Medieval D-Day ??? Scene from "Robin Hood" trailer

[ChernayaAkula]

Went to see Kick-Rear (substitute Rear for a word that rhymes with "Bass") today (very cool movie btw!  ) and also saw the trailer for the new Robin Hood film starring Russell Crowe. Looks like it's gonna be a great film. Even if it takes as many liberties with history as Gladiator did, it should still work as a film and be thoroughly enjoyable (as Gladiator undoubtedly was). There was one part, however, when I couldn't help but blurt out aloud "Medieval D-Day?".  Below are a couple of screencaps from a trailer on the interwebs. You'll immediately see the D-Day connection:









Especially the boat in the second pic looks very much like an LCVP, doesn't it?

Were there boats like this in medieval times? I mean, with all the iron-clad knights, you tend to forget all the other means of warfare available to medieval warfare.

All this, of course, begs the question: How could this be applied to whiffing?  English knights storming a beach held by Teutonic knights? 

[PR19_Kit]

Where's the Mulberry Harbour then? 

[Fulcrum]

Where's the Mulberry Harbour then?  

Maybe old wooden sailing ships latched to each other &/or sunk in place

Another question is where is the Americans & Canadians?
          Maybe Aboriginal volunteer warriors ?!?

[Howard of Effingham]

landed on sword beach no doubt! 

[beowulf]

wheres Tom Hanks? 

[NARSES2]

There are some references to "flat bottomed barges with loading ramps" and these may be associated with horse transport, however it's not clear if they are references to actual events or it's the chronicler making suggestions in a "what if sort of why". Although amphibious warfare is as old as the first army having to cross a river, most of these amphibious operations would have been unopposed and therefore they tend to be overlooked in the "histories" of the time and just get a one sentence mention "Lord so-and-so landed on the coast of Brittany" etc. A lot of the reports of these events were written quite a long time after the event and were written for a specific audience (what changes ?) and one problem is the author transposes what was current at his time to what happened years before.

As for taking liberties with history in any Robin Hood film, it's a fable anyway so I'm not bothered as long as they try and get the feel of the period and are as accurate as possible with their representation of warfare of the time. Although we don't really know what it was like we can only get a feeling for it from the chronicles.

I'm looking forward to it anyway 

[jeremak]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMcDeNo6KUs&feature=fvw here is trailer. I note that when i frist time watch this. Some scenes just scram for montage its with Private Ryan in some crazy cross-time story.

[Geoff]

Arn't there Noman horsemen in the Bayeux tapestry, and I am pretty certain the English took horses to the English Kingdom's lands of France when we returned the favour about 200 years later?
I think I have read about the Roman navy having some amphibious uses/forces, but I don't think they had anything like an LCI.

[rickshaw]

They had flat-bottomed barges for landing troops from Roman times.  However horse-transports were usually done in a different way.  They were large, fat transports which would be grounded and they had hatches in the sides that once the tide had gone out, leaving the transport high-and-dry, would be opened allowing the horses out.  If you're looking for a D-Day simile think of them as being like LSTs.   The reason why they didn't land them by barge was because of the problems of moving them from ship to barge.  Horse transportation was a difficult enough business without trying to hoist them over the side and down onto a barge.   Most pre-modern amphibious operations occurred on undefended beaches (which were pretty common, considering the relatively low population density and the miniscule size of most armies in the period) or relied upon harbours being seized.

[nev]

I was actually speaking to some re-enactors at Whitby Abbey last summer who had just come from filming these scenes.  They couldn't say too much as they were under a gagging order, but they did say it was a very big production.  The beach it was filmed on was somewhere in Norfolk IIRC.

[NARSES2]

Arn't there Noman horsemen in the Bayeux tapestry, and I am pretty certain the English took horses to the English Kingdom's lands of France when we returned the favour about 200 years later?
I think I have read about the Roman navy having some amphibious uses/forces, but I don't think they had anything like an LCI.

The Romans had marines Geoff (as did the Egyptians and a few others) but there main use was for combat at sea, which at the time was to a large extent based on closing and boarding the enemy. They were used on land as well and during times of crisis during civil wars etc they could be part of a land army for long periods. The horses in the Tapestry and those landed in France by the English would have been handled as Rickshaw explains, or in very similar ways.

[jeremak]

Medieval D-Day? Here it is... I've made it today, its pure example of amator film mashup. But it show the idea...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5qLUDIfOvI
Used: Robin Hood trailer, Private Ryan, Battle of Britain and "Krzyżacy" + a bit from Mans in tights.

[dragon]

Of course, if you really wanted to "whiff" some medieval landing craft, you could always claim that they had been designed by Sir Andrew Higgins- Lord of (Insert likely British town or region here).  This family lore then was passed on to his descendant Andrew Jackson Higgins who decided to modernize the concept in 1930.

[Spey_Phantom]

i did so Roman Emperial Landing craft in the anime film "Asterix and the brittains"
there also was a verry D-Day type landing at the white cliffs of dover in the beginning of the film 

i found a youtube clip of the movie, its in swedish, but i think Narses will enjoy this 

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

[NARSES2]

Cheers Nils  I'm a great fan of Asterix, love the stories, animation and gentle humour