Sorry But Armies Of Old Didn't Use Fire Arrows Like They Do In Movies!

If you are a big fan of TV shows like Game of Thrones, Braveheart or similar historical stuff, you might notice that heroic characters and armies usually pour a rain of fire arrows towards their rivals. From a very long range, these good guys aim to destroy the villains by stretching a bow in unison and shoot a bed of fire arrows, making us feel like all the badasses would be burnt and be exploded when facing fire arrows.

No matter how powerfully fire arrows appeared in movies, many film lovers still wonder about its real ability. Under no circumstance do fire arrows become truly sacred as we’ve seen on the TV, not to mention a fact that almost no army in Medieval periods actually operated them in an open battlefield.

To dig deeper into the truth, let’s take a glance at how arrows work. As explained by experts, old armies throughout history were interested in arrows thanks to many useful features – but generally, they had found three core properties of these weapons. First of all, arrows can be triggered up from a long distance. In the meantime, a team of bowmen could attack opponents at the same time while other teams reload their bows with arrows, meaning that they can have a very high rate of fire. Last but not least, arrows were able to pierce through armors.

These appreciated attributes didn’t come along with fire arrows. Keeping a fire on an arrow during its entire flight doesn’t give us any positive impact, but it could ruin time and one of the three core properties mentioned above. Hardly could a bowman modify his arrow stay on fire but be able to keep the planned distance or the strength that he expected when aiming his target.

On the other hand, the practice of attaching a cloth piece into an arrow and fire it up could damage not only the bow but also the hand that you use to hold it. Even if successful, flames from a tiny stick like that will fail to burn guys in full-place armors like we usually see in the movies. In a nutshell, using fire arrows actually costs a lot of time and brings us no considerable effectiveness.