Schematic plan · World War I (Turkish Fronts 1917)

Second Battle of Kut

22 February 1917
Mesopotamia
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.

Great Britain (Br 1st & 3rd Corps, & U/I Cav Div, 46,000 men under Gen Maude) attacked Ottoman Empire (Tk U/I Task Force, 10,500 men under Nur-Ud-Din Pasha) in Mesopotamia. The CAA Database of Battles records 35.8 hours of fighting on a front of 7.2 km, a frontal attack against prepared defense, and that Great Britain won. Losses: Great Britain 2,750 (6%), Ottoman Empire 4,300 (41%).

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

Great Britain

Gen Maude

Unit	Arm	Men
Great Britain left wing	Infantry	10,414
Great Britain centre	Infantry	13,885
Great Britain right wing	Infantry	10,414
Great Britain reserve	Infantry	8,678
Great Britain artillery (174 guns)	Artillery	2,610
Gen Maude	Commander	—
In this plan		46,001

Ottoman Empire

Nur-Ud-Din Pasha

Unit	Arm	Men
Ottoman Empire left wing	Infantry	2,192
Ottoman Empire centre	Infantry	2,923
Ottoman Empire right wing	Infantry	2,192
Ottoman Empire reserve	Infantry	1,827
Ottoman Empire artillery (91 guns)	Artillery	1,365
Nur-Ud-Din Pasha	Commander	—
In this plan		10,499

What the sources report

	Great Britain	Ottoman Empire
Strength, this plan	46,000	10,500
Losses, this plan	2,750	4,300

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 325, “Tigris Crossing”, compiled for the US Army to study what decides battles. These are the figures a what-if engine can be calibrated against.

Fighting: 35.8 hours
Winner: the attacker
Terrain: Flat, Bare
Weather: Dry, Sunny, Temperate, Winter, Temperate
Defender’s posture: Prepared defense
Front width: 7.2 km (attacker), 40 km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
Great Britainattacker	46,000	2,750	0	174	Frontal attack; Penetration
Ottoman Empiredefender	10,500	4,300	0	91	Defensive plan; Withdrew with heavy losses

Attacker’s advantages momentum +1 · air superiority +1 · combat effectiveness +1

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. 325 · ODC-BY-1.0Strengths, losses, front widths, hours of fighting, tactics and outcome.
Wikipedia contributors, Second Battle of Kut · 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.