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

Battle of Capua

13 October 1943
Italy
Victory for Germany

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(+), 16,857 men under Bg Lyne) attacked Germany (Ger Hermann Goering Pz Div(-), 8,000 men under Mg Schmaltz) in Italy. The CAA Database of Battles records 12 hours of fighting on a front of 2 km, a river crossing against prepared defense, and that Germany held. Losses: Great Britain 420 (2%), Germany 94 (1%).

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

Bg Lyne

Unit	Arm	Men
Great Britain left wing	Infantry	3,382
Great Britain centre	Infantry	4,509
Great Britain right wing	Infantry	3,382
Great Britain reserve	Infantry	2,818
Great Britain artillery (160 guns)	Artillery	2,400
Great Britain armour (73 tanks)	Armour	365
Bg Lyne	Commander	—
In this plan		16,856

Germany

Mg Schmaltz

Unit	Arm	Men
Germany left wing	Infantry	1,681
Germany centre	Infantry	2,242
Germany right wing	Infantry	1,681
Germany reserve	Infantry	1,401
Germany artillery (59 guns)	Artillery	885
Germany armour (22 tanks)	Armour	110
Mg Schmaltz	Commander	—
In this plan		8,000

What the sources report

	Great Britain	Germany
Strength, this plan	16,857	8,000
Losses, this plan	420	94

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 405, “Capua”, compiled for the US Army to study what decides battles. These are the figures a what-if engine can be calibrated against.

Fighting: 12 hours
Winner: the defender
Terrain: Flat, Mixed
Weather: Dry, Sunny, Temperate, Autumn, Temperate
Defender’s posture: Prepared defense
Front width: 2 km (attacker), 2 km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
Great Britainattacker	16,857	420	0	160	River crossing; Repulse
Germanydefender	8,000	94	0	59	Defensive plan

Attacker’s advantages 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. 405 · 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.