Pat, you make continuous references that todays bows cannot approach the bows of the 30's and 40's and you are dead wrong. Bow performance is based on the speed of the bow where flight shooting is the distance.
Badger, thanks for clarifying what seemed to be a babylonic speech confusion.
Yes I'm talking about efficiency, not raw speed. Efficiency is the kinetic energy of the arrow divided by how much energy you put in the draw (area below the FD curve). 10 gpp seems to be a good proxy for that. And if not, it's at least what we typically shoot when hunting.
By the way, the Kooi & Bergman paper suggests that the most efficient bow design is a deflex-reflex bow with a gentle working recurve (basically aking to the duoflex design), very closely followed by a straight bow (Table 1 in that paper).
The straight bow will not shoot as fast as the contact recurve, but it will be nearly as efficient. Mark the difference.