Effectiveness of bows & arrows in the Revolution?

[insurrectomad]

Aguinaldo made a plea for vast numbers of bowmen units to be formed, both when first fighting the Spanish and later when waring against the Americans. Bands of Igarot warriors it is recorded, where placed in the forefront of the lines surrounding the walls of Intumuros in 1898, but I have not seen any records of their achievements.
Was any Spaniard or American soldier ever wounded or killed by an arrow? Was any American ever killed by a spear? I suspect the answer is no to both questions. Only native tribesmen from the hills used bows & arrows, and only they had the Knowledge and skill to make the arrows. I'm sure they had only hunting bows with there limited short range and had no program of the mass production of arrows needed to mount a military campaign in the field. The success of the bowmen in Japan & China had already shrank to a shadow threat by the time of the Boxer Rebellion for instance. The Welsh & English Long bowmen were feared throughout Europe for 200 years. They could outdistance & had a far more rapid rate of fire against any gun up to the American Civil War. the problem was with the time it took to train a bowman and the effort required to manufacture the arrows. 7000 arrows were used at the battle of Agincourt, requiring a train of covered wagons to transport them. Far simpler to produce muzzle-loading muskets & simple lead balls with just a few hours instruction in how to fire them needed! Even so this was also beyond the ability of the Filipino Army & suppliers. There where not enough manufacturers of Blackpowder or the raw ingredients such as saltpeter to supply the army. Lastly bows or musket fire is only effective when used in large formations of trained men so as to fill the air with a cloud of arrows falling into killing zone. Musket brigades fired at an angle; crisscrossing the zone in a curtain of lead. Had Gen. Luna been given more time and support by the Rep. Govt. it may have been possible, but that never happened of course.

[justinaquino]

There is a BIG difference between igorot bows and seasoned yew bows wielded by landed yeoman archers who were trained from birth to draw 60lbs and up.

Its an old link, if you look for draw weight of the native bows here they are roughly at 20lbs. Sporting archery needs about 40-60lbs. Horse archers for their 12 arrows/min have an easy draw weight of 60lbs. Master archers of horse nomad stock (turks, mongols, kazaks etc. ) have their elite drawing 180lbs with composite bows that have better or equal energy return as spring steel.

Also Archer fatalities are from volley fire, septic wounds and mostly from harassment fire in a disciplined military engagement. You can't expect peasant farmers or igorots who spend 80% of their time in subsistence to have the resources to train and arm themselves.

I've done the math and some war game simulations with GURPS, my own biometric research and the physics formulas freely available online. There is no way you can train decent level medieval archers cost effectively compared to training with firearms and buying rifles from where ever.

I didn't realize limited archery because of movies and TV till I had some myarmoury historians expalined to me the physics of it, and economic lessons pointed out the HUGE logistic barrier, as well as the Memetic Barrier to work with the constraints.

In an altered history, the best case scenario is able bodied generals with near-tyrannical discipline to be able to work with technical limitations and more combat engineers to use the overwhelming number advantage in fortification and traps building.

[insurrectomad]

That concurs with my thoughts on the subject Justin. In hindsight one can see that the better tactic would have been to rely on hit and run ambushes by smaller bands of trained marksmen with ample supplies of ammo and food. There was just enough supplies available for this but it was dispersed though-out the whole army and was wasted in the hands of ill trained novices mostly led by poor officers with no experience. Had the govt. of Aguinaldo and other generals supported Luna at the beginning, then there was a chance to have forced the americans to the peace table. David