Science Breakthrough: Plate Armor is Heavy

[Canadamus Prime]

And once again thousands of dollars are wasted on scientific studies to point out the obvious.

Of course I would like to point out, that it's likely that the soldiers at the time had the training and endurance to deal with the additional weight. ...at least long enough to get through a battle anyway. Obviously not a battle preceded by a 300 meter march through mud.

 

[AdumbroDeus]

See, its experiments like these that annoy the crap out of me. I don't want my tax dollars going to fund this stuff. Its -obvious-.

Opposite's attract? Obvious right?

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

What is your friend making it out of and what process is he using that's causing that much weight?

Well, the outer coating is plate steel, I believe, and there's foam carriermat or leather inside to protect it. This is field plate rather than full plate though.

I can roll to my feet, sit up, stand, jump, etc in my armor. I know a few people of the more acrobatic mindsets that can kip up from their back in plate.

That's gotta be aluminium. Rolling in real plate would give you quite a nasty scrape. I'll chat with him later and see if he can fill me in on the details.

 

[mad825]

Can't say for certain, but I would also think that a good old fashioned english longbow or a crossbow bolt wouldn't have too much difficulty penetrating leather either.

Considering the British longbow could pierce plate, I doubt leather really is going to stop it.

At point blank range yes however it's more likely to leave a nasty dent and knock over the knight. Most of them where more likely to be hit in the openings between the plates.

Leather(hardened) would reduce the damage it did to the wearer ^.^

 

[TheEndlessSleep]

Wrong, it's not science. Like Martial artists, Knights were trained since their youth in armor. They wore it like a second skin from childhood. I carry a 50 pound pack while hiking long distances, and after a few days, it feels like less than half the weight. People don't understand today the meaning of "bred for battle", but the Knights spent a ridiculous amount of time training to be soldiers. US Marines, on the other hand spend a few months. Try to understand the difference.

Whether or not you have been trained to be used to it, it's still heavy and it will still slow you down.

 

[Dogstile]

Can't say for certain, but I would also think that a good old fashioned english longbow or a crossbow bolt wouldn't have too much difficulty penetrating leather either.

Considering the British longbow could pierce plate, I doubt leather really is going to stop it.

At point blank range yes however it's more likely to leave a nasty dent and knock over the knight. Most of them where more likely to be hit in the openings between the plates.

Leather(hardened) would reduce the damage it did to the wearer ^.^

Well i'm not arguing it would reduce the damage.

HOWEVER, I still think that damage would kill the wearer unless it hit it at an angle and deflected off. I THINK...

These scientists should do this next.

 

[Ulquiorra4sama]

Maybe next they can have some people try building a pyramid so they can test if those stone blocks really are heavy!

It's good to know we have people with education to tell us these things.

 

[moose_man]

ABOUT six centuries too late. Good effort though!

 

[Jenx]

I've heard the same team is now working on providing a solid proof that fire burns. I'm not sure if they can pull it off though.

 

[Kakita]

They were and weren't status symbols.

The problem with so many people's opinion on armor and knights is that they combine multiple time periods. By the time Sport Jousting was in full swing then yes, you had status symbol knights wearing armor they couldn't really move in. But they never saw combat this way.

When you drop back some to knights and plate armor in the field it's an entirely different animal.

It also doesn't help that for years various fantasy sources (D&D, WoW, Various novels) constantly increase the weight of arms and armor to rediculous levels. Standard one handed swords jump to 2-3 pounds to being 5-8. Two handed affairs grow from 4-7 to being over 15. Plate armor goes from being 20-70 to being 80 pounds minimum. All kind of sad considering any basic search could get you the real numbers and results.

As for the gear, yeah, modern day carries as much or more and a lot of it's on their back. Was actually asked of my brother in law once he got back from Iraq and back into fighting. He said he'd rather wear his full armor and helm all day long than put up with his army gear for even half a day. (And his armor is more of the coat of plates overlapping style, so there's actually more metal on him than standard plate.)

The Root: Not sure on my friend's armor, though I'll point out that the T6 Aluminum that the SCA uses for armor isn't as light as it seems. As for my armor. Helmet is 12 gauge mild steel, rest of my armor is 16 gauge.

 

[hopeneverdies]

After thinking about it for a bit, reading some of the comments and resisting saying duh, I realized that this isn't quite the best way to study it. Knights start as pages from a young age and as they rise through the ranks, they practice wearing armor. This is a process that takes a long time.

For fans of the Fire Emblem series, look at the Constitutions for your Knights and Generals. This is how built your unit is, which affects his/her ability to rescue a unit and if and to what extent a weapon impedes their speed. That stat for those classes is generally high, often in the double digits. It's high because they've gotten used to their armor. Sure their Speed stats are generally low, but that's to be expected from someone wearing a metal suit.

 

[Justin1221]

Wow, no shit knight armor is heavy.

 

[Xariat]

what theese people didnt account for is that opposite to marines or modern armies, knights began their training at an age of 7, and trained non stop for their entire life. they were also cavaliry, not infantry, so they barley had to run at all.

obvious and poorly done science was obvious and poorly tested.

 

[ReiverCorrupter]

I once tried putting weights into a backpack, and special weights on my legs, for training purposes. That particular session did not exactly go well.

The thing about the experiment was that the test subjects were probably not USED to the weight of the armour. I spend days at a time with my leg weights on, and find that after a couple of days my body adjusts accordingly, almost as if I'm not wearing them at all. I wouldn't second guess that getting a feel for their armour was a regular part of a knight's training.

Exactly. This is BAD science. The scientific method requires controls on the conditions of the experiment so that one can isolate the factor that one is looking for. First off, there needs to be a much larger sample group than three people. Secondly, they would need to replicate the training and nutrition of ancient knights. In addition to this, they would need to find people who came close to the actual size of the nights. Remember that people were much shorter back then (I think the average height was probably closer to 5 feet) and this would have affected the way they carried the armor.

In addition to this is the fact that A) Knights mostly rode on horseback on only got off to fight, B) They all had squires who helped them with their equipment, and C) they never had to run far, once they were on the ground they would be fighting, not running. Once the experimenters added more controls so that they had people who would physically come close to medieval knights they should have tested them for how long they could swing a sword, not how long they could run.

Bad science.

 

[s0p0g]

Breaking news: snow is cold!

ololol, some "researches" are just hilarious ^^

 

[ReiverCorrupter]

You'd think if they were going to do a study about something so mind-numbingly obvious they'd at least make sure to do it right, but as others have pointed out they don't seem to be taking into account that the wearer of such armour would be trained and experienced in its use. There's no denying it's heavy, I mean really a bloody scale can determine that, but if you want to somehow judge how it effected battlefields and combat conditions you've got to take the human element into account as well.

You wouldn't just randomly send a group of people into a tank expecting them to have the knowledge and experience to use it right, if at all. Same for their medieval counterparts.

A more appropriate study would be to have selected groups wearing the armour and exercising in it on a regular basis over the course of a few months then have a control group that are brought in for testing without the same experience. Ideally you would even have different groups in different types of armour over different amounts of time.

But then that would also be expensive and time consuming, so I guess they decided to go with the more obvious approach.

SCIENCE

No, it's bad science. I don't know what degrees the people who ran the experiment had, but they should have had kinesiologists who consulted medieval martial artists (yes there are such people). Instead they probably had average joes run on a treadmill in armor that wasn't made to fit them. This is a travesty of not only history and anthropology but the sciences as well.

 

[subtlefuge]

In the 2nd grade, I did a science project to find out if model rockets carrying more weight wouldn't fly as high.

Back then, I would have thought this was stupid.

 

[Jake the Snake]

Birds crap. There are starving children in Africa. Heavy Armor is Heavy. Obvious study is obvious.

 

[Giest4life]

The scientists probably all went to the pub and had a jolly time; they only pulled out this report to show for the "research" grant they received. Who says scientists are without humor?