Sword Points

[Matt Lukes]

With a good point, it really doesn't matter if the maille is penetrated, the underlying organs of the stomach, liver, sleen, bladder, intestines, kidneys and other parts not protected by the ribcage are going to become damaged, sometimes with the immediate rupture, others with internal bleeding that lasts for days and still kills or cripples the target.

Well one of the specific features of mail is that it spreads impact energy out, and any kind of padded or at least thick-ish garment worn under mail may provide a good amount of protection from blunt injury. I can see ribs being broken, but rupturing anything, at least consistenly, might be a stretch. The thing is that breaking ribs is pretty incapacitating and if the target goes down, the chance of being able to strike a truly vulnerable spot increases.

A one handed thrust made while stationary against a stationary target is going to have different force than one delivered by a charging man against a charging man.

I'd expect that the former is what we're discussing and what was tested by Horsfall- stabbing doesn't usually imply anything other than a stationary situation. Furthermore, I wouldn't expect a specific addition to a personal weapon's design that would only work at a run :wink:

I am not totally convinced that someone who spends several hours a day thrusting at a solid post is going to deliver the same thrusting force as a man who doesn't train the same muscles!.

This is one reason why I wondered how valid the test energy maxima are- any data would be very much dependent on the individual doing the stabbing. Of course the experiment should defend its methodology of determining the maximum energy that can be produced.

Maybe a well hardened gladius point, wielded properly, could get through mail, since mail is often made from iron that isn't quenched and hardened the same way a thrusting tip would be hardened.

If Williams' tests are properly designed and conducted, it would be the case that iron mail can't be penetrated by a thrust sword, whatever the design.

Matt

[Tarbicus]

Either way, this tip makes it much easier to penetrate chainmail, simple physical laws.

Simple physical laws? Suppose it is impossible to generate enough force with one hand to penetrate mail? It doesn't matter what your blade looked like you still would not compromise the armour. Mail provided a much better defense than many assume.

New Scientist article, March 1996, on research being conducted for modern armoured vests, and what is the best material to make them from:

History provides a fund of ideas. Horsfall says that ancient armourers knew what materials stopped knives, short swords, arrows and spears. And he found a living source of expertise in the Society of Armourers and Brasiers based in London which is helping to fund the work.

Researchers have already tried chain mail but this was especially vulnerable to high-energy knife thrusts because a single link takes all the force of the impact and breaks easily. "Chain mail was designed to protect against slashes from a broad sword rather than a stab with a knife," explains Horsfall. "Maybe a welded titanium mail with a very fine link size might work," he muses.

So far, ancient Greek and Roman armour has provided the most promising materials - animal hides and shark skin. This is hardly surprising since skin has evolved over millions of years to resist injury. The secret lies in the microscopic structure of skin or hide - a three-dimensional tangle of fibres that do not flex to allow sharp objects through even when some of the fibres are severed.

But there is still a long way to go. In a 42-joule test, a commando knife penetrated six millimetres of rawhide. This equates to about the same level of protection as a Kevlar vest, which would be lighter but thicker. "What we want to do is to make a skin-like structure out of Kevlar-type fibres,"

[Matthew Amt]

That's still a pretty bizarre quote--how can an iron ring "break easily"? And one ring is NOT taking the force of the blow, that's the whole point! It starts by trying to move out of the way of the impact. The four rings linked through it all then start to move and soak up more force, then the rings linked through them, etc. It's only when all the rings have reached the limit of their movement that real force can be exerted on the breaking or cutting of that one ring. By that time, how much force has been dissipated? And after that first ring is broken or cut, the hole in the mail is still darn small (considering the average ring size in Roman mail) that not enough of your point has gone through to penetrate the padding and cut the wearer. Mail does not come apart like a knit sweater when you make one cut. If the first ring you hit was one of the riveted ones and gave out at the rivet, now 4 solid rings are waiting for their turn.

It just seams strange to me that mail should have been THE main type of armor for over 1500 years, while spears and bows were THE main weapons of so many cultures, if it didn't do enough good for the guys wearing it to be satisfied with its performance.

I will have to say that a reinforced tip on a gladius WOULD increase one's chance of penetrating armor--from "Forget About It" to "Not Bloody Likely But Try If You Like"! If *I* were training at a post day after day, I'd learn to stab the guy where he was NOT armored! Work smarter, not harder.

Valete,

Matthew

[Tarbicus]

I've no idea Matt, but they did put it to the test and found it lacking.

The most interesting part for me was that they found skin-based armour to be the most efficient at stopping a knife thrust, much more so than metal. They are now trying to find an usurper to Kevlar that mimicks those resistive qualities.

[tlclark]

It just seams strange to me that mail should have been THE main type of armor for over 1500 years, while spears and bows were THE main weapons of so many cultures, if it didn't do enough good for the guys wearing it to be satisfied with its performance.

"Satisfaction" is probably not the best judge of an armor's performance.

I AGAIN invoke the Bill Hamblin, (military historian at BYU) rule. It's not that maille was VERY effective, it was only that it was that if was MORE effective than the next readily available alternative.

The issue is not whether it was good, only that it was better than the next best alternative.

Consider this. If maille failed 90% of the time to a spear/sword thrust would you wear it? Your first reaction would be "heck no!" until you realize that skin and cloth fails nearly 100% of the time against spear thrusts. Suddenly 10% survival looks pretty damn good!!

My Dad, (Long time ago) was chief radiation medical officer in Korea during the cold war from 67-69. He would have to brief generals on the effects of fall-out on soldiers in the horrible event of nuclear attack. One day one asked about adrenaline as a countermeasure to radiation sickness. Adrenaline can reduce the fatality rate of radiation sickness by 1-2%. That may not seem like a huge deal, but for a force of 30,000, that's 300-600 men that might survive that ordinarily wouldn't. In a war, that much could be critical, so even though it was expensive and hard to store, nearly every medical station was outfitted with lots of adrenaline, just in case they had to fight in a radioactive environment. There was no question about whether it was worth it. Any demonstrable positive benefit, was enough, by their estimation, to justify its use.

The same is true for lots of things in military contexts, iodine, countermeasures for nerve agents, etc. The survival rates are not all that great, but you give yourself every advantage you can.

If I knew that maille only gave me a 1 in 10 chance of survival, I would still wear it, not because it was great, but because it was better than my 0 in 10 chance without it. And I think that even at that low benefit level EVERYONE would have worn it. (Although I personally think that mail was far better than a 1 in 10, I'm just making an argument here.)

During the late middle ages and early renaissance, chain maille was universally supplemented by plate, but once firearms and pikemen come along, plate disappears, because it was suddenly no better than the cloth and for 300 yrs, "armor" was an anachronism in infantry. Now we have tons of armor, none 100% effective, far from it. But even if it were 10-20% effective it would still be worth the cost/discomfort.

Anyway, that's my two cents.

[Dan Howard]

I've no idea Matt, but they did put it to the test and found it lacking.

They didn't test anything that even remotely resembled mail that was actually worn by the Romans. With any luck we might be able to convince Erik to do some comprehensive tests on his upcoming hamata.

[Tarbicus]

I've no idea Matt, but they did put it to the test and found it lacking.

They didn't test anything that even remotely resembled mail that was actually worn by the Romans. With any luck we might be able to convince Erik to do some comprehensive tests on his upcoming hamata.

So what did they use?

[Dan Howard]

Looking at the above quote, I don't think Horsfall tested mail at all but was simply regurgitating something that his "researchers" told him. Mail makes a very good anti-stab vest. I made a patch of alternating rows of butted links and solid washers (1.2mm wire, 4-5mm ID) and the result resists the hardest stab I can do with a spear. If my butted links were riveted then the results would be even better. All a reinforced point will do is make it less likely to break when it is stopped by armour or lodges in bone.

[Tarbicus]

Interesting, thanks Dan.

[Octavianus]

Salvete fratres

An interesting link, a test shooting some bodkin arrows to chainmail and also 1 mm. iron plate with a 50 Lb. bow.
[url:ticoy3ny]http://es.geocities.com/cotasmalla/ma1.htm[/url]
Click in "mail versus arrow" or "malla contra flecha" if you want the spanish version.

Vale

Octavianus/Jorge Mambrilla

[Dan Howard]

About time. A test that actually involves a reasonable facsimilie of contemporary mail.

[ARudling]

Quite a nice test overall, the mail looked quite good in fact.
Gambeson was a bit thin for medieval but possibly about right for Roman (?)
50lb bow at point blank & still failing to get a proper penetration is quite interesting, especially with a bodkin - although I would have liked to see a broadhead type used too.
It does show that the arrow doesnt automatically find the centre of each ring like so many people seem to presume !

Now all we need is a similar experiment done with swords,spears,pila & pugio's

[Dan Howard]

Apparently other arrowheads were tested previously and the bodkin was found to provide the best chance for penetration.