My friend and I are having an agument, he says that the best way to deal with elephants wearing this sort of armour in ancient warfare would be to tell all your archers to specifically aim at the unprotected eyes. I said that that is unrealistic and you can't tell a company of archers to specifically aim for the eyes, considering they'd be in formation and volley fire and whatnot.
Can you guys weigh in on this at all? For discussion's sake, how would you deal with elephants wearing this armour?
>>792967
Your friend is right.
One way that Timur seems to have done was light animals on fire and send them running into the elephants.
If they are fairly close, artillery could also be an option.
The best way to deal with armored elephants is to coat some livestock in burning pitch and let them loose into the enemy ranks. The elephants will be spooked and they will break.
>>792967
I'm pretty sure the traditional method of dealing with armored elephants was to use fire if you were trying to take them out or frigthen them off.
Well-disciplined armies could actually just maneuver around them. Elephants aren't particularly aggressive animals, and at battles like Zama, the Romans opened up gaps in their line, and the elephants charged to there, not eager to fight a bunch of strangers. They're not easy to turn around once they start running, so once they're through your lines, you stand a decent chance of winning the battle before they can be turned around and sent back at you again.
>>792976
You were right. I misread and thought your friend was saying you can't aim for the eyes. Sorry for misunderstanding.
Your friend is a retard.
This isn't even a historical question, it should be common sense.
I have read sources on how English archer had a field day in Edward's wars against Scotland because the Scottish didn't wear helmets and so the archers could just aim at their faces and cripple them for the duration of the melee.
Your friend is a retard.
This question hardly requires historical knowledge, just common sense.
>>792984
Not OP, but one thing I found amusing is that if you look in the deuterocanonical books of Maccabees (I forget the exact book, chapter, verse cite, sorry), there's a passage about how in one of the battles, the Selucids brought a few elephants.
The Judeans were terrified, and one of their champions Eleazar Avaran, tries to calm the troops by saying "oh, they're not so tough" although his method involved trying to slip under them and stab at the unprotected belly.
He gets trampled to death, and the Jews break and run seeing it.
>>792967
As >>792980 says, well-disciplined Spearman are by far the preferable way to handle these guys. Remember that any elephant wearing that amount of armor would not be moving fast and would get tired pretty quickly. They're really just best avoided, in case they run amok, but if necessary, units could try to gore them, if they couldn't kill the drivers for some reason .
With that said, if I were a period general and had morale concerns, I'd try hard to keep my men away from them.
I read somewhere Romans attacked elefants feet with axes. It was in a particular battle though, I think it was in Hispania but I'm not sure.
Elephants freak out when pigs squeal
Litter the ground in front of the elephants with these
>>792967
better chances shooting the rider
>>793010
This (or something similar) is mentioned in Josephus' writings.
The Jews see the enemy army and one guy, the brother of the general or something, sees the elephant caravan and logically assumes the biggest elephant with the most bedazzled howdah must be the one the king is in. So he rushes through the enemy lines and stabs upwards into the elephant's stomach, and the elephant dies on top of him. And the king wasn't even on that elephant.
>>794413
>Not these
>>794570
>>>/reddit/
>>>/9fag/
>>792967
Shoot them with an elephant gun.
>>792967
Pretty sure Elephants wearing armor is not an ancient thing. More like 16th century India.
>>792995
Hallidon Hill and Duplin moor, the scots wore helmets just not the kind with facial protection.
>>794646
nah dude in RTW Selucid Elephants could be armoured.
>>792967
Nigga that type of armored elephants were used by the sultans of Delhi during the battle of Panipat. They actually used guns against them
>>794258
"the last significant use of war elephants in the Mediterranean was against the Romans at the battle of Thapsus, 46 BC, where Julius Caesar armed his fifth legion (Alaudae) with axes and commanded his legionaries to strike at the elephant's legs. The legion withstood the charge, and the elephant became its symbol. Thapsus was the last significant use of elephants in the West".
>>792967
Fuck armor, how do you deal with elephants that have cannons??
They call it a bullseye for a reason.
>>795052
Shoot them with your own cannons.
>>795085
This, I believe some colonial powers faced elephants with cannons on them, they simply shot this giant grey target.
>>792967
>My friend and I are having an agument, he says that the best way to deal with elephants wearing this sort of armour in ancient warfare would be to tell all your archers to specifically aim at the unprotected eyes
That would be rather hard to do with a bow from pre-modern times. What escapes modern archers when they talk about the subject is that the bow stings commonly used today are much more energy efficient ( 10%) and give a much clear release then what was used back in the day. Two years ago some folks on /K reported on a effort to looking the matter in a archery club. They had 3 fully accurate reproductions of old types of bow and a number of challenge targets set up. One of the targets was a 6 inch ( 15 cm ) hole cut into a foam block with the goal of shooting a arrow thru it at 30 yards ( 27.4 m ). Even with as many shots as a archer would care to take no one in the whole many that shot with any of the reproduction bows. For compound bows they made that same shot 33.4 % of the time and for modern recurve bows it was sometime like 14%. After the first day the group gave up for morale based reasons.
Feats of archery on a pre-modern battle field are a lot harder then most people now days think.
>>792967
Shoot the mahouts. Elephants don't give a fuck about your battle, they're just in it because the mahout says to get involved. They die, the elephants will likely wander off.
elphants
>>792967
i'm sure ballistas and similar weapons were effective against that armor, among many other tactics others have mentioned
>>792967
The best way is to cut his tendons with a lance.
>>796870
>he thinks that Mongols didnt exist
There is a reason why mounter archers conquered the world.
>he thinks that yeomen didnt exist
Try not killing anything with a 100lbs yew longbow. They trained from age 10 every sunday.
>/k/
Get the fuck out of here. A bunch of neckbear rednecks wouldnt know the last thing about historical archery.
>>792967
A Khan once set camels loose, covered in pitch and on fire, against charge of enemy war elephants. The elephants ran and trampled their own ranks. It was one of his easiest victories.
>>792967
Yes, OP. attack the elephant. Ignore the 10 or so infantrymen who are accompanying that elephant and shooting at you with their own weapons.
>>795052
that platform looks flimsy as fuck
i doubt it could withstand recoil of a cannon let alone 2
>>798963
>you shot on the two sides at the same time.
Basic physics.
>>798909
It was Timur and he didn't have the title of khan
>>798878
>he thinks that Mongols didnt exist
I do not think that I said that, let me check... >>796870
Nope, I did not say all thing of that nature. Nor did I say...
>he thinks that yeomen didnt exist
You are touching on a part of the subject that I did not spell out. Doing feats of archery like shooting out the eye of a armored elephant is hard but to a group of highly skilled archers is doable. The two cultures you drew examples of are very well known for producing highly skilled archers. Most cultures simply put did not produce the same quality of archers as those examples. The reasons for why are many, but they are partly environmentally.
For the English a not small part of it was access to a large of a wood that is so good for bow making that even for high draw strength war bow it does not need to be made into a composite. i am talking about Yew. The issue is that they used Yew in so large of amounts that by the late 13th century they started to run out of it. The crown came up with the idea of adding in unfinished yew bow staves as part of the harbor fees. That worked till about the 1480's when German and Norwegian supplies of Yew started to run low. This directly and sharply caused the price of doing business in English ports to go up, thus caused traders to use Scottish ports. The crown gave up on the bow staves as part of harbor fees scheme in 1536.
For the Mongol it was all about their lifestyle. It made them very good archers and horsemen. this also meant that a couple of generations after moving into a new area there would be issues with keeping those skills at the same very high standards. This happened in both the Yuan dynasty and the Ilkhanate. It did not happen to the Golden Horde because the lands they ending up in were suitable for their lifestyle.
> 100lbs yew longbow.
That is a Victorianism, English longbows made for war were in the 110 to 130 bls draw range. This is based on looking at the weight of the livery arrow. cont...
>>799057
.. and from estimates of what the pre- deterioration draw weight of bows from the Mary Rose. Even with a draw weight of 110 to 130 lbs without harden steel arrow heads the English had a hard time doing anything on the battle field. That may not sound like a issue, but it cause the crown to have to throw out 14000 arrows in 1322 and another 12000 arrows in 1326. It also caused issues with tying to buy arrows in France during the 100 year war, because the locals most just made hunting arrows that did not need harden steel arrow heads.
> wouldnt know the last thing about historical archery.
Does it look like I know nothing of the subject?
>>799084
Not trying to be a smartass, I'm genuinely curious and a little biased, but I've always had a problem with war bows cited as being over 100 lbs. The usual argument is that people then were stronger because they did more physical labor, coupled with the fact that they practiced with their bows more. I don't buy that they were that much stronger than a laborer (specifically farm type work) of today. You also hear how malnourished they were, that's why they were like what, 5' 6" on average? I suppose I'm really asking this: does everyone just accept the 100+ lb bow that's always cited, or is there anyone else questioning it? And how many people today have ever drawn a 100 lb bow to give their opinion?
>>799140
That is a very good point. Here is my out on the matter: the tie for highest draw range for war bows made by a given culture is 170 to 190 lbs. The Cultures are the Manchus and the other a number of Northern great plains native native american tribes. For the latter it is based on a number of bows measured by Americans back then, not the claims of the makers or by historians that do not have access to good condition period weapons. Bows with a 100 bls or more draw as a weapon of war were very much a thing.
>The usual argument is that people then were stronger because they did more physical labor, coupled with the fact that they practiced with their bows more.
From the cultures that appear to have used very high draw bows and left a written record on the subject it was a matter of physical conditioning. The ones that I am drawing from are English, Manchu, Japanese, Turks, and the later Mongols. For all of them (other then the Japanese, more on that later) to use a war bow took years of practice, moving on to higher draw bows over time. It was a lifestyle commitment really. For the Japanese it was a matter of just a few months to become passable with their foot bows. However they had the same out look on their horse bows, the daikyū, as other the cultures mentioned above did on learning archery. Their foot bows used in war had a draw weight of 70 to 90 lbs and their horse had a draw weight of 90 to 115 lbs.
It looks like using bow for more then just a single shot for hunting pass 90 lbs draw is very hard. This may well be one of the main reasons why the majority of culture did not use bow passed 70 to 90 lbs draw range, and a great many only used bows in the 50 to 60 lbs draw range. Classical era Persians are a example of the latter. It was a matter of cost benefit and for most the cost in time was not worth the benefit.
>>792967
You do it another way. Wasting your resources on taking down the elephant with archers is costly. They could instead be shooting at other enemies which could deal more damage. While your army is trying to kill some elephants, enemy archer could kill off your archer, effectively leaving you dead.
>>799289
Thank you.
>>799140
100 lb is not like tons and tons of work. I believe 90 lbs is entry level for warbow clubs today.
>>800204
I agree, but I've heard anywhere from 100-250, and I call total bullshit on 250. 100, okay, but much over that and what's the point? Plus I doubt they could be drawn by the average bowyer of the day.
>>792967
The best way to fight a elephant is with fire and javelins, preferably javelins on fire (inb4 TW)
if it got that armor on it you are going to have a hard time killing, so its better to scare it and send it running the other way
i guess you could just surround it with spearmen but that is going to be slow and dangarous and take alot of man power
>>792967
TWO Elephants in armor
The best way to fight elephants is by spooking them.
>>799140
Using a bow doesn't use the same muscles as working on a farm.
You draw have bows by drawing lighters bows until he muscles strengthen.
An otherwise mediocre person na manage a fairly heavy bow if they put enough time into it.
The English were REQUIRED to spend their sunday shooting.
I could manage a ~55lb bow with ease when I was 16 and 115lbs, a grown man who actually stands to make money off of his archery could easily outperform that.
Elephants aren't very domesticable, and they are not calm. If you can properly spook them then they'll do more harm to the enemy, plus the opportunity cost of having non-elephant units.
