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PSA About the Effectiveness and Some Misconceptions of Traditional Body Armor

sKz Aaron D·4/8/2018, 4:27:39 AM·1 votes·327 views

There are a lot of common misconceptions about how heavy armor, such as plate armor of the late medieval and early renaissance era, worked. Schools incorrectly teach that knights were virtually incapable of movement, that suits weighed well over 100 pounds, they needed to be craned onto horseback, that it could take over an hour to put on and remove, and that you needed the assistance of another person for the entire process.

In reality, full plate suits often weighed between 40 and 70 pounds, and something important to note is that the weight is spread across the whole body. It's not like wearing a 50 pound rucksack or trying to carry a 100 pound package of tiles. The design of the suits would also attempt to anchor much of the weight that would be on the torso to the hips of the wearer, to lower their center of gravity and make the suit's weight even less noticeable. You can quite easily run, mount and dismount your horse, and depending on your suit (and more importantly, your own acrobatic ability), also do somersaults or cartwheels in the full suit of armor.

Suits generally took between 10-15 minutes to put on, and you would only need assistance from someone else at one or two points to make a quick connection because your range of motion was slightly reduced. Suits could be stripped off in less than 5 minutes. In the case of mail, you would simply put on your gambeson like a coat, followed by the mail on top, and a belt, then you'd spend a couple of minutes strapping on your pauldrons and whatnot.

Schools also don't teach just how strong armor was, and because of this, popular culture shows armor to be utterly worthless. Watch any movie in the middle ages and you'll see arrows and swords impaling or cutting people in half straight through steel, despite knowing that you can stop a bullet (much more deadly than an arrow) with a steel plate - depending on the type of gun and round, as well as the thickness and grade of the steel.

Utter bull. (Pardon the lame attempt at a pun.) Even before the advent of full plate armor, a chainmail suit with pauldrons, greaves, bracers, helm, and gambeson underneath was nearly impenetrable. A mace to the chest? May knock you off of your feet, but the thick cloth gambeson would absorb a lot of the blow, and not be penetrated. A sword slashing across your stomach? Not a problem, can't even come close to cutting through the riveted four in one chainmail, and the gambeson would do a lot on its own if the sword wasn't sharp enough to shave with. An arrow to the heart from a longbow? Depends mostly on the arrowhead, the right kind would be capable of breaking through the chainmail, but would then be stopped without even hitting the flesh due to the gambeson underneath.

What about hitting someone over the top of the head with a longsword? Well, people wore helmets made of the same steel as the sword, with a chainmail coif to protect the neck, and padding just like the gambeson to absorb force to the head. Your sword would most likely hit the angled or curved helmet and slide off with much of the force of the swing being reduced - just like the cannonballs that would hit the sloped sides of ironclads. Maces however, were actually good for use against helmets. A solid mace swing could easily cause concussions and knock people out, and if you hit an open-faced helm or just a veil of mail, well... You're dead.

Full plate? A sword, arrow, bolts, axe, or mace will NEVER cut you through a proper suit of plate. The plate may get dented by some strikes, possibly even pierced by others, like a crossbow with extremely high poundage required to draw, but you will not be cut.

As a result of this, foot combat between knights most often turned into the knights half-swording until they knocked the other one down, then pulled out a dagger or unscrewed the pommel of their sword and tried to stab the other in the face, neck, groin, or armpit.

Tests done with properly made four in one riveted chainmail, gambeson, or plate armor of the same quality as the weapons result in the weapons not doing too much. I will provide links to some demonstrations and resources.

Due to the massive effectiveness of armor, weapons were specially designed to be good against the. Chainmail could be pierced by very pointy things, like spears, arrows, and thrusts from longswords - but a slash from even a shaving sharp falcion would be worthless. Chainmail was also always worn with gambeson. A gambeson was great for protecting against slashes from less sharp swords, blunt weapons, and pointy things, but a shaving sharp falcion could cut through it (and the wearer) like butter. Plate was the ultimate armor, able to protect against just about everything - warhammers, lances with a horse propelling them forward, trebuchets, and boiling oil being about the only exceptions. Plate was usually worn with chainmail covering the areas that you needed a greater range of motion in, and always with gambeson being worn as the lowest layer of the armor, so you can imagine just how difficult it was to mortally wound or kill someone wearing it.

Gambeson (cloth or padded armor) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CULmGfvYlso https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCWT7l9ic38 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODS7ksbBRuE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uWDCDJD_4w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uP4wLMmp-8U

Chainmail https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2-QuTLkZOQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtJS1MziI98 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydjdBTV8ZbY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADOhr-C0s74

Full Plate Armor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rO2nM_2iBXA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMT6hjwY8NQ

There may be some areas where I am wrong, as I am not an expert, just a bit of an enthusiast, so if you provide contradicting evidence to any claims here I will gladly edit the post and reform my understanding. That said, I expect this post to be largely accurate, though certainly not all-encompassing.

9 Comments

Rewt4/8/2018, 4:35:17 AM3 votes

And Thus. Halfswording. Which Btw can be done relatively safely with bare hands.

You are right that people completely underestimate armor and Think that you could just slash or thrust right through it which was just not true.

Now 1 thing is that you 100% undersold maces. Maces are nuts. Maces hurt like a bitch. The whole point of a mace is "Cant get through the armor....... just bash the fuck out of them" Also maces were generally used on the head due to the limited amount of armor on the head. 1 solid mace strike to the head could cause a concussion and completely take you out of the fight. Its the same Idea with the Hammer strike with a sword.

Kythers4/8/2018, 4:31:53 AM2 votes

lol just build item 3035

Vacus4/8/2018, 4:29:20 AM1 votes

Why exactly are you posting this here?

rh3yd4/8/2018, 4:29:51 AM1 votes

Ultimate click bait... I expected an in-depth discussion or armor (I.e. tabis, dead man’s, etc...)

Still, always good to learn something.

Proxy3454/8/2018, 5:23:07 AM1 votes

Its well known that the strongest heroines wear the least amount of armor in videogames lol

ZerglingOne4/8/2018, 7:18:57 AM1 votes

Let's also not forget that swords are not very good weapons of war. They're weapons of oppression. A weapon used almost entirely for the killing of peasants and preventing uprisings. A sword is best at this because it basically kills an unarmored opponent if any part of it touches them in a swing. Unlike weapons with sweet spots like axes, spears, or maces.

Also, melee weapons prior to the advent of gunpowder (which is why metal armor fell out of style) but late in the period reflected the fact that they were to be used against armored opponents. Things like the Lucerne hammer or other halberd style weapons. Things that have a bevy of options to hit your opponent with based on what they're sporting in terms of defense.

The Lucerne hammer is essentially the perfect melee weapon for an armored opponent. It has a hammer for plate, a swordspear for chain and gambeson, as well as that nasty hook for dismounting cavalry. A really cool weapon tbh.