Вероятно, каждому интересующемуся военной историей Средних веков и Ренессанса не раз попадалось утверждение о том, что таранный удар тяже..
vk.com
vk.com
A resource for historic arms and armor collectors with photo galleries, reviews, reference materials, discussion forums, a bookstore and a comparison tool.
web.archive.org
This VK post talks about notes of Doctor Аlan Williams, expert of metallurgy and medieval weaponry, in russian. The second link are William's writings, in english,
just what we need (third is about history of chainmail, fourth is about renaissance-era weapons exercises).
Joules values:
- Axe, sword: 60-130 joules; Average Human to Athletic Human level
- Underarm stabbing: 63 joules; Average Human level
- Overarm stabbing: 115 joules; Athletic Human level
- 12th century longbow: 80 joules; Average Human level
- 13th century crossbow: 100-200 joules; Average Human+ to Athletic Human level
- Very strong steel crossbow: 230 joules; Athletic Human+ level
- Lance without saddle: 100 joules; Average Human level
- Stronger charged lance: 200-250-300 joules; Athletic Human level to Street level
- 3mm cuirass durability: 500 joules; Street level
- 2.5mm fine cuirass durability: 450 joules; Street level
- Very strong charged lance, if you're lucky: 600 joules; Street level
Spherical bullet's surface is much larger than stabbing point of arrow, bolt, spear, dagger or sword. As such, bullets need many times more raw Joules to penetrate armor, since larger surface = smaller penetration. Cue muscle-based weapons, despite having small amount of Joules on paper, dealing gruesome damage.
This again shows why Piercing is so important. Most muscle-powered weapons, short of charged lances, have raw Joules of Average Human to Athletic Human levels, but deal Street Level damage due to being sharp and pointy.
This shows another weirdness of our system: maces and such are not sharp (not piercing) and have raw joules as axe of same mass - yet still somehow deal Street Level damage. Despite not being Piercing, maces were more effective at penetrating armor than swords.
It's also worth noting, that most soldiers were much stronger than researchers. In turn, knights, lords and such were stronger than common soldiers. So results in Joules that modern researchers got are likely much smaller than Joules of strikes of actual medieval fighting-men. Thus, numbers above are
low-end.