Schematic plan · World War I

Second Battle of Ypres

22 April 1915
France
Victory for Great Britain

All battles The event in the chronicle Wikipedia

A schematic plan, generated from the statistics of the CAA Database of Battles: the armies' size and width, the hours of fighting, the plan of attack and the outcome are as recorded; the ground and the positions are not.

Germany (Ger 4th Army(-), 150,000 men under Dk of Wuerttemberg) attacked Great Britain (Br 2nd Army(-)(+), 190,000 men under Gen Smith-Dorrien) in France. The CAA Database of Battles records 768 hours of fighting on a front of 23 km, a frontal attack against fortified defense, and that Great Britain held. Losses: Germany 35,000 (23%), Great Britain 70,000 (37%).

This plan is generated from those figures. It shows the shape of the battle the database describes: the size and width of the armies, the plan of attack and the outcome. It does not show where the units actually stood.

The armies

Germany

Dk of Wuerttemberg

Unit	Arm	Men
Germany left wing	Infantry	36,000
Germany centre	Infantry	48,000
Germany right wing	Infantry	36,000
Germany reserve	Infantry	30,000
Dk of Wuerttemberg	Commander	—
In this plan		150,000

Great Britain

Gen Smith-Dorrien

Unit	Arm	Men
Great Britain left wing	Infantry	45,600
Great Britain centre	Infantry	60,800
Great Britain right wing	Infantry	45,600
Great Britain reserve	Infantry	38,000
Gen Smith-Dorrien	Commander	—
In this plan		190,000

What the sources report

	Germany	Great Britain
Strength, this plan	150,000	190,000
Losses, this plan	35,000	70,000

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 291, “Ypres Ii”, compiled for the US Army to study what decides battles. These are the figures a what-if engine can be calibrated against.

Fighting: 768 hours
Winner: the defender
Terrain: Flat, Mixed
Weather: Dry, Sunny, Temperate, Spring, Temperate
Defender’s posture: Fortified defense
Front width: 23 km (attacker), 23 km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
Germanyattacker	150,000	35,000	0	—	Frontal attack; Penetration; Stalemate
Great Britaindefender	190,000	70,000	0	—	Defensive plan; Stalemate

Attacker’s advantages technology +1 · surprise +2

CDB90 (US Army Concepts Analysis Agency, 1990), tidy edition by Jeffrey B. Arnold; data under ODC-BY 1.0.

Notes

On this reconstruction

Generated automatically from the statistics in CDB90. Frontages, depths, distances, the order of events and the terrain are schematic: they follow the recorded strengths, front widths, hours of fighting, tactical plan and outcome, not maps or accounts of the battle. The sources give no hours; the timing is conjectural.

Sources

US Army Concepts Analysis Agency; tidy edition by Jeffrey B. Arnold, CAA Database of Battles (CDB90), no. 291 · ODC-BY-1.0Strengths, losses, front widths, hours of fighting, tactics and outcome.
Wikipedia contributors, Second Battle of Ypres · CC-BY-SA-4.0

Facts gathered from Wikidata (CC0), Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0) and Wikimedia Commons (licence per file); the plan and its text are timeastra’s own.