Scientists Study Impact of Wearing Medieval Armor

FoolishOwl writes "Scientists at the University of Leeds tested the effects of wearing heavy medieval armor by monitoring volunteers, who were experienced medieval reenactors, as they walked and ran on treadmills, while wearing accurate replicas of 15th century armor. While the suits of armor weighed between 30 and 50 kg, comparable to the weight of gear carried by modern soldiers, volunteers who carried equivalent amounts of weight in backpacks had an easier time with the weight. Volunteers in armor burned more energy and had difficulty breathing. The scientists speculate that much of the additional effort was due to weight of armor on the legs — leg armor was one of the first things dropped in the shift towards lighter armor in the 16th century. While it has long been assumed that heavy medieval armor limited mobility, and that this contributed to the outcome of battles, such as the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, this was the first study to quantify the impact of wearing heavy armor."

Comments

Ergonomics

[pgpalmer]

There's a reason why good-quality backpacks have a strap that wraps around the waist - the pelvis is capable of comfortably supporting a large amount of weight, and that is why the weight of backpacks is best supported there. Medieval armour supports it all over the body, causing body-wide muscle fatigue. From the article: "We were interested to find out why that was - and one of the main reasons is that if you wear a suit of armour, a lot of the weight is carried on the legs - about 7-8kg of it."

Re:Ergonomics

[Nefarious Wheel]

Medieval armour supports it all over the body, causing body-wide muscle fatigue.

Not so. Medieval armour up to the 14th century had hip belts that supported the weight of the leg armour on the pelvis.

The amount of effort you spend wearing armour is way more dependent upon the fit than the total weight.

There's been a huge study of this in various groups of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA). Possibly the best proponent of this study that I know of is a gent known as His Majesty Cornelius von Beck, current king of Lochac (Australia). (www.sca.org.au). He's an armourer himself, and has studied - and worn - original 14th century plate. Serious students only can contact him via the SCA.

The SCA is the only organisation I know that chooses its leaders by rite of combat...

Re:Ergonomics

[Nefarious Wheel]

A 50lb draw longbow can throw a clothyard shaft straight through 1/8" mild steel plate 10 out of 10, and through maille as if it were gauze.

Crossbows weren't really required at Agincourt. A long-established culture of longbow use (mandated by the Crown) had more of an effect. You can see the effect today by looking at the window sills of small English churches -- worn to a catenary by yeomen (yew-man, a bow user) who believed sharpening their arrowheads on a church window brought good luck.

Re:Battles

[liquidweaver]

Oh come on. http://www.militaryfactory.com/battles/french_military_victories.asp When you cherry pick from the history of any country, you can come up with a long list of defeats. I don't remember Japan, Germany or Russia being too successful in the last hundred years. Even America got it's capital burned to the ground in 1812, and was defeated in Vietnam (in fairness, after France too).

SCA Nerd

[Toze]

Disclaimer; the SCA does medievalISH combat with rules and equipment for safety; it's not authentic medieval fight styles, and there are other groups (like WMA) that focus on things like 15th century German fechtbuchs and who have more authority to speak on authentically historical modes and styles of combat.

That said, the SCA does swordfighting at full speed and often with full power (depending on the area), and there are some strong similarities with historical combat. The sticks used (for safety reasons) are roughly the same weight as the historical swords, and there's a strong social pressure to wear armour that is both save and as authentic as possible. Thus, there's a couple things I can comment on from personal experience. First, metal armour on limbs *noticeably* slows down shots. We accept plastic plates as long as they're covered ("best effort to look good" is the standard), so people will fight with plastic covered in canvas or leather, and there is a well-known tradeoff in the SCA between "looking good" in shiny metal armour and having the best possible speed.

I just finished building a fairly close replica of 14th century coat-of-plates armour. I had been using (poorly disguised) plastic before, and the difference when wearing 25 pounds of overlapping plates is quite noticeable. I look much better, of course, but I also work harder, sweat more, and need to take more breaks. The weight's all on my shoulders, so it's not wearing my legs out, but there's a noticeable weight when I'm moving. I recently got metal gauntlets, and they're noticeable as well; the hands move slower when there's a pound or two of metal on them. I hate to reference anime, but you know how Goku wears the heavy arm and leg weights in Dragonball Z? There's some truth to that; even the fat SCA fighters have bulkier shoulders and larger arms. (actually wearing weights around all day will just screw up your joints, by the way; it's the holding-heavy-things-out-from-your-body that does it)

There's a reason armour was attached where it was in the middle ages; suspending legs from a belt takes at least some of the weight off the legs when moving.

Firsthand

[Caerdwyn]

Speaking as an ex-"reenactor" (Society for Creative Anachronism, http://www.sca.org/ I can offer the following firsthand observations:

1. The quality of fitting to the individual is probably the single most important factor in how burdensome a given suit of armor is, from the point of view of the ability to move quickly. Leggings are by far the hardest to fit correctly; they also tend to shift around the most in response to movement, so a good fitting can become a bad fitting very quickly.
2. In melee combat, the legs are hit far more often than any target other than the head. Leg armor may be encumbering, but when it comes to hand to hand combat you can't do without it.
3. When faced with archers, an unshielded fighter takes it in the arms and torso more than anywhere else.
4. Breathing difficulties are usually caused by poor ventilation in a closed-face helm, or a side effect of heat. Which brings us to:
5. Overheating is what is going to exhaust you. You're wearing not just armor, but heavy padding as well. The number one factor an SCA medic sees at a large battle is overwhelmingly heat exhaustion/heatstroke/dehydration.

Re:Firsthand

[Toze]

Regarding 2, Bengt Thordeman's "Armour of the Battle of Wisby" includes a survey of wounds from a 14th century mass grave, and very many of the deaths in historical combat seemed to be preceded by leg wounds. Specifically, one or both legs followed by an overhead strike to the top of the head with sword or hammer.
(sca) I found it particularly amusing, because there's an An Tir joke about "the kingmaker" being ankle-ankle-head. (/sca)

Re:Firsthand

[Caerdwyn]

Larger wars include archery, slingers (glorified tennis balls), javelins. Archery rules specify 30-pound bows maximum, padded bird blunts, arrow shafts covered with fiber tape to prevent jagged points if they break (some kingdoms disallow wooden shafts altogether and require fiberglass, because fiberglass makes a mushy rather than pointed shape when it breaks), all helms required to have no single opening that you can fit a 1/4" dowel through, no neck-exposure allowed. West-Caid war (California vs. Arizona, etc.) was a great one for that. I think they do that at Pennsic (New England vs. the Rust Belt, battle cry is "Loser gets Pittsburg!"), and Pennsic draws many thousands of fighters annually. It's quite a spectacle.

All of the above info is over a decade stale. Things may have changed, then again, maybe not. I don't know if the SCA still includes archery in wars (it was never universal; wars were announced in advance whether there were any scenarios including archery), but archery was a great way to get inexpensively into SCA war-combat. An archer needed only light body armor and a helm that was the equal of the heavy fighters. Rules are (were?) that an archer was automatically considered dead if a heavy fighter comes within ten feet, which is a good thing, as SCA melee combat is full-power full-speed. You are hitting your opponent as just as hard as your strength allows (the blow has to be hard enough to have caused injury with a real steel weapon against period armor, so such a hit on a lightly armored combatant would certainly break bones, even with SCA rattan weapons); nobody wanted to chance that a heavy would misidentify a light fighter as another heavy through limited visibility and give a full-power hit instead of a token "love tap". However, getting within ten feet isn't easy. Many an archer has happily led a heavy fighter a merry chase under the blazing sun, taunting all the way... to deal with that exercise in frustration, some fighters carried "darts" (small javelins) to smack down cocky archers with.

Good times. Add where else can you hire an entire mercenary company for a keg of home-brew?

Modern Armored Combat

[JabberWokky]

What's interesting is that modern sports combat based on western martial arts -- meaning sword and shield, full metal armor, but using modern materials -- has shifted over to using things like 6061-T6 aluminum to keep things light. Also Underarmor sweat wicking clothing (seriously). For instance, the SCA, which is interested in individuals or groups meeting in competitive combat rather than a specific battle from a particular time or place. A good deal of effort is put into finding lightweight armor that still protects your bones.

Now comes the twist: It's actually thicker and more durable, because nobody likes to hammer out their armor each week after (or during) fighter practice. So it actually lasts much much longer under a barrage of blows, but is still roughly the same weight. Apparently it's a reasonable weight to fight in, and what you can now take out with modern materials, people are adding back for durability.

Check out http://www.zoombang.com/ for really out there modern armor designed for medieval non-edged combat.

obSemiOffTopic: Deep bruises are just part of the sport -- my wife is very careful to point out early in doctor visits that she's involved in full contact martial arts. Especially as she's 5 foot and petite and I'm 6'3" and huge; we already had one nurse freak out and send me out to have a talk with her about reporting domestic violence. She now carries photos on her phone of herself in armor, holding her helm and grinning happily, just to fend off people who get the wrong idea.

Re:Horses?

[canajin56]

Totally bogus, even in heavy plate it's not hard to stand again unassisted. Maybe you're thinking of tournament armor. Tournament armor was many many times thicker than battlefield armor. Because you wouldn't be wearing it for extended periods, you wouldn't need to maneuver, and nobody wants to die in a game. Those are the ones where the squire had to help them up, because the armor weight as much as the knight! A knight on the battlefield could probably get back up faster than you could. Another piece of common knowledge about armor that's wrong is that it's mostly pointless. In fact, 10 plate armored knights against a force of 100 chain and leather clad soldiers would be an even match. Plate armor was incredibly effective. It was even somewhat effective against musket fire unless it was at very close range. Just because the hero can casually slice through plate armor doesn't mean a damn thing. Just because it's barely effective in RPGs doesn't mean a damn thing.