[TML] Personal Armor Noise was Re: Current USAF fleet

[Leon Wu]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: tml-bounces at travellercentral.com 
> [mailto:tml-bounces at travellercentral.com] On Behalf Of Tom B
> Sent: Friday, May 02, 2008 3:55 PM
> To: The Traveller Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [TML] Personal Armor Noise was Re: Current USAF fleet
> 
> My understanding was, in some PoV, mail developed while the 
> main threats were pole weapons (including the spear) and 
> swords. The original underpadding was very light. Thus, they 
> sometimes suffered broken bits, but the mail stopped the 
> cuts. Then of course, flails, morningstars, bec-de-corbins, 
> military picks, and maces became potent weapons for fighting 
> other guys in mail. Part of their threat was the bludgeoning. 
> This lead both to heavier mail (including double mail) and 
> then plate. Concussion weapons remained potent but mail and 
> plate tended to reduce even their effect.

Ah but maces and clubs have go waaay back. Plus while mail does a good
job of protecting against edges they're not as good against points.
You'd want someting underneath to stop those over-penetrations. 
 
> The thing to keep in mind about history:
> 
> 1) Those that were there may not have documented completely 
> or without a slant.
> 
> 2) Those that are researching it may drop the ball noticably 
> much like the assumptions about the actual size of medieval 
> knights as being all small guys based on limited evidence and 
> assumptions that you couldn't move nimbly in plate mail, 
> subsequently disproven by further research.
> 
> So you have to read a lot of sources, study and allow for 
> bias and other issues, and make sure a whole bunch of 
> secondary or tertiary sources aren't drawing conclusions from 
> the same primary source. This means most conclusions about 
> how things were should be somewhat guarded, even if some 
> academic somewhere said it was so in a book.

No arguements there, like I said it's a theory on how people
killed/attempted to kill each other back then. It gains some credence
from Napoleonic/American Civil War accounts where bayonets injuries were
a significantly smaller amount compared to cannon or musket ball. It's
not easy to convince your group of men with sharp pointy objects to
close mano-a-mano with another group of men holding sharp pointy
objects. Most of the time they'd halt and begina musket duel. But until
someone invents a time machine, we'll never know how ancient/medieval
battles actually were fought.