jim, you seem to not understand that crossbows used shorts bolts that had no
fletching. that means the bolts weren't much more than frisbees past a very
short distance. 30 feet, the museum stated. having seen a bolt, I don't doubt
that figure.

Jim Richardson
Date: 10/15/2004 3:32 AM Eastern Daylight Time
Message-id:

On 15 Oct 2004 00:30:55 GMT,
JAXAshby wrote:
rhys, I was taking schlackoff's stupid statement to its conclusion.

real figures for bows as weapons of war were about one bolt even two
minutes
for the crossbow, and about 6 shafts a minute for the longbow. the
crossbow
had a net effective range of about 30 feet, the longbow about 100 yards.


Your range figure for crossbows is silly. Effective range of a crossbow
of medieval pattern, against armoured targets, is about 50 yards. Rate
of fire numbers are a bit bogus also, 6 shots/min for a longbow is
doable, for a very short time period. A std crossbow could do about 1
shot per min, or perhaps a bit more. Slower for some designs, faster for
others.


--
Jim Richardson http://www.eskimo.com/~warlock
"If guns cause crime, mine must be defective." -Ted Nugent