his bow is about the same height as he was or shorter.

Here's a old photo of a manchu mounted archer. Note the length of the bow. Probably 1.4-1.5 undrawn though I could be wrong.

The second is from the Men-at-arms series by Osprey. It shows two different types of archers, a Chinese archer with the superior recurve (composite) bow and the vietnamese auxillary archer with a lower tech armour and weapons ie. the longbow.

Jieming
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DragonSeedLegacy

Er, I think a bow with a system of pulleys and addons are called compound bows...

Oops, thanks. I've corrected the error. Got the terms mixed up a bit. :-)

Jieming

Here's the photo of the manchu horse archer which I couldn't add earlier.

http://www.villagephotos.com/pubbrowse.asp?folder_id=1057102

Jieming
DragonSeedLegacy

I answered your second question though, which is better.

I think the composite bow was better than the longbow in everyway. Someone mentioned the longbow was cheaper to make, but that's not necessarily the case. Longbows were made from wood of the yew tree. But only the heartwood could be used, so one tree can only make so many bows. Yew was also in demand for several things, among them shipbuilding.

Compare that to the composite bow, which is horn, sinew, and bamboo or other materials. Basically much easier to mass produce than the English longbow.

During the Qing dynasty the manchu chinese employed big bows as opposed to the smaller hungarian design which was used by the ming. So depending how to define it, you can actaully say that the Qing used long bows.

Had the compound bow (wheels and pulleys) been invented earlier, would it have a battlefield advantage? Would you say it's rugged enough for combat?

Well, not quite. More like Long"recurved"bows.


I think the pulleys would have been prone to jamming with the dust and grit under combat conditions. But then again, if one used them only in the rear for long range of instance, or from castle walls, yeah, I'd say it'd be a significant advantage over both the recurve and the longbow since the draw strengths of the compound could go far beyond those of the recurve or longbow.

so...no wonder...Qing bows look so diffrent from Ming bows.....
if then is Qing bows is usally hunting bows?

The Manchus had different types of bows. Those they used for horseback archery are like the mongol bows (or the Japanese bow) which is asymetrical and has a longer top limb than the bottom limb. Those I believe are used for horseback hunting by the mongols.

about an earlier post, the english war bows of the hundred years war have poundages of 100 plus. im a longbowman myself.

The English had dedicated units trained to use the heavy longbows which usually towered over the heads of the archers themselves. :-) I've read that they could go up to 2m+ in length. I've not heard of any other types of bows which reached such lengths before. Mounted archers for instance, couldn't use such bows. They needed more compact bows for fire from horseback.

I've heard that the wet conditions of england would've weakened the glue of composite bows

but... the southern parts of China get pretty wet too, and I think coating would've been used to resist wetness

i don't want to sound aggressive but you seem to help spread many stereotypes about Chinese especially in regards to warfare

the recurved composite bow (of which the Chinese version/design was unique to China, the Chinese composite bow was made out of all vegetation IE no animal parts like the central asian horn version of the composite) had been in China since 1600 B.C and is theorized to be able to draw 160 pounds even as early as Shang period.

the majority of archers throughout Chinese history relied on this weapon both from standing position (which is considered among the best style of standing archery) as well as mounted position(not as good as lets say mongols, but definitely not bad either)

crossbows fell in and out of popularity throughout Chinese history. in Nanbei Chao era, the crossbow was not popular at all

the composite bow never fell out of popularity from 1600 B.C all the way up until close to modern times.
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i practice archery and i can say that i prefer to use a composite bow over long bow

The thing about recurved bows that many people don't understand is that, they when compared to the longbow, they are shorter and therefore more compact (for horseback archery) without sacrificing draw strength. A longbow when reduced to the lengths typical in a recurve, cannot reach the draw strength of similar lengths recurves.

However, if you compare the "strongest" longbows with the "strongest" recurve, obviously both will be equivalent, only limited by the strength of the archer. Only difference is the longbow needs to be very long compared to the recurve.

Another confusion I find are the definitions. The proper term for the asian type bow with the double curvature is the recurve bow. A composite bow merely means that the bow is made out of more than 1 material. So longbows can also be composite bows. Just a composite longbow.

Just to wrap things up, the last category of bows today (other than the longbow and the recurve bow) is the compound bow. This bow is a modern invention which uses pulleys and stuff to increase the draw strength of a bow without needing the same strength from an archer. Women generally prefer this bow since they don't need to be as strong to draw the same poundage as a man using a recurve or longbow.

Hope this clears up some of the confusion and misconceptions here.

Full circle...

If my memory and understanding serves me right, during the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, English longbowmen had virtually decimated the mounted French knights... but then some decades later, French artillerymen went on to destroy the English longbowmen with their cannons in another battle...

Nonetheless. the longbow was an awesome weapon...

The sword forum seems to get into pretty heated debates on whether those longbows really were that powerful. But I still accept that as common fact.

does anyone know about the glues weakening in moisture? I've also heard that a longbow is easier to aim because it is larger, and a recurve is less... I guess 'stable' because of the power in the compact frame.

I believe the greater draw length of the longbow would enable it to fire a longer, heavier arrow. The heavier an arrow is, the less air resistance will slow it down, and thus it will retain better speed and penetrating power at long range.

Not all composite bows are created equal. The English abandoned their own short bows in favor of the Welsh longbow in the 13th century because the Welsh longbow was clearly superior to their own bows. I expect the Mongol composite bow was probably substantially superior to the English pre-13th century short bows.

Note that "composite" and "recurve" are not synonymous. "Recurve" refers to the shape of the bow. "Composite" simply means the bow is made of layers glued together instead of a single timber of yew or elm like the English longbows.

By the way, Grigori, are you sure about yew being in demand for shipbuilding? I don't know about shipbulding in the Middle Ages, but by the 17th century England was building most of its ships out of oak or cedar, oak being legally reserved for the Royal Navy ships.

how so? wouldn't only the force of the bow matter in whether the arrow is launched well or not?

No, two arrows with the same force will slow down at different rates depending on their weight. The air canot slow down a heavy arrow as fast as a light one. If the air resistance is, say, 500 grams per square centimeter per second, a 500 gram arrow will slow down faster than a 1,000 gram arrow, if they are both the same width but different lengths.

Yew is a small tree and not big enough to make ships out of. But yew wood was used for certain maritime applications like oars and planks and they're still being used by yacht builders when the customer is willing to spend big money. I'm not sure how much of a role they played in post-Medieval ship building, I believe the pins used in pulleys were still made of yew. English carpenters considered yew a substitute for iron in many uses such as nails. It was also a prestige material for making furniture for the very wealthy.

Most of the yew wood used in longbows were actually imported from Iberia. Iberian yew trees had less knots in them. For a time England had a law that all ships bearing goods must bring so much yew wood per ton of cargo. Yew bows were actually a form of composite bow because it was cut in such a way that the inner part of the bow was heartwood and the outer part the surrounding layer. Yew trees were small and slow growing, and since one tree can only make a few bows the trees nearly became extinct from the falling. Today English yew trees are very knotty supposedly because they cut down all the good specimens leaving only the reject trees to breed.

but I mean is why would a longer draw allow for a bigger arrow, I figure that only the strength of the bow is needed for launching heavier arrows.

It's the other way around actually. Because your bow has a longer draw, you have no choice but to use longer and thicker shaft arrows.

However, with a shorter draw bow, you have the option to use long or short, thick or thin arrows. If two bows have the same draw strength but one has a shorter draw length while the other a longer draw length, both will still be able to fire the same thick arrow with the same penetration strength but the long draw bow cannot fire a thinner, shorter arrow.

The benefit of a longer arrow is that it would be more stable in flight and a thicker shaft would make it heavier and therefore again, more stable with greater momentum.

My gf has a recurve which is shorter and weaker in draw length and strength respectively from mine. I can't use her arrows because they would probably buckle but she can most definitely use mine though they would stickout the front a little bit more than usual when she fires them.

I do however, admit that there is a clear advantage in using longer arrows for the flight stability. So to bring the argument back round, to fire such arrows, you do that by having a bow with a longer draw length. The problem with taking a recurve to the same draw lengths as a longbow would be that the recurve becomes too powerful to draw at equivalent lengths.

So there you have it. The one reason why I would use a longbow over a recurve would be so I could fire longer arrows without having it stickout the front.

A longer (and therefore thicker/stronger) arrow doesn't mean better penetration. It is only more stable in flight and can therefore fly straighter without fluttering in the air.

Haha, I've always wanted to take up archery but never had the time other than a short beginner's lesson. So glad that we have some avid archers here to teach the rest of us

Haha, I shoot at Potong Pasir CC if you want to join me though I don't go as often as I'd like to.

is the arrow sticking further out in the front really a problem in any way? Other than looking a bit odd, it would still fire no harder than it would be with a longbow, no?

So are you saying recurve bows can fire longer arrows fine?

Hehehe, well a little bit of arrow sticking out the front isn't really a problem unless the front part sticking out become disproportionately long compared to the rest of the arrow! Where this line between the proportion on how long the front can stick compared to the rest of the arrow is, I frankly don't know but you can imagine there would be a point where the length of the arrow starts to become an issue.

The ideal is of course where the arrow is less than 1inch or so beyond the front of the bow. Then if you start using longer and longer arrows, and the arrows stick say between 1 to 5inches beyond shouldn't see any degradation to performance because the centre of gravity of the arrow remains roughly within the centre of the drawn bow. But if your arrow is say 10 inches infront of your bow, then the center of gravity of the arrow starts to hover too far the front of the bow. It'll start to be too front heavy and dip when you fire it. Of course you can compensate by raising your bow and pointing higher but then you lose accuracy because the more arc you need to fire with, the less accuracy you get.

So to answer your question, yes... and no. A recurve would fire longer arrows fine (just as a longbow would also fire longer arrows fine), but not too long. :-)

Going back to the longbow vs. the recurve bow, the difference between the super long longbows and the "standard" recurve bow (non-mounted) would be about 1-1.5 feet at the most. This translates to a difference in draw lengths of about 6-10 inches. So a super longbow would allow the firing of very long arrows while a standard recurve would not be able to fire very long arrows as accurately. However, if I understand it correctly, the English never used the super longbows for accurate fire. They were used as artillery, firing up in an arc for maximum range. If this was all the super longbows were used for, then the standard recurve would have done the trick too.

If range and penetration power are all you require, then you need just two things, a bow with good draw strength and strong heavy arrows. A recurve wouldn't lose to a longbow despite being much shorter.

I agree that length per se does not mean better penetration, but as you pointed out, the longer arrow will retain momentum better. Won't the greater momentum increase penetration?

I admit I had not thought of the possibility of simply using the long arrow in a short bow with the arrowhead sticking out well beyond the bow. Every time I see archers shoot, it seems they always draw the arrowhead right back to the arrow rest, and the idea of not doing that didn't occur to me.

Yeah, a longer arrow with better momentum will penetrate better if all else being equal.

Hahahaha, it wouldn't have occured to me either if my gf didn't keep taking my arrows after finishing up all her own.

a bit off topic here..........

why Qing arrows always look larger with large feather on its back?

FYI, English Longbows could be over 100lb drawstrength and this is why they trained from youth, and the French would cut off the 2 fingers of the drawing hand of captured Longbowmen to stop them fighting again(and why the English have a particular of waving two fingers as a symbol of defiance).
Some of the longbows used by the royal armoury in Britian for testing were over 100lb, and something like 120lb for a 'Mary Rose' longbow. These could penetrate chain, but had difficulty in penetrating plate at often optimum angles.
The effectiveness of plate (or the longbows ineffectiveness against it) has been demonstrated in experiments, some televised, and I provided links to detailed discussions on these armour piercing theories on the sword forum (somewhere here on CHF, may be under other posts on crossbows and such).
The battle of Agincourt is not always taken as simple evidence that longbows easily pierced plate, as not all of the French force were knights and other ideas are advanced to explain the ineffectiveness of the knights, such as mounts being shot out from under them, dismounted in muddy boggy terrain and the crush, and also that many were captured alive for ransom rather than simply shot to bits by arrow fire.
I suggest scanning the sword forum international under the armour section for more info as that is essentially the conclusion of penetrating power reached by the knowledgable folks there.
Basically the armour/penetration/longbow & crossbow thing never goes away, but it hasnt been replicated in the way that people imagine it. (that arrows go through like a knife to butter)
Watching the bodkin points bend and the shaft of the arrow split in slow motion photography convinced me the longbows great power alone didnt make for penetration, as it has more to do with a short chisel point for the arrow to puncture plate.....but plate more often than not did the job well.

Of yeah, it does seem the Turkish composite bow holds the records for longest range from the discussions elsewhere, I have heard of flights of 600 yards or more (if I recall correctly) which the 19th century English diplomats had to see to believe.

I'm a bit rusty on the details of these but can provide links to the various points if folk here need them.

Check this book out..

http://www.suttonpublishing.co.uk/webapp/w...27919&langId=-1

well, when most people refer to "composite" bows, it infers recurve bows that are generally made of three materials.Chinese, Korean,Mongol,Turk,etc,etc recurve bows are generally made out of 3 materials. long bows are usually made of two so yes technically long bows can be "composite" purely by definition of the word composite.

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Shang pictograph of Composite recurve bow

If you look at the first chart, Bow A is a short self bow, Bow B a longbow, Bow C a short recurve and Bow D a long recurve. You can see that the initial draw is harder in the recurve. The stored power of the bow is the area under the curve. So the potential power stored in a recurve is greater than a longbow of equilivant length.

Actually, the longer a bow is, the weaker in poundage it will be if it keeps the same cross section. It's quite easy to understand that you can easily bend a 1m long thin beam than the same beam shortened to 10 cm.

If you are building a bow that ends up too light, you may raise its power by shortening it a little.

The "formula" for a given bow power is that by making it twice as wide, it becomes twice as powerful, but making it twice as thick will make it 8 times more powerful. Twice as long will only decrease its power.

You make a bow very long for 3 main reasons :
-one, because if left long, the material will not be as much stressed as in a short weapon, so less risk of breakage and less string-follow.
-second because if the bow is long, the draw force curve will be more even (like -B- above) and there will be no stacking effect (like -A- above) hence more power and more confort to shoot.
-third because as the angle of the string at full draw will be more open on a long bow than a short one, there will be less "finger pinch" effect for a longer bow.

The 3rd reason is much more interesting to a western archer using the 3 fingers mediterranean release than for an asian archer using thumbdraw who would be practically immune to finger-pinch.

But if you're a rider looking for a short weapon, you can recurve a bow in order to get more energy stored into a smaller design, but in turn, pre-stressed and shorter limbs will give more chance of breakage and more string follow, that is if you keep using wood... But you could instead go for a much more flexible bow made of horn on the belly and sinew on the back, that is an asian composite design.

Longbow is easier to make too.

Composite recurve bow is friggin hard to make. Just attempting to cure the fish glue will give you a heart attack. The trick to a good composite recurve are the bone inserts. Most modern composite recurves do not use bone but traditionally most use bones ... I think only the chinese and turkish composite recurve do not have bone inserts.

Hell, I have made longbows before. All you need is highschool woodwork skill ... a few free weekends and a stack of high quality hardwood (Yew, Ironbark, Spotted gum ... etc) and you are ready to crave the baby. It took me 6 weekend of trail and error before I manage to make one that works without snapping or funny performance.

I was told by a professional bow carver (word of mouth only so there's no "paper" proof) that a good bow maker can carve a proper longbow in about 4 hours from tree using traditional tools.

Are longbows more stable/accurate? I remember reading that somewhere. Like.... since it's longer in relation to how much power you get, it is easier to aim.


Also, since longbows aren't glued together, they are more resistant in damp environments. I think composite bows can be treated to be resistant to moisture though.

now... do they use composite bows in the jungles of southeast Asia? I think that answer would be good for going towards the 'composite weak to moisture' idea