Crossbows

I came across this type of crossbow while looking at "ancient weapons." It is called a "Chu Ko Nu" and is a precursor to cartridge firing weapons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repeating_crossbow

IIRC, the only time I have read about crossbows in the series is when they are only able to get off one shot before having to put down the weapon and draw their sword after firing one shot.

Also coming from the Chinese, the "Nest of Bees." Was this just not thought practical since they had already pushed towards grapeshot?
http://deadliestwarrior.wikia.com/wiki/Nest_of_Bees


I await the critiquing of my tangent.

Yeah, repeating crossbows are cool.

Unfortunately, they are rather awkward for aimed fire. They do have the lever, but it won't be as powerful as a cranked crossbow. You still have to lower the bow to cock it. I think it would be faster than a regular crossbow, musket, or very early rifle, but not as accurate or powerful as any of them.

After reading about it, I keep thinking about OAR when the assassination attempt was foiled by Merlin. He had said that he barely got there in time, IRRC, and wouldn't it have been more prudent for the assassins to have a weapon that would enable them to have quick follow up shots if needed? They were obviously not worried about keeping the guardsmen alive.

ChaChaCharms wrote:After reading about it, I keep thinking about OAR when the assassination attempt was foiled by Merlin. He had said that he barely got there in time, IRRC, and wouldn't it have been more prudent for the assassins to have a weapon that would enable them to have quick follow up shots if needed? They were obviously not worried about keeping the guardsmen alive.

2 problems. They wanted to drop Caleb right away from a distance so they didn't have to get into melee if possible where his guards might protect him, which indicated using arbalests. Secondly we have no textev they ever developed repeating crossbows on Safehold in the first place, and pre Merlin firearms were big clumsy matchlocks.

Well, the repeater crossbow is (in theory) good, but actually it have a serious disavantage in accuracy and penetration power. In the open battlefield... Well, they may be effective against light cavalry or unprotected infantry, but they didn't work well against firearms.

SWM wrote:Yeah, repeating crossbows are cool.

Unfortunately, they are rather awkward for aimed fire. They do have the lever, but it won't be as powerful as a cranked crossbow. You still have to lower the bow to cock it. I think it would be faster than a regular crossbow, musket, or very early rifle, but not as accurate or powerful as any of them.

Much MUCH faster. You can go through all arrows loaded in it in far less time than it takes to reload a musket ONCE. Even a poorly trained soldier could manage one aimed arrow every 2 seconds.

And with reloading it being fairly quick, the rate of fire soldiers with these could manage is quite astounding.

And it´s about as powerful as a shortbow or thereabouts, about a hundred meters range.

And no, you do NOT have to "lower" the bow to cock it. You hold it aimed with one arm and work the lever with the other.

It was commonly aimed from the hip however, so accuracy of individual arrows tend to suck.
But then again, you crank out arrows REALLY fast.

Had it been possible to combine these with the range and force of longbows or regular crossbows, they would have ruled just about any battlefields up until rifles were mature weapons.

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Dilandu wrote:Well, the repeater crossbow is (in theory) good, but actually it have a serious disavantage in accuracy and penetration power. In the open battlefield... Well, they may be effective against light cavalry or unprotected infantry, but they didn't work well against firearms.

Against firearms, they worked just fine, with 20-30 times the effective rate of fire and similar effective range to early firearms, it would take a poor general or a bad situation for an equal strength army with repeating crossbows to loose against an army with firearms.


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ChaChaCharms wrote:Also coming from the Chinese, the "Nest of Bees." Was this just not thought practical since they had already pushed towards grapeshot?

In the right situation, they could be highly effective, but most of the time, they were almost as dangerous for their own troops, as they had to be handled rather carefully to avoid accidental misfires and other unpleasantness.

They were simply too difficult to employ effectively. As your link states, they were usually more effective as psychological weapons than at directly killing soldiers.

And these came well before grapeshot.

Just a quick note, based on the psychology of the establishing powers.

Faster is not always better. Yes, the repeating crossbow predated cartridge firearms and grapeshot - but the idea of a mechanical advantage was not being encouraged. Once you start talking about rate of fire issues, you've opened a bag of worms that leads to an arms race. And, as evidenced by our world, wars are one of the fastest ways into innovation. The CoGA would not have encouraged such things.

Note how long it took to re-create the pike hedge for dealing with cavalry!

Just my two cents.
Dave

Against firearms, they worked just fine, with 20-30 times the effective rate of fire and similar effective range to early firearms

Seriously?

Their effective range is no more than 80 meters and the maximum is 120 meters. And their penetration power decreased rapidly.

The range of smoothbore musket, in salvo firing on the enemy formation (not the individual targeting) is about 150-200 meters. And their bullets still have the penetration power to kill the lightly armored or unarmored trooper.

it would take a poor general or a bad situation for an equal strength army with repeating crossbows to loose against an army with firearms.

Really?

The musketeers army would just start to blast the enemy arba-repeaters formation from 200-250 meters, while the cross-repeaters would need to go at least to 100 meters to have any effect. During that, their number would decrease fast.

And even if the cross-repeaters would be able to close to 50-100 meters, they simply would not be able to do so much damage. Oh, they would shoot their bolts in fifteen second - but how many of them would hit the enemy in powder smoke of firearms battle even from 50 meters? And after they exaust their ammuition - what would they do after?

Lazalarlives wrote:Just a quick note, based on the psychology of the establishing powers.

Faster is not always better. Yes, the repeating crossbow predated cartridge firearms and grapeshot - but the idea of a mechanical advantage was not being encouraged. Once you start talking about rate of fire issues, you've opened a bag of worms that leads to an arms race. And, as evidenced by our world, wars are one of the fastest ways into innovation. The CoGA would not have encouraged such things.

Note how long it took to re-create the pike hedge for dealing with cavalry!

Just my two cents.
Dave

I'm afraid, the repeating crossbow is simply not an effective weapon at all. They were almost completely unknown outside of China.

Simply - they are weak. Their range and their penetration power and their accuracy is weak. The rate of fire didn't really mean a lot, if the enemy heavy cavalry could simply charge you, and you arrows wouldn't be able to penetrate their armour, or if the enemy shooters would fire upon you from the superior distance (and possibly shields).

Tenshinai wrote:

SWM wrote:Yeah, repeating crossbows are cool.

Unfortunately, they are rather awkward for aimed fire. They do have the lever, but it won't be as powerful as a cranked crossbow. You still have to lower the bow to cock it. I think it would be faster than a regular crossbow, musket, or very early rifle, but not as accurate or powerful as any of them.

Much MUCH faster. You can go through all arrows loaded in it in far less time than it takes to reload a musket ONCE. Even a poorly trained soldier could manage one aimed arrow every 2 seconds.

And with reloading it being fairly quick, the rate of fire soldiers with these could manage is quite astounding.

And it´s about as powerful as a shortbow or thereabouts, about a hundred meters range.

And no, you do NOT have to "lower" the bow to cock it. You hold it aimed with one arm and work the lever with the other.

It was commonly aimed from the hip however, so accuracy of individual arrows tend to suck.
But then again, you crank out arrows REALLY fast.

Had it been possible to combine these with the range and force of longbows or regular crossbows, they would have ruled just about any battlefields up until rifles were mature weapons.

If you are cocking and firing it from the hip without lowering it, then it cannot possibly be as powerful as a short bow. A shortbow requires the strength of the shoulders to pull. Pulling back that lever at your hip will produce a fraction of the force used to pull a short bow, and over a much shorter distance. And firing from the hip like that would be no more accurate than an untrained gunman firing a pistol from the hip.

If it is fired the way you describe, it is useless for anything except short range suppression fire. The power, range, and accuracy are all way too low for anything else.

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As an aside, I've seen archers with 80 pound recurve bows, and 18 inch draw, fire fifteen aimed arrows in thirty seconds--the same rate as your repeating crossbow. The range was only twenty yards, but every arrow hit within an 8 inch radius. Now that's amazing (yeah, not relevant for combat situations, but still amazing!)