Schematic plan · World War I (Western Front 1918)

Battle of Aisne-Marne I

18 July 1918
France
Victory for France

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.

France (Fr 10th Army(+), 750,000 men under Gen Mangin) attacked Germany (Ger 9th Army, 450,000 men under Gen Eben) in France. The CAA Database of Battles records 24 hours of fighting on a front of 130 km, a frontal attack against fortified defense, and that France won. Losses: France 55,000 (7%), Germany 50,000 (11%).

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

France

Gen Mangin

Unit	Arm	Men
France left wing	Infantry	154,380
France centre	Infantry	205,840
France right wing	Infantry	154,380
France reserve	Infantry	128,650
France artillery (7,000 guns)	Artillery	105,000
France armour (350 tanks)	Armour	1,750
Gen Mangin	Commander	—
In this plan		750,000

Germany

Gen Eben

Unit	Arm	Men
Germany left wing	Infantry	93,600
Germany centre	Infantry	124,800
Germany right wing	Infantry	93,600
Germany reserve	Infantry	78,000
Germany artillery (4,000 guns)	Artillery	60,000
Gen Eben	Commander	—
In this plan		450,000

What the sources report

	France	Germany
Strength, this plan	750,000	450,000
Losses, this plan	55,000	50,000

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 352, “Aisne-Marne I”, compiled for the US Army to study what decides battles. These are the figures a what-if engine can be calibrated against.

Fighting: 24 hours
Winner: the attacker
Terrain: Rolling, Mixed
Weather: Dry, Temperate, Summer, Temperate
Defender’s posture: Fortified defense
Front width: 130 km (attacker), 130 km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
Franceattacker	750,000	55,000	0	7,000	Frontal attack; Penetration
Germanydefender	450,000	50,000	0	4,000	Defensive plan; Withdrew with heavy losses

Attacker’s advantages morale +1 · initiative +1 · surprise +1 · air superiority +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. 352 · ODC-BY-1.0Strengths, losses, front widths, hours of fighting, tactics and outcome.

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.