Re: (TFT) Guns and Armour Penetration.

["Charles Gadda" <cgadda@earthlink.net>]

Started off on the wrong foot - to put mildly.

The flak jacket analogy is a valid one, but I have no idea if it applies or
not. Dean's book mentions a number of anecdotes which suggest that armour
was considered valuable. A Marshal Saxe in c. 1750 is cited as proclaiming
how important armour is. There are many, many other such anecdotes, which is
why I really do advise getting this book, if you can. Its just too much to
summarise in an e-mail. If you have a real problem, give me your mailing
address, and I'll let you borrow my copy (please return it, though - I over
spent as it was... :-)

Certainly I think it quite possible for a breastplate to stop a musket
round. The late Mediaeval breastplate, at least the better ones, could be of
surprisingly good quality steel - easily matching the steel used in swords,
and was often heat treated. Granted, it was *streaky* steel, of varying C
contents (0.2-0.8%), usually with slag inclusions. But, again, the better
stuff minimised this problem. Ballistically, it had very good sloping and
could be quite difficult to plant a solid, non-glancing hit on. The
thickness could be up to 1/8" in some places, which is an awful lot of steel
to poke through, even for a musket. Sources: Longbow, by Robert Hardy (esp.
App 3, which talks about penetration details), Dean's book, and an article
from the Arms and Armour symposium held back in 1999. I have the
proceedings, which had an article on period metallurgy, heat treating, and
so forth as it pertains to armour, but I can't locate the **$^! thing
(buried it in a pile within the last couple of days - I'll find it
eventually) Look for Arms & Armor (located in Minneapolis, MN) on the web -
they do repros of Mediaeval/Rennaisance arms and armour (hence the name...)
I think they still sell copies of it. If you have trouble I can fish up the
URL for you.

I was aware that spherical rounds lost a lot of V with range - any stats?
Esp. comparing with arrows or bolts? I've always wondered how to model loss
of power with range, myself.

1. Recognise your point regarding statistics, but there is one possible
problem here, namely, what are the actual period casualty statistics? Maybe
it is funny, but, what if a breastplate really was that effective, or maybe
even better? Unfortunately, the only way to find out is to take 200 less
than wise people, issue half breastplates and the other half T-shirts with
bulls eye's painted on them, and plug each with a Brown Bess and record the
results. Not sure how you'd get a permit to do that... or how expensive it
would be...

2. Less than 30m- distance would certainly maximise K. E. As to historical
evidence, there is some, but of course the details (muzzle V, armour
quality, etc.) are often lacking. I do not think crossbow penetration is
solely K.E. As a thought experiment, I plugged some numbers into the
penetration formula listed in Longbow, and came up with the same penetrative
ability as a musket, when one factors in the X-section area (I assumed 1/4"
bodkin for the crossbow and a .75" D ball for the musket. The upshot was
that the bodkin point did 1/7th of the work of the musket ball. Granted
these are poor figures, but as a ROM it is quite illuminating) I admit,
though, that factoring the point of a crossbow bolt/ arrow is difficult; but
one has to figure that, at initial contact, whatever K. E. the bolt/arrow
has is going to be focused on an area around 0.001" square. That
considerably magnifies the effect of said bolt/arrow. I would expect that a
lead musket ball will deform considerably, possibly mushrooming well beyond
its initial diameter, but I have no way of modelling that (yet - but that
may well be from a lack of looking on MY part...) As for the change from
swords and pikes to muskets, a couple of points. First, I think muskets
(well, matchlocks of various sorts) really were primary weapons in the 16th
century; I thought the pikes were just to ward off cavalry (at least by the
latter half of the 16th cent.) Second, the change from standard melee
weapons should be seen as a change to muskets *with bayonets* Certainly the
musket with bayonet rendered the pike superfulous - can't say as much about
swords, axes, warhammers, etc., but it might be the same thing. Finally,
Dean and other sources (Dubruck's history of warfare series) imply a change
in tactics towards greater mobility might have been responsible for the
widespread disuse of armour. Marching long distances in a heavy breastplate
is not fun; having run around in a hauberk at a mere local ren faire is bad
enough (and I don't have a sadisdic sergeant force marching me all day - I
can rest and drink water at leisure) I can readily understand why something
as simple as mobility might cause people to lose armour, no matter how
effective.

One problem with K.E. theory. Part of my reluctance is an article in the Nov
'96 issue of Military Illustrated, which dealt with the infantry anti tank
rifles (Boyes, M1918 Mauser, Solothurn, etc.) While most were difficult to
compare, I came across a couple that were close enough to make a meaningful
comparison. This was the 13x94R steel core AP (fired from a Mauser M1918)
and a very modern 7.62x51 NATO round, manufactured by FFV in Sweden. THe
former round is 800 gr, with a muzzle V. of 2525 fps. The latter is tungsten
cored, 130 gr, and a muzzle V. of 3120 fps. The 13x94R has an energy of
11396 ft-lbs while the FFV round is only 2960 ft-lbs. Yet both are capable
of penetrating 15mm of armor plate at 300 meters! Granted, the quality of
the armor plate is not specified, but one would reason that any differences
would favour the WWI vintage 13x94R, rather than the ultra modern FFV round.
This is a major reason why I don't consider K.E. to be all important. At the
very least one must explain how such a discrepency is possible, given the
near 4:1 advantage in energy possessed by the 13x94R.

As for modelling all of this, I have no idea. But note that similar issues
plague even hand weapons. A warhammer's backspike will routinely punch a
square shaped hole in a breastplate (or anything else, for that matter) thou
gh one would never think that from looking at the TFT rules!

Also, the point about hit points is spot on - it is a weakness. It can be
overcome, but it involves a lot of overhaul. I have some ideas, mostly along
the lines of allowing high penetration weapons to use one die, while other
weapons use multiple dice, and have armour (depending on type) subtract from
*each* die of damage the weapon does. For example, say mail stops 2 hits/per
die. A short sword with 2-1 dice will do 2d-5 in this case (ave dam 2) while
a small axe at 1d+2 will do 1 die (ave damage 3.5). This is not the best
example; I had worked it out a bit more, but it kinda illustrates the point.
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