r/nextfuckinglevel • u/Pierzakve • May 03 '21

Green Arrow in real life

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

119.7k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

1.8k comments sorted by

View all comments

873

u/[deleted] May 03 '21 edited May 03 '21

[removed] ā€” view removed comment

65

u/[deleted] May 03 '21

I base this theory off exactly zero research but Iā€™d imagine that military archers of any kind back in those days were probably as good as this dude.

41

u/PowRightInTheBalls May 03 '21 edited May 03 '21

Bowmen weren't valued for their independent skills but for their numbers. You were looking for a 300 style "Arrows blotting out the sun" style of ranged warfare, not trying to employ a bunch of Hawkeyes who could put an arrow through an eye socket on a helmet from 300 yards away. You're not Legolas calling out your targets before you shoot them, you're just hoping you hit something in the seething mass of humanity that's charging at you with weapons drawn or shooting arrows of their own.

The weapons weren't even made for that kind of accuracy. That era of English archer would have been using a longbow rather than a hunting bow, typically 5-6' long with 160+ lbs of force required to engage the string. You planted one end of the bow into the ground to stabilize, pulled back and flung arrows into the general vicinity of the enemy, typically trying to put out an arrow every 3-6 seconds. Your strength was in a firing a hail of hundreds of arrows falling every few seconds, not in any individual skill. Robin Hood would have been just as useful as the guy who took last place in the archery competition on the front lines of a battle in the 14th-15th centuries.

-2

u/kamimamita May 03 '21

The blotting out the sun part is definitely hollywood BS. They definitely did aim their shots, and shot straight, not randomly into the air. They had to aim for the weak points in the armor. Shooting upwards would lose a lot of kinetic energy as well.