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

Battle of Vietri

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 Hermann Goering Pz Div(+), 15,000 men under Mg Schmaltz) attacked Great Britain (Br 46th Inf Div(+), 12,917 men under Mg Hawkesworth) in Italy. The CAA Database of Battles records 72 hours of fighting on a front of 14.5 km, a frontal attack against hasty defense, and that Great Britain held. Losses: Germany 900 (6%), Great Britain 1,164 (9%).

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 Schmaltz

Unit	Arm	Men
Germany left wing	Infantry	2,930
Germany centre	Infantry	3,907
Germany right wing	Infantry	2,930
Germany reserve	Infantry	2,442
Germany artillery (164 guns)	Artillery	2,250
Germany armour (108 tanks)	Armour	540
Mg Schmaltz	Commander	—
In this plan		14,999

Great Britain

Mg Hawkesworth

Unit	Arm	Men
Great Britain left wing	Infantry	2,599
Great Britain centre	Infantry	3,465
Great Britain right wing	Infantry	2,599
Great Britain reserve	Infantry	2,166
Great Britain artillery (146 guns)	Artillery	1,938
Great Britain armour (30 tanks)	Armour	150
Mg Hawkesworth	Commander	—
In this plan		12,917

What the sources report

	Germany	Great Britain
Strength, this plan	15,000	12,917
Losses, this plan	900	1,164

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 398, “Vietri”, 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: 14.5 km (attacker), 14.5 km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
Germanyattacker	15,000	900	0	164	Frontal attack; Penetration; Repulse; Stalemate
Great Britaindefender	12,917	1,164	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. 398 · 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.