Schematic plan · World War I (Western Front 1918)

Battle of Beaurepaire Farm

18 July 1918
France
Victory for USA

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.

USA (US 2/23rd Inf Rgt(+), 4,480 men under Maj Waddill) attacked Germany (Ger 3/219th Res Inf Rgt, 565 men under Cpt Stockmar) in France. The CAA Database of Battles records 4.9 hours of fighting on a front of 1.3 km, a frontal attack against fortified defense, and that USA won. Losses: USA 125 (3%), Germany 181 (32%).

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

USA

Maj Waddill

Unit	Arm	Men
USA left wing	Infantry	931
USA centre	Infantry	1,242
USA right wing	Infantry	931
USA reserve	Infantry	776
USA artillery (36 guns)	Artillery	540
USA armour (12 tanks)	Armour	60
Maj Waddill	Commander	—
In this plan		4,480

Germany

Cpt Stockmar

Unit	Arm	Men
Germany left wing	Infantry	136
Germany centre	Infantry	181
Germany right wing	Infantry	136
Germany reserve	Infantry	113
Cpt Stockmar	Commander	—
In this plan		566

What the sources report

	USA	Germany
Strength, this plan	4,480	565
Losses, this plan	125	181

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 356, “Beaurepaire Farm”, compiled for the US Army to study what decides battles. These are the figures a what-if engine can be calibrated against.

Fighting: 4.9 hours
Winner: the attacker
Terrain: Rolling, Mixed
Weather: Dry, Temperate, Summer, Temperate
Defender’s posture: Fortified defense
Front width: 1.3 km (attacker), 1.3 km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
USAattacker	4,480	125	0	36	Frontal attack; Penetration
Germanydefender	565	181	0	0	Defensive plan; Withdrew with heavy losses

Attacker’s advantages morale +1 · momentum +1 · initiative +1 · surprise +2 · 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. 356 · 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.