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

Battle of Calabritto

1 December 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 46th Inf Div(+), 17,765 men under Mg Hawkesworth) attacked Germany (Ger 15th Pz Gr Div(-)(+), 7,588 men under Mg Rodt) in Italy. The CAA Database of Battles records 23.5 hours of fighting on a front of 2 km, a frontal attack against fortified defense, and that Germany held. Losses: Great Britain 250 (1%), Germany 20 (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 Hawkesworth

Unit	Arm	Men
Great Britain left wing	Infantry	3,734
Great Britain centre	Infantry	4,979
Great Britain right wing	Infantry	3,734
Great Britain reserve	Infantry	3,112
Great Britain artillery (130 guns)	Artillery	1,950
Great Britain armour (51 tanks)	Armour	255
Mg Hawkesworth	Commander	—
In this plan		17,764

Germany

Mg Rodt

Unit	Arm	Men
Germany left wing	Infantry	1,674
Germany centre	Infantry	2,231
Germany right wing	Infantry	1,674
Germany reserve	Infantry	1,395
Germany artillery (37 guns)	Artillery	555
Germany armour (12 tanks)	Armour	60
Mg Rodt	Commander	—
In this plan		7,589

What the sources report

	Great Britain	Germany
Strength, this plan	17,765	7,588
Losses, this plan	250	20

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 420, “Calabritto”, compiled for the US Army to study what decides battles. These are the figures a what-if engine can be calibrated against.

Fighting: 23.5 hours
Winner: the defender
Terrain: Rugged, Mixed
Weather: Wet, Light precipitation, Temperate, Autumn, Temperate
Defender’s posture: Fortified defense
Front width: 2 km (attacker), 2 km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
Great Britainattacker	17,765	250	0	130	Frontal attack; Penetration; Stalemate
Germanydefender	7,588	20	0	37	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. 420 · 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.