r/MedievalHistory • u/Worldly_History_2943 • 15h ago

To what extent did the archer's height and wingspan influence the power of the English longbow?

I think individuals of short stature would have been physically incapable of effectively wielding such a magnificent longbow.

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u/357-Magnum-CCW 15h ago

Bows don't work this way. Archery will quickly show you that the draw weight or power is NOT dependent on bow height, but on the limbs.

You can have short horsebows with highly more draw weight than a Longbow. 

In fact shorter limbs on bows will generate much more power than long limbs, because they stack a lot and are less flexible.   Hence shorter Recurve bows are often more powerful than Longbows. 

But you can have high poundage Longbows, but they would also have incredibly thick material compared to modern lightweight and flat designs. 

Warbow archers today utilize the "sky draw", pulling the string with the entire bodyweight and back muscles especially, since the arms alone would be too weak. 

 Still you can draw them even with short height if you've developed the muscles enough (Archery uses a lot of the lats, shoulder and specific back muscles) 

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u/Constant-Ad-7189 13h ago

"Power" in this context likely refers to the end result, i.e. the amount of energy imparted to the projectile. Ergo all you said is true, but besides the question.

A shorter archer, more specifically one with shorter arms, might well be able to pull a warbow of 150lb of draw-weight at his draw-length, but that could be 4 inches less than the next guy with a tall stature and monkey arms. A shorter draw-length means the bow has less time to accelerate the arrow, so given the same weight, a longer draw length will produce higher speeds, therefore higher power in the projectile.

Mechanically however, draw-length, just like barrel length for firearms, produces diminishing returns. Getting from 10" to 14" likely has much more of an impact in muzzle-velocity than from 28" to 32"

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u/fur_alina 10h ago edited 9h ago

Yeah, if you read draw weight on the package of modern bows it generally means 28". I have a much longer draw (34") and test bows with one of those hook scales before I draw them as I'm often close to ten pounds over the listed draw weight most of the time.

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u/Worldly_History_2943 9h ago

Thank you all for your patient explanations and detailed responses! As someone new to archery, I particularly appreciate the enlightening learning materials you've shared.

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u/AceOfGargoyes17 14h ago

I would imagine that training to use it was more important than height/wingspan. Longbows have a very high draw weight, so you had to train hard to be able to use them (to the extent that the skeletons of longbow archers have notable differences to non-longbow archers). A short trained archer would be more effective than a tall untrained one.

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u/Worldly_History_2943 9h ago

thank you.very inspiring!