Medieval Longbow: The Best Distance to Defeat a Knight in Armor

Kevin the Bowman here. Kevin the Bowman from the History Squad. I often get asked questions and I'm going to answer one now from Tyrant Bat, one of my subscribers. He asked about the distance, the killing distance, and what Tyrant was saying was the optimum killing range, 30 yards or 30 places. Well, I've got first-hand experience of this, not from when I was in the army. This is something totally different. I was the bowman at Warwick Castle for 13 years, long time ago now. I'm very, very lucky. I was the first bowman there in modern times, of course, and I had carte blanche to basically make up shows, do stuff, shoot across the river, and all that kind of thing. It was great, but I got challenged by two reenactor knights. They were from the Woodvilles household, great guys, great guys, and they challenged me. They said if I use the blunted arrows, the ones with the rubber bung on the end, they would come down the ditch at Warwick Castle, up the other side, while I'm shooting at them. They reckoned because they were going to be in full armour, good armour, I wouldn't be able to stop them. And me being me, said I'll do it provided we incorporate it into a show. So, four to six hundred people there, it's one of the big shows. So, off they go and they stand up by the castle wall, which was about 40, 50 places away in a straight line. I've got a big bag of these blunted arrows and down they come. And I was hitting them and the arrows were basically bouncing off as they were going down the ditch. They were dead easy to hit. When they come up the other side, I hit one of them here in his helmet and I heard him gasp as the arrow lifted his helmet up. He then, as he tried to step forward, the front part of his armour between his legs, his tassets actually opened up. What are you going to do? So, I simply put an arrow there and I sent another one straight away and he hit the deck. He just simply dropped and his signal for me not to shoot him was raise his hat. Fine. The other guy now, he's actually doing this, coming towards me, tiptoeing, tight as he can. So, 30, 20, 30 places. I aimed and I put an arrow straight down his arm brace, his armour here, and he span around. As he opened up, I shot at any void, any gap I could and I actually hit him in the groin. Unfortunately for him, he was wearing chain mail, but he wasn't wearing any padding underneath. He hadn't got a gambeson or anything like that and that unfortunately injured him. He dropped to his knees like a sack of potatoes and I knew he was out of the game. So, this business of distance. First of all, I've always done it in paces instead of yards, feet and inches because it's a bit modern. If you take Henry V, he marched his troops to within 200 paces of the enemy. Then they begin to shoot, stings them into action, but of course, they're coming towards you and they're closing down that distance and I can tell you, what you do is you shoot at the voids, shoot at any gaps at the weak points. These guys knew how to do it. So, 30 paces, good killing, I'll tell you now from experience. You can aim at a point and you can put your man down. I hope that's helpful.