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

Battle of Aprilia I

25 January 1944
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 1st Inf Div, 19,350 men under Mg Penney) attacked Germany (Ger 3rd Pz Gr Div(1/2)(+), 6,750 men under Lg Graeser) in Italy. The CAA Database of Battles records 24 hours of fighting on a front of 7 km, a frontal attack against hasty defense, and that Great Britain won. Losses: Great Britain 1,158 (6%), Germany 130 (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 Penney

Unit	Arm	Men
Great Britain left wing	Infantry	3,862
Great Britain centre	Infantry	5,150
Great Britain right wing	Infantry	3,862
Great Britain reserve	Infantry	3,219
Great Britain artillery (242 guns)	Artillery	2,903
Great Britain armour (71 tanks)	Armour	355
Mg Penney	Commander	—
In this plan		19,351

Germany

Lg Graeser

Unit	Arm	Men
Germany left wing	Infantry	1,327
Germany centre	Infantry	1,770
Germany right wing	Infantry	1,327
Germany reserve	Infantry	1,106
Germany artillery (66 guns)	Artillery	990
Germany armour (46 tanks)	Armour	230
Lg Graeser	Commander	—
In this plan		6,750

What the sources report

	Great Britain	Germany
Strength, this plan	19,350	6,750
Losses, this plan	1,158	130

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 423, “Aprilia I”, 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: Flat, Mixed
Weather: Wet, Heavy precipitation, Temperate, Winter, Temperate
Defender’s posture: Hasty defense
Front width: 7 km (attacker), 7 km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
Great Britainattacker	19,350	1,158	0	242	Frontal attack; Penetration
Germanydefender	6,750	130	0	66	Defensive plan; Withdrew

Attacker’s advantages initiative +1 · surprise +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. 423 · 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.