Reconstructing The Historical Chinese Storm Of Crows Weapon

The Chinese had been utilizing massive crossbows – akin to Greek and Roman ballistae – for warfare for lots of the similar causes that European armies liked them. Their single, massive arrow was successfully unstoppable, although this additionally was fairly ineffective towards massive teams of infantry until they have been so variety to neatly line up. Old Chinese information point out a particular form of ammunition, known as a cup arrow, or ‘storm of crows’, which entails launching many smaller arrows as a substitute of a single massive one, a feat that [Tod] really wanted to try and recreate.

In itself this doesn’t sound too advanced: simply seize some arrows, loosely tie them collectively in a bundle and slap them on the crossbow. Yet with the immense forces utilized on this bundle it clearly seems that the engineering problem isn’t fairly that easy, because the arrows like to scatter wildly in all instructions or in any other case be fairly unpredictable.

Although we are able to discover historical references to a number of bolt siege crossbows getting used, particulars are sparse on how the Chinese engineers addressed these aforementioned points, so [Tod] tries a variety of approaches to try to make it work on his personal siege crossbow. Unfortunately he wasn’t in a position to make it work reliably, however he says he’ll be again with a variety of enhancements, with the neighborhood invited to pitch in their very own concepts.

These kind of weapons have been very generally utilized in China and surrounding nations from a whole bunch of years BCE to across the sixteenth century CE, when black powder was used to launch projectiles like fireplace arrows from a Huo Che or the Korean equal of the Hwacha, successfully a number of rocket launchers, not in contrast to the MLRS models seen in militaries at this time.