This modern commercially available armored plate:

http://www.mtlgrp.com/pdf/Armox-Armour.pdf

...can, according to the trade lit linked above, stop a .357 magnum at 5 meters with 3mm thickness, or an M-16 5.56 / FN-FAL .308 at 10 meters with 6mm thickness. These weapons are much more powerful than 17th Century muskets needless to say.

This is a medium tempered steel alloy with .3% carbon, and trace amounts of molybdenum, nickel, chromium, and mangenese which they say gives an 'equivalent carbon content' of 0.67%. The steel has a hardness of 480 - 540 HB.

We should be able to compare that hardness to the numbers quoted in Knight and the Blast Furnace. Alan Williams uses the VPH scale. So for example on page 379 of Knight and the Blast Furnace there is a 15th Century Tempered German breastplate listed with an average hardness of 405 VPH which translates to about 380 HB, if I'm reading that right, which seems to be in the ballpark (76%) of the average hardness for the modern armor. Unfortunately Alan doesn't list the thickness of the plate, but if we assume it was at least 3mm (which is quite likely based on what I've seen) I think it would have been adequate to protect against a Musket at say 20 meters or more. I'm not certain how a .357 magnum compares in penetration to a musket maybe someone else can chime in with that.

On page 409 there is another similar half-armor, tempered steel at 0.5% carbon with an average hardness of 408 VPH

Another similar tempered steel three quarters anime harness on page 414 has an average VPH of 407 and a carbon content of 0.5%

Here is the google books for Knight and the Blast Furnace
http://books.google.com/books?id=GpVbns ... ss&f=false

I was using this table for conversion:

http://www.steelstrip.co.uk/hardnessconv.htm



BD

Quotes from Dan Howard on anothr forum, (quoting from Knight and the Blast Furnace and Ffoulkes The Armorer and his Craft:)



So from this data is sounds like a musket or any other firearm would be insufficient to penetrate a good quality tempered steel armor from any distance until the late 16th Century using corned powder, and even then probably at short range.

G.

I find that at odds with a lot of battles throughout the Italian wars, where a musket (meaning actual musket, not the arquebus that is often refered to as a musket) seems to often penetrate armour.

Well, according to that data a late 16th Century Musket using serpentine or corned powder should be able to penetrate steel armor at least at close range. These late era muskets are much more powerful than I expected them to be, compare the energy in Joules to modern firearms.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzzle_ene ... cartridges

On the other hand it's also true that steel plate is not easy to shoot holes in. I think the point you are missing is that there is a big difference between an individual musket being able to penetrate the thickest part of the best armor, and a concentrated fulisade of musket fire being effective against armored cavalry.

There were many similar (and quite tedious) arguments about longbows. Just because a longbow couldn't penetrate the helmet or cuirass of a 15th Century chevalier doesn't mean that longbows were not effective against them in the right circumstances; clearly they were. All you need is for the armor on the horse to fail to protect it or the weaker or incomplete parts of the armor of the rider. With enough well-aimed projectiles concentrated sufficiently into a group of cavalry which can't get out of the way this is bound to happen.

But it's not automatic, and it's worth noting that in the Italian Wars musketeers and arquebusiers were typically protected by pikes and / or fortifications or fieldworks. It wasn't until the late 17th Century that Pike and Shot tactics began to be replaced by all-musket armed infantry. There was a limit to the effectiveness of muskets until you had well trained troops with a good shooting drill using reliable guns with good (corned) powder and efficient firing mechanism (flint-locks).

G.

Agreed, but the death of the pike was caused by socket bayonets in 1680's.

Socket bayonetts would not have been sufficient to stop heavy cavalry of the type you still saw in the 15th and early 16th Century. All that device did was make the musket into a viable melee weapon.

Socket or plug bayonetts in fact weren't very effective initially.

G.

Socket bayonet isn't from early 16th century. Its from 1680's. so late 17th century, and you don't see heavy cavalry like your thinking of at that time. Were talking 50 years after gustavus adolphus. That is when pikes stoped being used. And a socket bayonet is not a plug, it allows you to still fire while using it.

As for instances where plate armour (in the italian wars) was found stuck inside of a persons torso (the armour being turned into shrappnel) I recommend Bert S. Hall's weapons and warfare of the renaissance.

We are kind of talking past each other here, but I'm a bit too tired to try to sort it out.

I'm familiar with those kinds of anecdotes, but the plural of anecdote is not statistic, so they say. I'm more interested in hard data.

G.

Interesting test with a hussite style handgonne, looks like penetration at about 5 or 10', then it bounced off at about 20'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdXy0IfsWsE