Schematic plan · World War I (Western Front 1918)

Battle of Picardy 1918, II

21 August 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 (Br 1st Army(+) & Fr 1st Army(+), 300,000 men under Fm Haig) attacked Germany (Ger 2nd, 9th & 17th Armies(+), 200,000 men under Cr Pr Rupprecht) in France. The CAA Database of Battles records 336 hours of fighting on a front of 150 km, a frontal attack against fortified defense, and that USA won. Losses: USA 35,000 (12%), Germany 80,000 (40%).

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

Fm Haig

Unit	Arm	Men
USA left wing	Infantry	72,000
USA centre	Infantry	96,000
USA right wing	Infantry	72,000
USA reserve	Infantry	60,000
Fm Haig	Commander	—
In this plan		300,000

Germany

Cr Pr Rupprecht

Unit	Arm	Men
Germany left wing	Infantry	48,000
Germany centre	Infantry	64,000
Germany right wing	Infantry	48,000
Germany reserve	Infantry	40,000
Cr Pr Rupprecht	Commander	—
In this plan		200,000

What the sources report

	USA	Germany
Strength, this plan	300,000	200,000
Losses, this plan	35,000	80,000

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 363, “Picardy 1918, Ii”, compiled for the US Army to study what decides battles. These are the figures a what-if engine can be calibrated against.

Fighting: 336 hours
Winner: the attacker
Terrain: Rolling, Mixed
Weather: Dry, Sunny, Temperate, Summer, Temperate
Defender’s posture: Fortified defense
Front width: 150 km (attacker), 150 km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
USAattacker	300,000	35,000	0	—	Frontal attack; Penetration
Germanydefender	200,000	80,000	0	—	Defensive plan; Withdrew

Attacker’s advantages morale +2 · momentum +1 · technology +1 · initiative +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. 363 · 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.