Modern SAMURAI Can Cut Speeding BULLET in Half!

Grugore said:
No joke. Here's the video.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fTPKqWQADr0
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The Samurai sword and style of sword fighting (Kendo) is over rated.

In the 16th Century Portuguese traders in Japan, armed with cutlasses were handed their asses by elite Samurai armed with katanas and fighting the kendo style. Cutlases though were intended as a weapon to prevent assailants from boarding ships. Later the Portuguese came back armed with rapiers and fighting in the western fencing style and they slaughtered the Samurai who attacked them with katanas.

Why? Because the rapier is a stabbing sword and the katana is a slashing sword and a stabbing sword is a more effective means of killing than a slashing sword. When modern day fencing masters compete against kendo masters the fencing masters strike a killing blow against kendo master 3 out of 4 times on average.

So though certainly a highly disciplined and skilled martial art kendo is unquestionably inferior to the western fencing method.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
The Samurai sword and style of sword fighting (Kendo) is over rated.

In the 16th Century Portuguese traders in Japan, armed with cutlasses were handed their asses by elite Samurai armed with katanas and fighting the kendo style. Cutlases though were intended as a weapon to prevent assailants from boarding ships. Later the Portuguese came back armed with rapiers and fighting in the western fencing style and they slaughtered the Samurai who attacked them with katanas.

Why? Because the rapier is a stabbing sword and the katana is a slashing sword and a stabbing sword is a more effective means of killing than a slashing sword. When modern day fencing masters compete against kendo masters the fencing masters strike a killing blow against kendo master 3 out of 4 times on average.

So though certainly a highly disciplined and skilled martial art kendo is unquestionably inferior to the western fencing method.
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Funny you should mention that. Because someone proficient with a quarter staff could take on both of the swordsmen at the same time, and win.
 
Grugore said:
Funny you should mention that. Because someone proficient with a quarter staff could take on both of the swordsmen at the same time, and win.
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True.

The ancient Romans discovered though that in group tactics using stabbing weapons was a far more effective method of killing enemy combatants than melee combat was. A Roman legion would have defeated a medieval army of Samurai though the Samurai individually were superior fighters as the Samurai tradition in combat was to fight melee style and their armies lacked close combat tactics and unit discipline the Romans were famous for.

It drives me crazy anytime I see a program on Ancient Rome as almost always they show Roman legions fighting melee combat which the Roman armies did not use.

The only ones I’ve seen get it right was Kubric in Spartacus and in HBO’s Rome.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
True.

The ancient Romans discovered though that in group tactics using stabbing weapons was a far more effective method of killing enemy combatants than melee combat was. A Roman legion would have defeated a medieval army of Samurai though the Samurai individually were superior fighters as the Samurai tradition in combat was to fight melee style and their armies lacked close combat tactics and unit discipline the Romans were famous for.

It drives me crazy anytime I see a program on Ancient Rome as almost always they show Roman legions fighting melee combat which the Roman armies did not use.

The only ones I’ve seen get it right was Kubric in Spartacus and in HBO’s Rome.
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What about the Spartans? I heard they were the best fighters who ever lived. I mean, look how they held against the Persians. They lost, but their skill and courage united the West against Persia.
 
Here’s some examples of complete nonsense


I like how the Roman cavalry is using stirrups which weren’t even discovered until after the western Roman Empire had ended.
 
With the exception of Pullo’s insubordination this from HBO’s Rome would have been accurate for small unit tactics.

 
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Grugore said:
What about the Spartans? I heard they were the best fighters who ever lived. I mean, look how they held against the Persians. They lost, but their skill and courage united the West against Persia.
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I wouldn’t say that but the Spartans around 800 BC or so developed the Phalanx system which was utterly dependent on unit discipline and thus they began the western tradition of strict military discipline that western armies have been known for. Alexander the Great used the Phalanx to conquer a vast swath of territory.

The Ancient Romans borrowed the Phalanx system from the Greeks but recognized its flaws of maneuvering in rugged or hilly terrain. The Roman then modified the Phalanx into the three line Maniple system of the Legions. The Romans first came into military conflict with the Greeks around 300 BC and though the Greeks defeated the Romans in battle they suffered huge loses to the Legions Manipular tactics which were more flexible. Around 100 BC the Roman general Marius implemented his reforms and replaced the maniple system with the cohort system for which by then the Phalanx system of the Greeks was hopelessly out dated and the Legions easily rolled them up.

Still, all these military tactics required strict unit discipline which to this day is the hallmark of Western militaries.

During the 15 century CE Europeans, who were just coming out of the Dark Ages and were in many ways inferior to most of the civilized world would borrow and develop military technologies that combined with the western tradition of strict military discipline permitted them to pretty much conquer the rest of the world.

Which is really astounding when you look back at that time and see how small in population and how divided the Europeans were at this time but conquer the world they did and the western tradition of strict military discipline played no small role.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
Beats me but the stirrup was invented in China in the second century AD and arrived in Europe with nomadic invaders after the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirrup
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It looks like a stirrup to me, which also protected the legs as well. From your Wiki article.

A coin of Quintus Labienus, who was in service of Parthia, minted circa 39 BC depicts on its reverse a saddled horse with hanging objects. Smith suggests they are pendant cloths, while Thayer suggests that, considering the fact that the Parthians were famous for their mounted archery, the objects are stirrups, but adds that it is difficult to imagine why the Romans would never have adopted the technology.
 
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