Knights Vs G.Is

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Bogie, and others...

I agree that it is certainly possible to hit a man-sized target at 500 yards with a rifle of moderate accuracy. I can do that myself, just fine, on a square range, against a highly visible, stationary target. I cannot, however, hit an erratic, rapidly moving, man-sized target that is returning fire. Can you?

I think that you guys are seriously estimating the advantage that modern weaponry would grant in this scenario. That an advantage exists is undeniable. I do not think that such an advantage will allow 30 infantry to stand up against one thousand medieval soldiers. The manpower imbalance is simply too great.

- Chris
 
Well gents, I shoot long bows. Arrows lose speed very quickly once they leave the string, and even with my fastest bow, a Black Widow LAG, 400 yards is WAY, way, way out of my range. I'm not talking about hitting anything...I'm just talking about getting the arrow that far. I think the only determinant in this fight is the cavalry. If they immediately start thier charge when the shooting starts they might just barely have enough hooves left to crush 30 troopers before they're all done. But I really don't think that they would make it that far in the face of massed auto weapons fire. Horse cavalry in the post Maxim era? Nah.
 
Wouldn't it be ultra-cool if someone could come out with a video game.... call it "What If"... that you could input any kind of scenario, then allow it to be networkable, possibly online?

Untill that happens, or untill that Time Tunnel gets invented or dug-up, we'll just have to give our opinions, whether educated, experienced, or just thought up.
 
Until the targets are within 200 or so yards, they're essentially not returning fire. At least not effective aimed fire. And you don't have to worry about the peasants until they're within 20 or so yards. Remember that just because an archer made a shot once doesn't mean that any archer can make it all the time.

The technological advantage is there. Your soldiers may not hit the targets on the first round, but they're using semi-autos (except for the machine gunners) with confirmed antipersonnel capability to beyond 600 yards.

The M21s are fully capable of hitting 50% of rounds fired, to a distance beyond 800 yards.

Even if an M-16 is only going to hit on 25% of rounds fired at 400, that's still a sizable number. And odds of hits get better as the environment becomes denser.

Add in losses from the 203 gunners aiming for clusters (and do the 203s have flechette rounds available?) Plus, they've got the .223 capability - they can load the blooper, wait until they've got a target while firing the .223, then target the blooper when they've acquire something worth it.

Say each soldier is carrying an average of 500 rounds of assorted ammo. Personally, I'd be carrying more... SAWs, etc., could literally start at one end of the line, and mow to the other, with truly nasty consequences to the medieval troops. If a round would miss the first rank, it's still a danger to the next - and the next. Remember that at these distances, the trajectories are essentially flat; +/- a torso. Not so with the archers.

Any bow hunters out there? I wonder just what the actual max for a bow is?
 
As stated previous, modern soldiers would be stupid to sit in the middle of an open field and given the fact that each side would follow the tactics of their time, as this is all they know, the modern infantry would utterly destroy the medieval soldiers, IMHO.

Not saying that the medieval soldiers lack courage or cunning, but their combat tactics involve skirmish lines and charges. We see how well that worked out in the revolutionary war and the civil war. It's no wonder we don't fight like that anymore.
 
Any bow hunters out there? I wonder just what the actual max for a bow is?
Click to expand...
I can shoot my 80lbs compound 100 yards, not at animals but at targets. With practice I think I could be consistent at 100 yards. Of course that is with modern arrows and a compound. Medieval archers didn’t even use recurves so they lost a lot of energy that modern bows transmit to the arrow. Adjust for old arrows (which I’m not all that familiar with) and figure that the archer is a super stud then toss in some bonus yardage and I figure the max effective range of the archers was less than 200 yards. Not what one or two was able to do, but what all of them are capable of. To be honest, I really don’t think archers would have been effective beyond about 100 yards. Within that range though, I think they would have been devastating.
 
Bogie -

Generally an professional longbowman would carry an arrow case with maybe two dozen shafts. Some carried more, although during wartime good shafts were often scarce. Archers in the HYW were taught not to use volley fire unless they could not pick a target. I don't know what their hit percentage was, but I suspect that it was pretty high. We're talking guys who spend ten years just learning the basics of the skill.

203's do have flechette rounds avaialable, but they wouldn't be useful in this battle. They're out of gas by 75 yards. Kind of like a big, low-velocity shotgun. I'm not sure if they're even issued anymore.

500 rounds of ammo each? That sounds high. 800 for a SAW gunner, maybe around 4-500 for a 240B, 210 for a -16 (not counting the ammo carried in stripper clips; either way the battle will be over before those come into play.) Dunno about the M21s, but I doubt they carry more than 200 rounds ready to go.

Raking fire with a machinegun isn't a viable technique that I've ever heard of. You pick a cluster of targets and walk bursts of fire into it. The modern troops can inflict some casualties with that technique, but I doubt that it would be enough to offset the manpower disadvantage.

As for the -21s and -16s, they may be capable of 50% or 25% hits, but that leaves out the human factor. In a battle, the hit percentage is always a whole lot lower.

Still, it would be interesting to write a simulation for this scenario. Maybe in Operation Flashpoint? Anyone have a computer capable of handling 1030 seperate AIs?

- Chris
 
Well, taking into account the above info, assuming that the cavalry can be taken out relatively easily (horses are big, and generally don't dodge about...), you're going to have at least 30 seconds where the modern M-16 troops can fire unopposed (assuming that the archers can move at olympic-sprinter speeds... but they not likely to move ahead of their protecting peasants). During those 30 seconds, if they can unload a total of 450 aimed shots (15x30), they should be taking out at least 100 enemy. Odds are, they'll get a body count greater than that, since I expect that the archers, etc., wouldnt' be able to close within striking distance for upwards of two minutes. Likely _way_ upwards.

Then, assuming an average rate of fire of one round/second, with 25% hits (at under 400 yards, without appreciable return fire, it's a trigger pulling contest that gets easier as the ranks approach 200 and then 100 yards), that's half the enemy force gone. Add in 3 x 10 x 2 (50% hits for the 3 M21 riflemen x 2 magazines) on selected targets, and things are becoming a LOT more manageable. And we're not even considering the bloopers.

Also consider that it'd be a simple thing for the M21 riflemen to discern, target, and remove the medieval leadership.

So, the medieval force will likely lose 50% of its capability, including much of the cavalry and archers, by the time it closes to where the archers can actually hit. Also, take into account that after the cavalry is removed, the 7.62 and .223 machine guns will then be brought into play against what's left of the archers.
 
Something else I just thought of. While it would be easy to pick out the cavalry (assuming they were in range), how do you identify an archer? They wear roughly the same gear. How easy is it to tell a longbow and a spear apart at 400 yards?

- Chris
 
Thing is, it isn't a battle until the other side can shoot back. Up until then, it's a trigger pulling contest. I _know_ that I can fire a magazine, aimed, in under a minute, with darn good hit results. And remember that ANY hit will likely work. Leg, arm, whatever. Any place where they're massed, you miss your target, the bullet keeps going until it finds another. If the fellows at Roarke's Drift could hold off 3000 Zulu with single-shot rifles, imagine what a third of their number could do with 10x (conservative) the firepower.

And someone oughta tell the folks who withstood human wave assaults in WWII and Korea that raking fire is ineffective...
 
Uh folks, there are some pretty equivalent real life examples that be examined.

Polish Calvary vs the German Wehrmacht, 1939?

Various WWI Calvary actions?



My thought is that the Modern unit will see the mounted armor with enough notice that they will be ready to shoot well before the archers can, or before the horses can get up to speed.


My vote is that the middle ages folks are dog food, with some horses crashing to the ground within 25 yards of the GIs.
 
the GIs would never get trampeled. one HE round from a 203 would scatter the entire enemy line, and they'd run for the hills. it's got a range of 400 meters. now, say *each* 203 gunner is going at it while the knights/etc are still clustered, and the 240 gunners and saw gunners are going at it, and the riflemen are attacking *area* targets.

by the time the first 30 seconds are up, there'd be so many dead that the remaining would scatter anywhere they could to avoid the fiery death from the wizards on the other side of the hill.
 
The Geek's Thoughts:

1) I'm glad someone brought up Africa. Basically, it was conquered by relatively small troop formations with single shot rifles and only a few machine guns per formation.

For the sake of argument, can we agree that metal armor is irrelevant to modern gunfire? If so, then it only serves to bog down the medievals.

2) I'm not under the impression that the longbow was generally an aimed weapon, so for all intents and purposes, you've got a relatively static formation ballistically lobbing arrows perhaps 200 yards into kevlar clad troops. Now I know that kevlar isn't especially knife proof, but I'll bet the ballistic plates and the helmets are.

3) The marine manual of machine gunning calls for a number of techniques, including traversing fire. http://www.biggerhammer.net/manuals/mcwp3151.pdf


4) Basically, you've got a situation where the medievals are being severely depleted at an increasing rate before they can even get into range where they can employ their weapons, against troops who are suitably armored against them.

5) Either the cavalry leads, or they don't play, and if they do play, the medieval footmen will have to climb over all the dead horses, which will slow them down. This then forms a natural ridge and barrier, as the bodies pile higher and higher.

6) Another truism learned from another war: Bonzai charges against rifle companies just don't work. ;)

7) There is a REASON cavalry, plate armor, archery and pikemen no longer have a place on the modern battlefield, and it's name is RIFLE.
 
Heck I'll play.

First of all, knights of this period would have been wearing chainmail, not platemail (plate came into dominance as a result of firearms). Any penetration by a modern bullet would have sent shards of chain into the body in addition to the bullet itself. Bad stuff.

Longbows probably wouldn't have been shot farther than 200 yards. Archery is most effective when volleyed from formed ranks -something aimed riflefire can break up.

Medieval horse wouldn't go near the sound of the guns. Unless trained, horses do not like loud noises. FACT- Mongols used firecrackers in the 1300's to disrupt Hungarian cavalry when they invaded Europe.

Dying to the last man is stupid, troops are expensive.
Few formed hand-to-hand units would have stayed cohesive after 10-15% causalties. This is called brittleness . Medieval chivalry ran away all the time.

Prior to the introduction of firearms, the majority of battlefield fatalities were caused after one unit has broken and run away. Deaths were caused mostly by the victors as they caught up and killed the losers from behind.

Soldiers of any age won't accept huge casualties before running away.

Modern infantry can pick off targets starting at 300yards with some regularity.

You do understand that firearms were the principal reason cavalry lost dominance on the battlefield? Firearms were also the reason why bowcraft ended.
 
Clarification

To clear up the situational and terrain background, I'm assuming that a platoon of G.Is get lost on manouvers and stumble into a trans-dimentional portal. They get transported to a parrellel dimention which is still stuck in the 1200 - 1300s.

Baron whateverhisnameis is on his way to quell a rebellion by the highland clans with his 1000 troops when our G.Is appear as if by magic some 400 yards in front of them. Due to their strange appearance, the Baron assumes that they are "demon spawn from the plains" and attacks with all this men.

The Baron adopts the same tactics that English lords would use in 1250AD.
 
Chris

"Raking fire with a machinegun isn't a viable technique that I've ever heard of. "

All involved racked up a considerable body count on many occassions during WWI using that very technique. I assume you are I are defining racking fire in the same manner.


S-
 
The info about weapon capacities and all is fascinating and good to know. The input about the human element is also well taken.

Here's another human element: No one said anything about the moderns having (or having the time to create) an entrenched, defensible position (making the comparison to Roarke's Drift like apples to xylophones). The moderns got caught out in the open. This already implies that they're poorly commanded.
 
Four hundred yards. The best English archers, with the finest weapons of the time MIGHT make it that far. Might make it, if there was a miracle. Your average archer wasn't well paid or fed and wasn't likely to have the hundred pound pull strength for the best bows. Even if they were the best archers of the day, a dispersed unit of G.I.s would be hard to hit at any range other than two hundred yards or less.

In the time it took the bowmen (and their screens) to move into effective range, the machine guns and grenades would have devistated many of their troops, they would be scared to DEATH and the horses would be hard to control. The armor would not help, at all. If it did, we'd still have it. That's why it died out, guns penetrated it easily. The troops, other than the knights, would be peasants with a few units of mercenaries to strengthen them out. Devil machines are dropping your friends and comrades all around, fire is blasting out of the ground(M203) and you might be next. It's looking grim for the knights...
 
Why not more math?

Hello All,

Use some math?

30 kill/stop 1000.
Every 3 kill/stop 100.
or!!!
1000 kill/stop 30?
Every 100/kill stop 3?

That is THREE modern/100 medieval;
OR
ONE modern to 34 medieval.

At first I after reading this thread I thought the medieval troops would win for superior numbers. I was going to show here why. However, I realize how wrong I was.

After doing the math, each GI with ONE 30 round magazine (and all kill shots) is going to mean even numbers of loss!!!!!!! BUT !!! BUT!!! BUT!!! the GI can project causulties further out (AND carrry more then ONE 30rnd M-16 magazine).

The same reason the Gulf War was one sided for the USA tank crews. The USA tank crews could inflict damage at a greater range.

IF each GI has 4 30 round magazines in there M-16A2, and can shoot worth a hoot, then its no contest. Each GI shoots 30 of the medieval troups (900 inflicted wounds) before the GI's even come under fire themselves.

And! That is with the M16, in .223, if some of the GI's are allowed to use other modern weapons, the defeat of the medieval is even more certain.

Sad to say, the medieval guys need closer range, or more numbers.

Sprig
 
only surviors of the maedevile forces will be those who fall down behind the windrows of dead or dying.
three heavy machine guns at 400 yards will easily kill the
attacking force.

the m16s and grenade launchers would be just langnappe.

battle of the somme anyone?

rms/pa
 
saw a show a while back where they were talking about the effective range of siege weapons, they said the trebuchet maxed out at about 200 yds and were wondering if the long bow from a castle wall would be a danger for a siege crew, to demonstrate a guy took a longbow and fired from 200 yards, the arrow alsmost went clean through an armored dummy but the fletching caught on the way out the back. the guy who shot the arrow didn't look like he was really even trying.


personally I think that if the medieval forces didn't run from the sound of gunfire they'd probably use volley fire at long range to distract the GIs while the cavalry tramples them. of course if the archers are using alternating volleys they can advance to range and start really shooting.
 
This is all a question of the tactics used by either side. There are tactics which would allow either to win. The question then becomes how contrived is this situation going to be? Is one group going to withdraw immediately? If so there may not be a fight. Does either side understand how the other fights?

The GI reaction to this would probably be to withdraw (using covering fire if necessary) to defensible ground. Then entrench and find out what the heck is going on. How the heck did we end up in a renfaire?

The medeival reaction would be huh? Are they angels or demons? Foriegn invaders? Don't see any insignia or heraldric emblems so how can we tell? Perhaps we should run up a white flag and parley before the battle like civilized men?
 
Oh yeah, if the GIs fall back in staggered sequence, they can delay closure even more.

I'd venture 50% of the opfor, including most of the archers and cavalry, will be out of the battle before there is a chance of a hit on a GI.

Numbers would be higher if the opfor was clustered together in any sort of "fighting formation."

For instance, this "lost platoon" would also stand a VERY good chance in the opening scene of "Gladiator." One light SAW would be more than enough for a phalanx, leaving the rest of the group to concentrate on siege weapons, archers and mounted troops.
 
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