Schematic plan · World War II (Italy 1943-1944)

Battle of Battipaglia I

12 September 1943
Italy
Victory for Great Britain

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 16th Pz Div(-)(+), 14,730 men under Mg Sickenius) attacked Great Britain (Br 56th Ind Div(+), 11,230 men under Mg Graham) in Italy. The CAA Database of Battles records 72 hours of fighting on a front of 4.8 km, a frontal attack against hasty defense, and that Great Britain held. Losses: Germany 1,112 (8%), Great Britain 1,639 (15%).

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

Mg Sickenius

Unit	Arm	Men
Germany left wing	Infantry	3,040
Germany centre	Infantry	4,053
Germany right wing	Infantry	3,040
Germany reserve	Infantry	2,533
Germany artillery (108 guns)	Artillery	1,620
Germany armour (89 tanks)	Armour	445
Mg Sickenius	Commander	—
In this plan		14,731

Great Britain

Mg Graham

Unit	Arm	Men
Great Britain left wing	Infantry	2,255
Great Britain centre	Infantry	3,007
Great Britain right wing	Infantry	2,255
Great Britain reserve	Infantry	1,879
Great Britain artillery (146 guns)	Artillery	1,685
Great Britain armour (30 tanks)	Armour	150
Mg Graham	Commander	—
In this plan		11,231

What the sources report

	Germany	Great Britain
Strength, this plan	14,730	11,230
Losses, this plan	1,112	1,639

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 397, “Battipaglia I”, compiled for the US Army to study what decides battles. These are the figures a what-if engine can be calibrated against.

Fighting: 72 hours
Winner: the defender
Terrain: Rolling, Mixed
Weather: Dry, Sunny, Temperate, Autumn, Temperate
Defender’s posture: Hasty defense
Front width: 4.8 km (attacker), 4.8 km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
Germanyattacker	14,730	1,112	0	108	Frontal attack; Penetration; Repulse; Stalemate
Great Britaindefender	11,230	1,639	0	146	Defensive plan

Attacker’s advantages training +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. 397 · 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.