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

Battle of Canal II

18 October 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 46th Inf Div(+), 17,500 men under Mg Hawkesworth) attacked Germany (Ger 15th Pz Gr Div(1/2), 8,128 men under Mg Rodt) in Italy. The CAA Database of Battles records 48 hours of fighting on a front of 9 km, a river crossing against prepared defense, and that Great Britain won. Losses: Great Britain 220 (1%), Germany 138 (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 Hawkesworth

Unit	Arm	Men
Great Britain left wing	Infantry	3,534
Great Britain centre	Infantry	4,712
Great Britain right wing	Infantry	3,534
Great Britain reserve	Infantry	2,945
Great Britain artillery (168 guns)	Artillery	2,520
Great Britain armour (51 tanks)	Armour	255
Mg Hawkesworth	Commander	—
In this plan		17,500

Germany

Mg Rodt

Unit	Arm	Men
Germany left wing	Infantry	1,742
Germany centre	Infantry	2,323
Germany right wing	Infantry	1,742
Germany reserve	Infantry	1,452
Germany artillery (45 guns)	Artillery	675
Germany armour (39 tanks)	Armour	195
Mg Rodt	Commander	—
In this plan		8,129

What the sources report

	Great Britain	Germany
Strength, this plan	17,500	8,128
Losses, this plan	220	138

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 412, “Canal Ii”, compiled for the US Army to study what decides battles. These are the figures a what-if engine can be calibrated against.

Fighting: 48 hours
Winner: the attacker
Terrain: Rolling, Mixed
Weather: Wet, Light precipitation, Temperate, Autumn, Temperate
Defender’s posture: Prepared defense
Front width: 9 km (attacker), 9 km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
Great Britainattacker	17,500	220	0	168	River crossing; Penetration
Germanydefender	8,128	138	0	45	Defensive plan; Withdrew

Attacker’s advantages 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. 412 · 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.