Talk:Bodkin point

Bodkin tipped arrows will penetrate plate armour by several inches at ranges anywhere up to 100 yards using an "average" longbow.

N Hotchkiss

Modern experiments demonstrating that these arrows will barely, or not at all, penetrate plate armour used a stationary target. In this scenario, the only force applied to the armour is that of the incoming arrow. In battle, however, the Knights wearing plate armour were moving forward at possibly 15 - 20 miles per hour. That speed, multiplied by the combined weight of the horse, rider and their armour, is a terrific force moving in one direction. Combine that force with the force of the arrow moving in the opposite direction, and you have a Total Force more than capable of penetrating the best French or Italian plate armour of the time. Therefore, these arrows, loosed from a standard Longbow, actually were the devastating weapons depicted in contemporary accounts of Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt.

This article could use a picture. The best examples I found were Hector Cole Arrow Heads and Hector Cole Type 9. They're lovely but copyrighted, although there should be examples from English museum collections somewhere. Maybe someone could ask Hector Cole himself if he would provide photos of his work under the GFDL that could be used with attribution. I don't have any experience with making such a request, but his site is Hector Cole Arrowsmith. --Quale 22:10, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Your physics if flawed. That the knight is a large heavy object moving forward doesn't add much to the equation. The speed only adds maybe 10% at best, and the problem isn't that the arrow doesn't have the energy to puncture the armour, it the design of a bobkin is wrong for the job. It is a long point of SOFT iron, these are NOT hardened steel (if they were, they would work well). This long soft shaft deforms on impact, and spreads its force out over a much larger area. Show me a modern test that 'proves' they could readily punch through armour, and you are either showing me cheap non period armour, or cheap non period arrows. Bodkins that would be used in war were most likely for the range, and somewhat simple means of production, and repairing them is also easier than a broad head. Any arrow that was used as an 'anti-armour' arrowhead would have taken a shape more of a modern field point. A very short point, that wouldn't bend and compress easily when hitting something. Reference to armour piercing should be changed to point out this hold over error.--Talroth 01:55, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Maybe we can settle this argument by specifying meaning of "armour", particularly whether one means PLATE steel armour or CHAIN MAIL armour. A bodkin point (steel or iron), would be highly likely to penetrate chain mail, but any arrow, bodkin or broad head, hardened or not, was unlikely to penetrate decent PLATE armour, not least because it is unlikely to hit said plate at a perfect 90 degree angle. The bodkin will however find a gap in chain mail, independent of impact angle. What sorts of armour would be worn by the majority of of an oncoming army, particularly the foot soldiers? 125.239.189.172 02:00, 27 June 2007 (UTC)


 * As I note below in the armour penetration section, bodkins will not penetrate mail armour. This conclusion is based upon tests conducted by the Royal Armoury at Leeds and also upon contemporary accounts.  For instance Anna Comnena, Byzantine historian, comments that the Crusaders attacking Constantinople are invulnerable to arrows.  She notes that some crusaders had as many as ten arrows sticking out of them and were unfazed by it.  There are simply no contemporary accounts of arrows killing bunches of people.  Individuals here and there?  Without a doubt; even the best armour sometimes fails (especially given the level of QC available at the time).  But there is simply no evidence, literary or experimental to support the assertion that bodkins regularly penetrated any kind of armour.
 * It is simply not reasonable to assert that bodkins were armour piercing points. There are contemporary examples of armour piercing points, on lances and swords, so the Medieval smiths clearly knew how to make such a weapon.  But the bodkin is nothing like a sword point.  The sword point is hardened steel.  The bodkin is soft iron.  The sword point flares continuously outward from the point to buttress the point.  The bodkin has a narrowed shank where it can bend or fail on impact.
 * The burden of proof falls upon those who assert that the arrows were frequently lethal to armoured soldiers. In any armour. Mercutio.Wilder 02:15, 27 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Royal Armouries tested two bodkin points. To say that this is statistically insignificant is an exercise in understatement. They tested five of the type they determined to be used for armor penetration, of which they found three to be hardened composites. This is also statistically insignificant. It remains that, in the face of a lack of real research, reason and record are the best determiners of whether bodkin points really were used for armor penetration. Throwing around this "research" as proof is just ridiculous. And no, the burden of proof doesn't fall on anyone here, because either side can be phrased as a positive assertion. NotARusski (talk) 03:07, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

English arrows or mud?
English arrows or mud? I believe I saw a show on the History Channel which reviewed this battle. They did a study with the long bow and arrows used against french knights. Their study showed that the iron tipped arrows didn't penetrate the french steel plate armour. Instead their study showed it was the "sticky" mud on the battle field which slowed the knights and eventually falling them. The mud would stick to the surfaces of the armour where as "clothed" light armed troops which had no problems killing French nobles did not get stuck in the mud as bad. They were able to use daggers and such to stab the fallen knights in the arm pits, eye slits, and etc. So the study showed it was mud and not english arrows which defeated the charge.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Battle_of_Cr%C3%A9cy"

Are you talking about Crecy or Agincourt? It makes a difference, as plate armour technology did move on in the intervening years. Also, even though I would accept that by Agincourt, longbows had trouble penetrating plate armour, it seems wrong to ignore the effect of thousands of archers firing tens of thousands of arrows, some of which would surely find weak spots in armour, or wound less well protected soldiers, or kill horses, or knock people down. Approximately 80% of the English army at Agincourt was longbowmen, and the English were probably outnumbered 3-1; so if longbowmen were utterly useless, how on earth did the English manage to win the battle?

--Merlinme 20:27, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Although the English army had roughly 80% longbowmen, they were still assumed to have daggers, mauls and other melee weapons. The documentary made an assumption that the french knights were most likely de-mounted enmasse rather then penetrated by the bodkin arrows. Following this, it also assumed that they got stuck in the mud (or slowed by it), as mud apparently 'sucks' harder on steel surfaces. The longbowmen, being dressed in cloth or leather armor, were much more maneuverable in this environment and outnumbered the encumbered knights. It takes little imagination to assume that the longbowmen proceeded to stab and/or capture the knights (which at the time often yielded instead of fighting to the death, hoping that they would be ransomed home). If I remember right, most of the knights died AFTER the battle, where the English army was ordered to execute all the prisoners they had taken. Hope this clears a few things up. Sybaronde 19:29, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

To back up what Sybaronde has said, the air tight metal boots, greaves, had the same effect as a rubber boot getting stuck in bog mud. Cloth shoes can simply be pulled out, rubber needs to be angled to remove the suction. Also, take into account that the battle (Agincourt) lasted hours, not the minutes it would take to get the arrows off (lets be generous and say archers had 100 arrows a piece, many documents state they can get off 6 arrows a minute, that means that the battle, if it were down to arrows should have lasted about twenty minutes.) Now, these Frenchmen were advancing through hard terrain, under heavy arrow fire, wet and cold, and then they come up upon an army of peasants. Now, this should seem like the French would have the advantage, but, the French attacked the English center, where the men-at-arms, the knights and the King were. At this point, the English would have fell in upon both sides of the French, as archers were arrayed on the flanks. Add to this that Henry forbade his soldiers to take prisoners until the battle was clearly theirs, and the French soldiers are going to be pretty scared, and so it is no real surprise that they then routed. Then, the English knights returned to their horses, which were fresh as they had not been used in the battle and pursued the French. This explains the heavy French casualties, and their rapid rout. Gculk 17:52 16 December 2007

Sewing bodkin
In sewing a Bodkin is a rod, traditionally of ivory or bone, tapering smoothly to a point. It is used to make eyelet holes in cloth without cutting.--Saxophobia 01:23, 7 August 2006 (UTC) Also a small steel rod with an eyelet allowing it to be used for threading elastic or ribbon through a hem.

Armour penetration?
The bodkin point was most likely not for armour penetration and besides mail armour has been shown to stand up to any contemporary weapon (see Talk:Mail_(armour)). The only exception being arrows fired at very short ranges (such as < 30m). Bodkins were soft iron and broadheads were hardened steel. Mercutio.Wilder 08:02, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

In a thread |on myArmoury Dan Howard quotes a personal correspondence with a researcher at the RA on bodkin vs. broadhead.

''As a metallurgist this is a question which interests me greatly. Some early studies were done by Peter Pratt and Peter Jones, involving a current member of RA staff but before he joined us. Some of these experiments are recorded in an appendix to Robert Hardy's book. However I have been concerned that the published version of these experiments used heat-treated steel bodkin points, for which we have no evidence. By contrast it would appear that other types of arrowheads: the compact tanged and barbed (London Museums Type 16), did indeed have steel edges/points welded to them and these were quenched and tempered. The metallurgical work is in progress but some of the information is due to be published by Ashgate in a collection of papers from the International Medieval congress, Kalamazoo (The volume will be titled de re Metallica). Unfortunately I haven't seen any results on the testing of such weapons.

Hope this helps,

David Starley PhD Science Officer

Royal Armouries Museum Conservation Department ''

So it wasn't bodkins that were hardened, but compact broadheads.

Consider the following: 1. Many sources acknowledge that hardened steel arrowheads stood a greater chance of punching through armour than soft wrought iron. Yet, according to Dr Starley, the majority of hardened arrowheads found are not of a bodkin typology but of a compact broadhead typology - e.g. MoL Catalogue Type 16. Virtually all bodkins so far examined have turned out to be unhardened.

2. If you fire a bodkin type arrowhead and a broadhead arrow weighing the same weight from the same bow, the bodkin constantly outranges the broadhead.

3. Sir John Smythe recommended a fourth of each sheaf be flight arrows to "gall" the enemy at range. This is similar to the ratio of broadheads to bodkins found on the Mary Rose.

All this suggests to me that the compact broadhead was intended to be used against armour at shorter ranges and the bodkins were intended to be used on the flight arrows described by Smythe.

Mercutio.Wilder 08:53, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Longbow vs Crossbow
The crossbow article and all scholarship I've seen indicates that the crossbow was more powerful than the longbow. Mercutio.Wilder 23:46, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

I'll remove that silly text. First of all bodkin point is just that, a type of head for an arrow, its power depends on the device it is lauched from. Allso there is no reason that would prevent using bodkin tipped bolts in a crossbow, I'm not saying that they were historically used though. --UltimateDestroyerOfWorlds (talk) 19:13, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Steel bodkins?
Were there steel bodkins at all? Longbows were still in use during the Wars of the Roses where armour was almost exclusively steel.. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 156.34.12.37 (talk) 16:29, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
 * To my knowledge: no. The studies I've seen have only found unhardenable iron bodkin heads. Mercutio.Wilder (talk) 02:34, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Arrowheads similar to bodkins, and made of steel, existed in Asia. Can't find a source right now, so I'm not adding it to the article. When/if I find that, and feel like writing something here, it would be a major change to the article from focus on the bodkin arrowhead in the British arsenal of the medieval times to "bodkin-type arrowheads" up until the era of the Qing empire or so. 85.225.188.79 (talk) 21:27, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Archery vs armour
Regardless of any and all previous discussion about the effectiveness of the specific arrowhead - with or without taking into account that an arrow spins, that not all armour is 100 % every single day, and so on - it is certainly a too strong statement to say "Archery was not effective against plate armour, which became available to European knights of fairly modest means by the late 1300s." Stating this says that any and all archery was ineffective, not just this specific arrowhead, and needs to be backed up by more than one reference. The Turks had some success, with bow and arrow, against plate armour as well, should be duly noted. More importantly, a statement about the effectiveness of archery in warfare should be moved to another appropriate page.85.225.188.79 (talk) 22:48, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I deleted that quote now, since noone was speaking against. 85.225.188.79 (talk) 10:33, 20 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I have expanded the section somewhat, with a quotation in the reference from a fairly definitive modern source. I hope this helps. Richard Keatinge (talk) 19:36, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Moving article?
I wonder about moving the article, or at least the bit about armour penetration, either to Arrow or to Armour; the thing about bodkins seems to be their non-use against armour so the armour penetration bit doesn't really fit in here, and the remainder is a stub. Any comments? Richard Keatinge (talk) 19:36, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Agreed, mostly, though I'm leaning towards something about archery in warfare (which is too big a topic to have as one article, so emphasis on "something") 85.225.188.79 (talk) 21:27, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Firearms made armor obselete?
The current page states that "Firearms were beginning to dominate the battlefield and would make infantry armour largely obsolete in the coming centuries", something that, while commonly held to be true, is contradicted by the Plate armor page, which says that "Armour was not confined to the Middle Ages, and in fact was widely used by most armies until the end of the 17th century for both foot and mounted troops. It was only the development of powerful rifled firearms which made all but the finest and heaviest armour obsolete" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.167.85.47 (talk) 02:01, 29 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I suggest that the present wording puts it rather well, though feel free to put in some further clarification if you can find a good secondary reference.Richard Keatinge (talk)
 * I still have to question this as it gives the impression that WW1 saw the end of infantry armour. In WW2 many countries used plate armour that was capable in the right circumstances of defeating high powered rifle rounds. Of course it was ridiculously heavy and only partial cover, but modern Kevlar and plate armour, while not as thick, is far lighter and widespread. Of course, this is effective in part because the countries that can afford this armour are typically facing adversaries who cannot afford newer, higher quality firearms, which means armour penetration can suffer.--Senor Freebie (talk) 18:03, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
 * The later development of personal armour, after bodkin points fell out of use, is indeed interesting. But not in this article, I think. Richard Keatinge (talk) 20:30, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Article Quality
This article reads like an absent minded professor giving a short summary of a subject. It slowly seems to meander around with mild digressions, hedging its position on armour piercing ability back and forth. It just doesn't feel very encyclopedic, it lacks any real formatting. It seems like the debate from the top of the page, has bled over into the main article page. There certainly appears to have been a mild citation war or something. Anyway, the point is its kind of a poor article.KaiserJVGB (talk) 17:33, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

As a historian I have studied The Hundred Years War. I enjoy reading conclusions based on theories. I do not like the dogmatic emphasis on certainty. That mistake should disqualify the "findings" of many would be historians. (Digression 1)That is like saying a modern scientist is entitled to his opinion conclusively denying human caused global warming but that certainly calls into question the integrity of him/her as a scientist. Likewise with historian. (Digression 2)Always be critical of the premise to an argument). It is my belief after talking to Wardens at the Tower of London, Re-enactors at Winsor, and copious reading of primary sources that it is MOST LIKELY that the bodkin tips used during he hundred years war were steel. This belief also relies on an anecdote I happened upon while reading and researching at Cambridge. The story goes that one of Edward III's officials in charge of procuring arrowheads paid for ones made of iron rather than steel, and pocketed the difference at a handsome profit. Subsequently, in the opening volleys of the Battle of Poitiers the English arrows were bouncing off the French Armor. So they started shooting at the valuable and ransom worthy horses to save their necks. I have not found out what happened to the official's neck. So going back to this articles own premise, steel bodkin arrow points would have penetrated French Armor. It did, and they did, most likely. Done. Dr. Friederich E. Herlinger — Preceding unsigned comment added by 168.216.130.145 (talk) 15:10, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

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