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

Battle of Monte Camino I

5 November 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, 19,513 men under Mg Templer) attacked Germany (Ger 15th Pz Gr Div(1/2), 6,750 men under Mg Rodt) in Italy. The CAA Database of Battles records 48 hours of fighting on a front of 5 km, a frontal attack against fortified defense, and that Germany held. Losses: Great Britain 240 (1%), Germany 33 (0%).

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	4,053
Great Britain centre	Infantry	5,404
Great Britain right wing	Infantry	4,053
Great Britain reserve	Infantry	3,378
Great Britain artillery (160 guns)	Artillery	2,400
Great Britain armour (45 tanks)	Armour	225
Mg Templer	Commander	—
In this plan		19,513

Germany

Mg Rodt

Unit	Arm	Men
Germany left wing	Infantry	1,427
Germany centre	Infantry	1,902
Germany right wing	Infantry	1,427
Germany reserve	Infantry	1,189
Germany artillery (41 guns)	Artillery	615
Germany armour (38 tanks)	Armour	190
Mg Rodt	Commander	—
In this plan		6,750

What the sources report

	Great Britain	Germany
Strength, this plan	19,513	6,750
Losses, this plan	240	33

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 415, “Monte Camino I”, 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 defender
Terrain: Rugged, Mixed
Weather: Wet, Light precipitation, Temperate, Autumn, Temperate
Defender’s posture: Fortified defense
Front width: 5 km (attacker), 5 km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
Great Britainattacker	19,513	240	0	160	Frontal attack; Penetration; Repulse
Germanydefender	6,750	33	0	41	Defensive plan

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. 415 · 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.