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

Battle of Battipaglia II

17 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.

Great Britain (Br 56th Inf Div(+), 14,730 men under Mg Templer) attacked Germany (Ger 26th Pz Div (Elms) & 16th Pz Div (Elms), 6,995 men under Mg Luettwitz) in Italy. The CAA Database of Battles records 24 hours of fighting on a front of 12 km, a frontal attack against delaying action, and that Great Britain won. Losses: Great Britain 300 (2%), Germany 110 (2%).

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

Great Britain

Mg Templer

Unit	Arm	Men
Great Britain left wing	Infantry	2,889
Great Britain centre	Infantry	3,851
Great Britain right wing	Infantry	2,889
Great Britain reserve	Infantry	2,407
Great Britain artillery (152 guns)	Artillery	2,210
Great Britain armour (97 tanks)	Armour	485
Mg Templer	Commander	—
In this plan		14,731

Germany

Mg Luettwitz

Unit	Arm	Men
Germany left wing	Infantry	1,357
Germany centre	Infantry	1,810
Germany right wing	Infantry	1,357
Germany reserve	Infantry	1,131
Germany artillery (80 guns)	Artillery	1,049
Germany armour (58 tanks)	Armour	290
Mg Luettwitz	Commander	—
In this plan		6,994

What the sources report

	Great Britain	Germany
Strength, this plan	14,730	6,995
Losses, this plan	300	110

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 400, “Battipaglia Ii”, 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, Sunny, Temperate, Autumn, Temperate
Defender’s posture: Delaying action
Front width: 12 km (attacker), 12 km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
Great Britainattacker	14,730	300	0	152	Frontal attack; Penetration
Germanydefender	6,995	110	0	80	Defensive plan; Withdrew

Attacker’s advantages momentum +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. 400 · 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.