Greek semi-auto crossbow

[Floyd]

Adam and Jamie are at it again.

Watch how Adam figures out a quick and dirty release mechanism for a heavy self feeding crossbow.

http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/mythbusters-arrow-machine-gun/

I want one!  

[Requiem ex Inferni]

We are so screwed if Adam and Jamie decide to become evil scientists. They won't NEED an army.  

[Man of the Demoneye]

Requiem in Mortis

We are so screwed if Adam and Jamie decide to become evil scientists. They won't NEED an army.

Nah, all they would need is Kari Byron and a magazine.

oh s**t!  

[war_junky 91]

I immediately had a come back for the "well played" comment about it taking 3 people to fire it. Archery back in the day took skill, a lot of skill. You could hand these out and have three field hands operate it and they could lay down some serious power if they had a battery of these.

The chinese did a similar thing with an easy cocking crossbow with a magazine, they handed them to field hands and once they got fast they could put out a bolt i second i think it was, the bolts didnt even have flights on them, the just relied on pure volume of fire from all the field hands having them to create damage.

Here is a picture of it i found on wikipedia:


Basically all you do is pump the handle up and down and it would recock the string, drop a bolt and fire as fast as you could pump it.  

[Floyd]

I'm sure a few hundred fans e-mailed links to that wikipedia article when they realized what had been missed.

Some time ago, I was watching one of those British military recreation programs and something some expert said stuck out. Archers were the snipers of the field back in the day.

Unlike the poor SOBs who were issued shields and pikes, and taught how to form a sawtooth marching line, the archers were expected to deliver on the investment in their weapon and training. It took years to master the bow and maintaining hundreds or thousands of such specialized troops cost a lot.

Imagine if you could deliver as many arrows with half or less than that number of men on the field. That would cut the cost in pay and training for that many men.

The down side to the device that the MythBusters is that its more a stationary weapon meant more for defending hardened positions than mobile actions. Had there been thousands of men marching against the launcher, at some point the opponents would have overwhelmed the weapon. You would need dozens of such machines and crews to replace hundreds of archers.  

[war_junky 91]

Floyd

I'm sure a few hundred fans e-mailed links to that wikipedia article when they realized what had been missed.

Some time ago, I was watching one of those British military recreation programs and something some expert said stuck out. Archers were the snipers of the field back in the day.

Unlike the poor SOBs who were issued shields and pikes, and taught how to form a sawtooth marching line, the archers were expected to deliver on the investment in their weapon and training. It took years to master the bow and maintaining hundreds or thousands of such specialized troops cost a lot.

Imagine if you could deliver as many arrows with half or less than that number of men on the field. That would cut the cost in pay and training for that many men.

The down side to the device that the MythBusters is that its more a stationary weapon meant more for defending hardened positions than mobile actions. Had there been thousands of men marching against the launcher, at some point the opponents would have overwhelmed the weapon. You would need dozens of such machines and crews to replace hundreds of archers.

Exactly right about the archers, thats why that crossbow i linked is so effective because of the bare minimum need of skill plus the volume of archers makes it insanely deadly.

And if you build a rig as large as they did for those arrows you arent going to make it shoot tiny little arrows, its going to be shooting harpoons, the romans had such a device they used in sieges, balista is it? I know there were multiple devices that shot large arrow type projectiles, balista might not be the one i'm thinking of.  

[Kuuhaku-shou]

"Aux grands maux les grands remèdes."

This is why I'm an archer. Because they're medieval badasses like Robin Hood.

"Desperate times call for desperate measures."