I made this comment in passing and prefaced with "as I understand it." Always happy to be corrected.

I followed the cited source for the wikipedia claim, and it's just a guy writing a paper and saying his opinion. He's not citing anything deeper to cover his claim about an initial volley followed by targetting individual solders. Just because it's in a paper doesn't mean it's right, or even well-researched.

Sure, it FEELS right, and that does have weight with living history and experimental archeology, but I worry that "feeling" is the only thing anyone is actually citing in this whole conversation, including Wikipedia.

You're misunderstanding. War bows can't be held, the bow is way too heavy to allow you to hold an arrow and loose it at will; drawing and loosing are two actions of a singular movement.

Volleys were used, but the similarity with the way they're used with firearms only exists in the use of crossbows, which were invented specifically because they allow to draw and shoot in two motions (and also they require virtually no training compared to war bows)