Got a Real-World Weapon or Armor Question? Mk. VI

[Eldan]

I'm here with yet another question which came to me while painting miniatures: how common were spiked pieces of armour? At least in fantasy art, long and probably sharp spikes on greaves, gauntlets, spaulders and so on seem pretty common, but I can't remember ever seeing them in a museum. It also seems, well, impractical for several reasons. So, was that ever really done, or is that yet another fantasy invention?

[Spiryt]

I have never seen one either.

They certainly could occur once or twice, especially in some more ceremonial XVIth century pieces, but certainly weren't used in most kinds battle armours in history.

[hamishspence]

I think the idea may derive from the Lambton Worm legend- a snakelike creature which crushed its prey- so the knight who beat it put spikes on his armour before going out to face it.

[Yora]

I looked into spikes on real armor some months ago and at the end came to the conclusion, that it was never done on any significant scale.
Sounds also pretty dangerous to me. Spikes anywhere on your arms and shoulders will most likely end up in your own face once you raise a hand above shoulder level or you fall down.

[Fhaolan]

The only historical armour spikes I've ever found were in three places:

There's the single upright helmet spike sometimes called a Pickelhaube. The simple versions were really just a shaft used to attach a horsetail plume to, or some other kind of helmet decoration, though they got quite elaborate in their own right in the 19th/20th century German helmets. Supposedly they helped with deflecting sabre blows, but unless the blow is coming down straight on the top of their heads, I'm not seeing it.

There's also the elaborate helms in Japan with spikes, rings, and whatnot. These were pretty much decorative as they were made to break off in most cases. If they were really solid, there's a good chance they would actually guide an incoming weapon in, rather than deflect it off.

And finally there's the grotesque armours. Much like the Japanese helms, these things were decorative, but these things extended to the entire armour with odd spikes and twisty bits. As far as I can tell, these were really never meant for combat at all, because they're just too.... awkward. They're parade peices, really.

In none of these cases were the spikes actually intended to be used offensively.

[Philistine]

Actually, Hawriel was correct - he was responding to the exchange between Hurlbut and fusilier about bomber crewmen, most of whom were protected only by the thin (enough so that you could punch holes in it with your bare hands) aluminum skin of the aircraft. Thus the issuing of flak jackets.

In general, it is more correct to say that parts of WW2 aircraft were protected. Self-sealing fuel tanks, a bulletproof windscreen, and (in single-engined types) a thin armor plate directly behind the pilot were typically all that was provided, though some dedicated close-support types such as the Fw190G or Il-2 did feature more comprehensive protection. The legendary durability of USAAF (and USN/USMC) aircraft in WW2 was due mostly to "overly" tough requirements for structural strength compared to European or Japanese standards. Of course sheer size played a part as well, particularly for the big four-engined bombers.

[Galloglaich]

I'm here with yet another question which came to me while painting miniatures: how common were spiked pieces of armour? At least in fantasy art, long and probably sharp spikes on greaves, gauntlets, spaulders and so on seem pretty common, but I can't remember ever seeing them in a museum. It also seems, well, impractical for several reasons. So, was that ever really done, or is that yet another fantasy invention?

it's a fantasy invention.

In fifteen years of researching armor, I found one photo of a panoply which had spikes like in DnD or fantasy art, from somewhere in the pacific Islands I think:



A friend of mine also found an account of a duel in Renaissance Italy where a guy insisted on wearing daggers welded to his helmet so his opponent, who was a good wrestler, wouldn't grapple with him (it didn't work).

But unless you are playing the chieftain of micronesia I would say, it's a-historical nonesense.

G.

[Galloglaich]

Actually, Hawriel was correct - he was responding to the exchange between Hurlbut and fusilier about bomber crewmen, most of whom were protected only by the thin (enough so that you could punch holes in it with your bare hands) aluminum skin of the aircraft. Thus the issuing of flak jackets.

In general, it is more correct to say that parts of WW2 aircraft were protected. Self-sealing fuel tanks, a bulletproof windscreen, and (in single-engined types) a thin armor plate directly behind the pilot were typically all that was provided, though some dedicated close-support types such as the Fw190G or Il-2 did feature more comprehensive protection. The legendary durability of USAAF (and USN/USMC) aircraft in WW2 was due mostly to "overly" tough requirements for structural strength compared to European or Japanese standards. Of course sheer size played a part as well, particularly for the big four-engined bombers.

I don't mean to be pedantic, but I disagree. WW II aviation is a hobby of mine. Bombers, including medium and heavy bombers in WW II had significant armor plate. The problem was that it often wasn't enough to cover every part of the plane particularly against flak bursts. But if you try shooting down a bomber from the six o'clock position in a realistic flight Sim like Il2 you will notice it's very hard to do.

Here is a diagram of the armor in a B-25 Mitchel.



3/8" steel plate may seem thin, but is pretty good protection against bullets and fragments, incidentally.

Some early Japanese medium bombers lacked armor, but it was added to subsequent versions and eventually became quite substantial, such as on the G4M3 version of the "Betty" bomber.

G.

[Galloglaich]

I should add though to be fair, the armor protection on a bomber is of limited value since many of the crew will be exposed from many directions, as you can see in that chart. The navigator / nose gunner has no protection from the front, none of the crew have protection from above or below etc. And both heavy (12.7 mm or bigger) machine guns (especially with AP ammo) and heavy AAA (88 mm or 90 mm and etc.) were powerful enough to punch through that armor.

The flak jackets helped a little, but not enough. Waist gunners who wore them had one of the highest KIA rates. Being a bomber crewman was very, very dangerous. That is why the 8th Air Force alone lost 47,000 casualties and 26,000 dead in World War II. (and a total of over 10,000 aircraft shot down.) They were also very, very dangerous to attack, especially US heavy and medium bombers. The luftwaffe had it's back broken by the 8th AF. It was attrition warfare... almost like trench warfare in the skies.

http://www.taphilo.com/history/8thaf/8aflosses.shtml
http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita...y/usaf/8af.htm

G.

[Philistine]

I'm sorry, you don't mean to be pedantic? In that case, I think you may be confused about the purpose of this thread.

I concede that these aircraft carried more armor than I had thought; but as you point out, the armor diagram presented shows very limited protection versus fighter attack, and virtually none against ground fire. I wouldn't say that's enough to be described as "significant armor plate," but YMMV. Certainly no aircraft was protected anywhere near as comprehensively, much less on anything like the same scale, as contemporary AFVs or warships. Talk of "armored aircraft" or "flying tanks" tends to give people entirely the wrong impression, in my experience.

Nitpicking, I'd also note that many of the plates shown appear to be labeled as "Dural," which would make them copper-aluminum alloy rather than steel.

[Galloglaich]

Well, it's different with aircraft though, because guns are often shot from further away than their best effective range, relatively few rounds and on target since the target is often moving a 200 to 300 + miles per hour (double that in a head to head convergence) and precious few aircraft had weapons anywhere near as powerful as the main-gun on a tank, say anything bigger than 40mm. (those that did used them for ground -attack, though some German bomber-killers used big cannon against US heavies)

The heaviest Flak was as heavy as a (heavy) tank gun but was fired in air bursts which created shrapnel, direct hits were rare. They could be very hard to shoot down even from heavy ground weapons, there is a reason the Germans called the Sturomovik the "concrete bomber".

But I agree 'fying tank' does give people the wrong idea. Bottom line, from all the historical accounts I read aircraft armor seemed to work, which is why they added more and more of it to military aircraft as the war went on, in spite of the extra weight and consequent performance hit.

G.

[Galloglaich]

Anyway not to change the subject but ... did anyone ever wonder what would happen if an English Pirate fought a Samurai?

No I'm not going to go down some ridiculous speculative road, instead,
I found an interesting historical account of just such an encounter in 1602 in the East Indies. I wrote it up in my little blog on Enworld, in case anyone is interested:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/general...ml#post5093363

G.

[Zincorium]

Certainly no aircraft was protected anywhere near as comprehensively, much less on anything like the same scale, as contemporary AFVs or warships.

To nitpick: modern warships don't have armor, the hull may be somewhat resistant to penetration from small arms, but that's it. With the type of missiles that would be used in any current conflict, the strategy is to either shoot them down or simply run damage control after a hit.

[Galloglaich]

To nitpick: modern warships don't have armor, the hull may be somewhat resistant to penetration from small arms, but that's it. With the type of missiles that would be used in any current conflict, the strategy is to either shoot them down or simply run damage control after a hit.

Are you sure about that? I thought that changed since the 60's...?

G.

[Thiel]

Are you sure about that? I thought that changed since the 60's...?

G.

Splinter protection around key areas and bulletproof glass and spall liners is standard on most modern warships, but that's about it.
The reason for this is that, with a few exceptions, modern AShMs aren't designed to sink their target, but to render it incapable of fighting, ie Mission Kills. With a modern warship, that means taking out the radars. Without radars, it doesn't matter how big and bad your ship is, because you can't see your enemy and thus you can't retaliate.
Since no amount of armour is going to protect your radars, and most missiles won't sink you anyway, it makes more sense to drop it and use the saved tonnage to increase performance in other areas.

There are a few exceptions. Some inshore and riverine patrolboats are armoured to withstand light artillery and RPGs, since they're likely to be engaged by those weapons, and they rarely carry more sensors than a commercial X-band radar and sometimes a FLIR. They are also small enough, and engagements typically occurs at short enough ranges that attacking the crew directly becomes an option.

As a rule of thumb, if a ship is capable of carrying out operations without sensors, they can be armoured. The Nimitz class, for instance, is supposed to be armoured to some degree since it's theoretically possible to continue to operate aircraft even after a complete sensor loss, though I can't imagine a scenario where all sensors are taken out, but the flight deck is left unharmed.

[Philistine]

Well, it's different with aircraft though, because guns are often shot from further away than their best effective range, relatively few rounds and on target since the target is often moving a 200 to 300 + miles per hour (double that in a head to head convergence) and precious few aircraft had weapons anywhere near as powerful as the main-gun on a tank, say anything bigger than 40mm. (those that did used them for ground -attack, though some German bomber-killers used big cannon against US heavies)

The heaviest Flak was as heavy as a (heavy) tank gun but was fired in air bursts which created shrapnel, direct hits were rare. They could be very hard to shoot down even from heavy ground weapons, there is a reason the Germans called the Sturomovik the "concrete bomber".

But I agree 'fying tank' does give people the wrong idea. Bottom line, from all the historical accounts I read aircraft armor seemed to work, which is why they added more and more of it to military aircraft as the war went on, in spite of the extra weight and consequent performance hit.

G.

Certainly, but even in relative terms aircraft armor was both much less extensive and significantly lighter than that sported by land or sea units. The citadel of a modern (Treaty or Post-Treaty) battleship protected its vital systems - primarily engines, main armament, and command - as well as sufficient volume to preserve buoyancy with a thickness of armor which was supposed to defeat own-caliber weaponry. Comparable armor for an aircraft would have meant protection sufficient to withstand at least .50" BMG (and preferably 20mm cannon) from any angle for its engines and flight control surfaces in addition to the pilot and crew. Even the Il-2, the usual suspect when people start talking about "flying tanks," did not feature anywhere near that scale or scope of protection.

There was also very definitely a point of diminishing returns with aircraft armor - witness the abortive attempts to build an "escort bomber" on the B-17 and B-24 airframes. Though of course you could push that point farther and farther out by adding ever more power.
_____

To nitpick: modern warships don't have armor, the hull may be somewhat resistant to penetration from small arms, but that's it. With the type of missiles that would be used in any current conflict, the strategy is to either shoot them down or simply run damage control after a hit.

Their contemporaries, not ours. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

[fusilier]

Don't most of them roll for damage? Wouldn't that cover it? If the damage from a grenade "hit" is random, part of that randomness could easily be taken to model different fragment sizes.

So in GURPS, a defensive grenade might have 2d6 fragmentation damage, whereas a 75mm HE round might have 5 or 6d6. While I would expect a fragment from a 75mm round to be likely to break through light armor (i.e. the armor of a light tank), I would also expect the round to generate a lot of small splinters (I'm thinking of stories of WW1 wounded). I don't feel that the dice represent that aspect.

One major thing to consider re; grenades etc., is modern high explosives are much more efficient than primitive black powder which was used back in pre-industrial times. . . .

This is certainly the case, but I'm not terribly sure how relevant it is. WW1 defensive grenades typically had a larger "danger radius" (or whatever you want to call it) than modern grenades, and they were filled with all sorts of weird explosives. I tried to research the fillings of WW1 grenades to stat some out in GURPS, and found it was no easy task. The grenades were often filled with odd sounding explosives, and even then they were often mixed with other explosives, including black powder. Some even used 100% black powder. I eventually just gave up.

Speaking what i can remeber form my grenade lessons:

15m is the radius agianst an unarmoured target. agianst someone wearing modern combat armour, we are told to reckon 5m. this figure is the 'effective' raduis, which i assume matchs up to to fusilier line that those hit would be out of combat.

According to the wikipedia entry, the M67 grenade has a "casualty radius" of 15 m, and a "fatality radius" of 5 m. However they don't mention body armor. I would suspect that around 5 m, concussion damage may become significant? And therefore armor becomes irrelevant?

[fusilier]

There was also very definitely a point of diminishing returns with aircraft armor - witness the abortive attempts to build an "escort bomber" on the B-17 and B-24 airframes. Though of course you could push that point farther and farther out by adding ever more power.

As already pointed out most aircraft in WW2 had some degree of armor plating somewhere. It's usually internal (except for armored cockpit glass) and you don't really notice it by simply looking.

The escort bombers, like the YB-40, ran into problems with their speed. Loaded down with armor, armament and lots of extra ammunition, they could still keep up with the normal bombers on the outward run. But once the normal bombers dropped their bombs (which the escort "bombers" didn't carry) they became lighter and faster. As a result, the whole formation was forced to slow down so that the escorts could keep up with them. Apparently the crews didn't like that.

Now returning to the subject of armor in aircraft. Armor started showing up on aircraft during WW1. I was under the impression that there may have been some scant armor protection on fighters by the end of that war, but can't find any data. However, ground attack aircraft started to have critical areas armored, and aircraft like the Junkers J.I (not to be confused with the J 1) had the engine and crew compartments surprisingly well armored. Unsurprisingly, the plane flew like a ton of bricks, but it did fly. :-)

Even the Il-2, the usual suspect when people start talking about "flying tanks," did not feature anywhere near that scale or scope of protection.

Yeah, and that so called "Flying Fortress" couldn't stand up to even half the punishment that a contemporary underground ferro-concrete fortress could take! ;-) Yes, planes like the Il-2 had no where near the armor of a real tank, and people should be made aware of that fact . . . but compared to other airplanes they were very well armored. Also, I suspect that the flying characteristics of such an over-armored aircraft encouraged the pilots to refer to it as a "flying tank."

[fusilier]

Anyway not to change the subject but ... did anyone ever wonder what would happen if an English Pirate fought a Samurai?

No I'm not going to go down some ridiculous speculative road, instead,
I found an interesting historical account of just such an encounter in 1602 in the East Indies. I wrote it up in my little blog on Enworld, in case anyone is interested:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/general...ml#post5093363

G.

Thanks for sharing that. I've heard of instances around that time of similar actions, like the Amboyna massacre, but never with that amount of detail. Interestingly, right around this time the Japanese seem to have been a bit more active on an "international" level, and honestly, with the limited information I've seen, they don't seem to have done very well.

[Galloglaich]

They seem to have made very good troops. They were sought out as mercenaries by the Europeans and the Chinese pirates.

I think they didn't expand much into the indies because few Japanese warlords were interested in doing that, most of the Japanese soliders who were out there were leaderless ronin. essentially cast-off by the Japanese system.

I know they did try expanding into Korea in the late 16th Century with plans to take on China and India, but they probably picked a bad place to start since the Koreans are really tough and had a good navy (wheras the Japanese had great soldiers but not much of a navy), and ultimately in spite of great military successes initially on the ground it got bogged down into a brutal land and naval war between Japan and Korea and the Ming Chinese that the Japanese eventually lost.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanes...2%E2%80%931598)

After the Tokugawa shogunate in 1603 Japan pretty much closed up.

G.

[Galloglaich]

By the way if you are interested in the Japanese / European interractions in this period I highly reccomend Giles Miltons other book Samurai William.

G.

[Galloglaich]

There was also very definitely a point of diminishing returns with aircraft armor - witness the abortive attempts to build an "escort bomber" on the B-17 and B-24 airframes. Though of course you could push that point farther and farther out by adding ever more power.

The escort bomber had more to do with a lot of extra ammunition so they could keep shooting their guns, and the diminishing returns had to do with their performance falling below that of the other bombers.

I think y'all are missing the point. Concrete fortresses and tanks don't fly 250 miles per hour in all directions ... and when you are shooting at them you are not going 250 miles per hour yourself.

Il-2 Sturmoviks were very hard to shoot down.

On paper if you look at an aircraft with just a few mm of armor and 23mm guns, you would have to assume that a tank with a 75mm gun and 4 or 5 inches of armor would have a big advantage. Yes if you parked them on the ground 500 feet apart the tank or concrete bunker will blow the plane apart. But planes don't sit on the ground.

In reality, Sturmoviks slaughtered German Panzers. Tanks don't have very thick top armor, light cannon, rockets and bombs proved very effective at wrecking them. Aircraft, meanwhile are hard to hit, if you are lucky you can get a few rounds into them, but the armor on a sturmovik made that unlikely to work.

The armor on a tank needs to protect against continual, unlimited small arms and machine gun fire, as well as multiple medium caliber artillery and mortar bursts, and even direct-fire from heavy-caliber tank rounds. The armor on an aircraft only needs to protect against a handful of rounds of 7 - 12 mm rifle caliber or one or two nearby airbursts of 20mm - 37 mm cannon shells from destroying them, and aircraft like the P-47, the Fw 190, the B-25, the B-17, Sturmovik etc. actually did very good with that.

The 'flying fortress' were so-called primarily due to the ten .50 cal machine guns they carried not so much for their armor, though both factors were significant. attacking US heavy bombers was extremely dangerous, they really were like a fortress especially when 10 or 20 off them were flying in formation. The Luftwaffe became ingenious at solving this particular puzzle but they still lost basically all of their pilots trying to defend their own families cities from being blasted to pieces and incinerated by the Allied bombers... ultimately without success.

You should either read up on WW II air combat in first-hand accounts, of which there are a near infinity, or try a realistic flight Sim like Il2, you'll notice how hard it is to shoot down an aircraft like a B-17 or a Sturomovik. Or even a G4M or an He 111. It takes very good flying, good marksmanship and not a little bit of luck to get through it unscathed.

G.

[Dervag]

I'm sorry, you don't mean to be pedantic? In that case, I think you may be confused about the purpose of this thread.

I concede that these aircraft carried more armor than I had thought; but as you point out, the armor diagram presented shows very limited protection versus fighter attack, and virtually none against ground fire.

Remember that for high-altitude four engine bombers, ground fire takes the form of exploding shrapnel shells that can go off anywhere relative to the aircraft. Thus, ground fire will not necessarily hit the plane from below.

To nitpick: modern warships don't have armor, the hull may be somewhat resistant to penetration from small arms, but that's it. With the type of missiles that would be used in any current conflict, the strategy is to either shoot them down or simply run damage control after a hit.

Though ideally you at least want the ship to be tough enough to limit the scope of damage, I'd think.

It's practically impossible to armor a ship heavily enough to make it immune to antiship missiles, but there could be a big difference between a ship that gets a 50m hole blown in the side by the missile and one that gets a 10m hole blown in the side. Armor as damage limitation may be worthwhile where "absolute" armor is not.

So in GURPS, a defensive grenade might have 2d6 fragmentation damage, whereas a 75mm HE round might have 5 or 6d6. While I would expect a fragment from a 75mm round to be likely to break through light armor (i.e. the armor of a light tank)...

I'd be skeptical, except at close range. Half the purpose of tanks in the first place was to make them shrapnel-proof as well as bullet-proof. A direct hit is another story, of course.

[fusilier]

The 'flying fortress' were so-called primarily due to the ten .50 cal machine guns they carried not so much for their armor, though both factors were significant. . . .

I was trying to be sarcastic. ;-) Although I guess I failed. My point was that these monikers have to be looked at in their proper context (flying tank, or flying fortress). That context is aircraft, not tanks or fortresses. I do think that philistine has a point, the Il-2 doesn't have "all-round" armor protection like a "tank" and calling it a "flying tank" may be misleading to some. Nevertheless, it was a very well armored aircraft. Just like the B-17 was a well armed bomber.

However, another thing to consider is the utility of armoring an airplane. The wings and fuselage are usually lightly skinned in aluminum sheets or fabric. Most bullets would simply put neat holes in these structures and do very little to effect the flying characteristics. However, a hole in the radiator or the pilot could easily knock the aircraft out of action. So armoring the whole plane isn't really necessary. It is possible to do structural damage to the fuselage and wings (this is where ball ammo and non-armor-piercing exploding ammo is useful), or to perhaps disable some control surfaces, but it's not as easy to accomplish.

Unless flying very low, most WW2 fighter aircraft had little to worry about AA. Bombers flying in formation might have more problems, but the statistics for most flak weapons were appalling low [as usual I can't put my fingers on such statistics at the moment]. Also in the mid 1930s there was a brief period where bombers were typically faster than fighters. This lead to several designs which minimized defensive armament, in favor of speed, just before WW2 broke out.

Ultimately, it's a matter of compromises. The Zero sacrificed armor for speed, maneuverability and range.

[fusilier]

They seem to have made very good troops. They were sought out as mercenaries by the Europeans and the Chinese pirates.

I think they didn't expand much into the indies because few Japanese warlords were interested in doing that, most of the Japanese soliders who were out there were leaderless ronin. essentially cast-off by the Japanese system.

I know they did try expanding into Korea in the late 16th Century with plans to take on China and India, but they probably picked a bad place to start since the Koreans are really tough and had a good navy (wheras the Japanese had great soldiers but not much of a navy), and ultimately in spite of great military successes initially on the ground it got bogged down into a brutal land and naval war between Japan and Korea and the Ming Chinese that the Japanese eventually lost.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanes...2%E2%80%931598)

After the Tokugawa shogunate in 1603 Japan pretty much closed up.

G.

My understanding is that Japanese soldiers of the period were usually very experienced (due to recent fighting in the homeland). But in the Korean invasions in the 1590s the Japanese don't seem to have done very well. In the first invasion they were beaten back by the Chinese, and in the second, after reforms, the Korean army itself was able to bottle up the Japanese. Although in both wars, the Korean navy had a significant part to play. At an abstract level this is basically what I would expect. The Japanese were so isolated that they never had to fight anybody with new ideas, which can lead to an over-specialized fighting style that might fail when faced with external opponents.

[Yora]

Question: How long did an experienced, but common weaponsmith work in his forge to make a sword. I assume he would make more than one at a time and don't do all the work himself, but how many man hours went into the creation of an average soldiers sword?

Assuming skilled craftsmen get paid 2 sp per day, which is fair because they created 2 sp of value added with their work; and a sword that sells for 150 sp requires 50sp of raw materials, a smith would have to work 50 days on just one sword. The cost of maintaining a forge are ignored here.
Even a master smith who works for 10 sp per day would take a year to make a single masterwork weapon.

It gets worse for a longbow, which would take 250 days of work. Even a very simple hatchet would take 20 days. And I more suspect them to take 12 hours of work or less.

[lsfreak]

-snip-

I can't answer any of those very well. But what I can say is that D&D was not made with anything but adventuring in mind, and the crafting and economic rules presented in the books are utterly useless for simulating any kind of reality.

If it's really important that these things work in your campaign world, you'll have to redo a lot of things. Possibly remake the entire wealth system, since even low-level adventurers are the equivalent of millionaires. As someone pointed out in the 'your wealth in chickens' thread a while ago, it costs something like 2,000 chickens just to get the simple kind of lock you'd want to keep your chickens safe.

[Karoht]

Question: How long did an experienced, but common weaponsmith work in his forge to make a sword. I assume he would make more than one at a time and don't do all the work himself, but how many man hours went into the creation of an average soldiers sword?

Assuming skilled craftsmen get paid 2 sp per day, which is fair because they created 2 sp of value added with their work; and a sword that sells for 150 sp requires 50sp of raw materials, a smith would have to work 50 days on just one sword. The cost of maintaining a forge are ignored here.
Even a master smith who works for 10 sp per day would take a year to make a single masterwork weapon.

It gets worse for a longbow, which would take 250 days of work. Even a very simple hatchet would take 20 days. And I more suspect them to take 12 hours of work or less.

A friend of mine works in the knife sharpening business, and got into old school swordsmithing as a hobby, so not using modern tools beyond a modern forge. I guarantee it would take an experienced person no more than a day. In general, the old school steps are...
Heat metal, pour into mould, let cool into rough shape. Reheat that piece of metal, pound it into correct shape, temper. Grind to achieve edge on a grinding wheel, do details such as hilt, pommel, handle, grip, etc.
This is assuming that the smith is starting with decent steel or processed iron to begin with, not just iron ore. If the smith is starting with ore, the ore must be processed first, I'm not sure how long that took in the old days. As for mastercraft, it might be a pet project of the smiths, taking as long as a week. People also forget that detailing is a part of the mastercraft description, and not all the time has to do with the weapon directly. Mastercraft weapons are prettier than regular.

A bow is very easy to make, takes no more than a day or three of whittling, once you have selected the correct piece of wood. Masterwork, I would say would take someone a week, painstakingly selecting out the perfect piece of wood, and being extremely careful and frugal with the triming of that piece of wood. They would cut, analyze, cut, analyse, etc. VS whittle whittle whittle whittle, check. Whittle whittle whittle whittle, check.

So why does a sword cost 150sp in game? Markup. Profit. Etc. Otherwise the guy (the smith or the shop owner) would not be in business.

[Stephen_E]

So why does a sword cost 150sp in game? Markup. Profit. Etc. Otherwise the guy (the smith or the shop owner) would not be in business.

Raw material costs, plant costs, taxes.....
Time making is only part of the item cost.

Stephen E

[Philistine]

The escort bomber had more to do with a lot of extra ammunition so they could keep shooting their guns, and the diminishing returns had to do with their performance falling below that of the other bombers.

Because the weight of additional guns and armor was negligible compared to the weight of the ammunition (which was being used up in the course of the mission, thus presumably restoring the aircraft's performance to better match its unladen bomber brethren), I take it?

Adding weight - whether armor, fuel, or whatever - decreased performance. Add enough weight of armor, and the performance drop makes you so much easier to hit that it doesn't matter how many hits you can take. That's assuming you still can still squeeze out enough range/payload to perform the mission at all at that point - because if not, you might as well have been shot down for all the damage you're doing to the enemy.

I think y'all are missing the point. Concrete fortresses and tanks don't fly 250 miles per hour in all directions ... and when you are shooting at them you are not going 250 miles per hour yourself.

Il-2 Sturmoviks were very hard to shoot down.

On paper if you look at an aircraft with just a few mm of armor and 23mm guns, you would have to assume that a tank with a 75mm gun and 4 or 5 inches of armor would have a big advantage. Yes if you parked them on the ground 500 feet apart the tank or concrete bunker will blow the plane apart. But planes don't sit on the ground.

...
With all due respect, I think it's you that's missing the point. Where did I say, or even suggest, that aircraft should be armored against tank weapons? What do you think I meant by "own-caliber"? Why do you think I specifically mentioned protecting against fifty-cal and twenty mike-mike, which by 1942 were the predominant weapons of fighter aircraft?

My point was, and is, that the term "armored" is misapplied to aircraft. Aircraft armor was both very light - not compared to tank armor and weapons, but compared to common aircraft and anti-aircraft weapons - and very sparse - in that it offered protection of only a very small part of the aircraft, and even that only from very limited angles. Furthermore, as you've so helpfully pointed out, an airplane's primary defense is not armor but motion - being difficult to hit or to hit squarely. Beyond that, even aircraft that were hit and survived did so not because of their armor, which most hits never impinged upon, but because of other factors - most notably strength of airframe, but also size.

Meanwhile, you seem to be basing your argument on the Il-2; but the Il-2 is a) hardly representative of the general case, b) still vulnerable - especially to engine, radiator, and pilot hits, but also to general airframe damage, and c) seem to have been primarily opposed by Bf109s, the most common marks of which were significantly under-gunned.

You should either read up on WW II air combat in first-hand accounts, of which there are a near infinity, or try a realistic flight Sim like Il2, you'll notice how hard it is to shoot down an aircraft like a B-17 or a Sturomovik. Or even a G4M or an He 111. It takes very good flying, good marksmanship and not a little bit of luck to get through it unscathed.

G.

Apparently this is going to come as a shock to you, but I actually do have some slight familiarity with this topic myself. I have indeed read some number (I haven't lost count because I've never tried to keep count) of first-hand accounts of WW2 air combat. And sure, any number of those have credited their aircraft's armor plate with saving their butts on at least one occasion... any number of fighter pilots' accounts, anyway. Bomber crews, not so much. Bomber crews are the ones who stare incredulously at interviewers who naively suggest that "all that armor" must have been a comfort, then retort that the aluminum skin of a B-17's or B-24's fuselage was thin enough to poke a finger through.

Lastly: flight sims, even "realistic" ones, inevitably reflect the prejudices of the games' designers rather than reality. While fun, they are not exactly reliable reference works. (This can be generalized to apply to all wargaming, in fact, including that carried out by military professionals. It can be a useful tool, but one wrong assumption can skew your results enough to render them worse than useless.)
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Remember that for high-altitude four engine bombers, ground fire takes the form of exploding shrapnel shells that can go off anywhere relative to the aircraft. Thus, ground fire will not necessarily hit the plane from below.

By the same token, the fragments also will not necessarily hit the aircraft from behind - which is the only direction from which most of the crew received any armor protection at all.