Bows and Arrows in the Civil War

[Johnrankins]

That made me laugh. I agree- it would take an impossible level of accuracy to silently kill foes, accuracy that the bow doesn't really have.

A crossbow could do it with someone who is a good shot. If they can hit the back of someone's head they will be dead before they can scream. But you are talking commandos or assassins not large bodies of troops here.

 

[Johnrankins]

The silencer wasn't invented yet at the time.

But sure they can. A silencer is basically just a series of gates and stops the bullet has to travel through, dissipating sound waves and muzzle flash along the way. Why wouldn't it work in a desert or a jungle? Obviously you need to keep it clean, but the technology is surprisingly simple.

More to the point silencers don't actually make guns silent but make them less loud. They merely loud instead of LOUD!! It suppresses the noise enough that you can't hear it maybe three rooms away instead of hearing it the entire block.

 

[Inquisitor Tolkien]

There were proposals to create longbow regiments in the British Army in the Napoleonic Wars, and some military historians reckon they could have beat equal numbers of enemy musketmen...but as said above, the trouble is for a longbow to be worth it you have to train the bowman for years, and thus if you're trading one longbowman killed for two enemy musketmen, it's costing you far more than it cost the enemy in the long run.

No such proposals existed, to the best of my knowledge. The best I could find for such a wide-spread claim was that Wellington allegedly asked for longbowmen in the Peninsular Campaign in a letter to Parliament, but I have seen no actual historical documents to corroborate this claim (indeed, the best I could find was references in the Sharpe series [which is a wonderful piece of absolute fiction]). Do you perhaps have a (primary) source for this claim?

 

[jayel]

Well, at least, it was silent and basic arrowry and bows can be easy to make, but I guess indeed a simple gun would be better.

Can silencer stuff work in non-european conditions? a desert or jungle or arctic, by example, well?

arrows aren't really silent (quieter than a gun yes but they whistle/hiss as they fly) but a crossbow is definitely not silent, any power at all and they thunk and twang on release, true gun powder silencers require a closed bolt and a sub-sonic bullet, a bullet breaking the speed of sound makes a crack like a whip

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

arrows aren't really silent (quieter than a gun yes but they whistle/hiss as they fly) but a crossbow is definitely not silent, any power at all and they thunk and twang on release, true gun powder silencers require a closed bolt and a sub-sonic bullet, a bullet breaking the speed of sound makes a crack like a whip

But they're a lot quieter than guns, and they don't have muzzle blast. So, for taking out sentries from hiding, your hypothetical raider might prefer to have a bow of some sort.

I do note that when Indians got access to guns, even when they were matchlock and required boughten gunpowder and lead, they abandoned bow and arrow for hunting really quickly.

 

[9 Fanged Hummingbird]

But they're a lot quieter than guns, and they don't have muzzle blast. So, for taking out sentries from hiding, your hypothetical raider might prefer to have a bow of some sort.

Speaking from experience, even an experienced archer can't just place shots exactly where he wants, and if an arrow hits a sentry without immediately killing him (which is very likely) chances are he'd scream "Oh hell, I just got shot!" and there goes all the sneakiness. The best weapon for stealth will always remain the knife.