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

Battle of The Factory

27 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.

Germany (Ger 3rd Pz Gr Div, 15,317 men under Lg Graeser) attacked Great Britain (Br 1st Inf Div, 17,976 men under Mg Penney) in Italy. The CAA Database of Battles records 12 hours of fighting on a front of 7 km, a frontal attack against hasty defense, and that Great Britain held. Losses: Germany 366 (2%), Great Britain 62 (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

Germany

Lg Graeser

Unit	Arm	Men
Germany left wing	Infantry	3,098
Germany centre	Infantry	4,130
Germany right wing	Infantry	3,098
Germany reserve	Infantry	2,581
Germany artillery (130 guns)	Artillery	1,950
Germany armour (92 tanks)	Armour	460
Lg Graeser	Commander	—
In this plan		15,317

Great Britain

Mg Penney

Unit	Arm	Men
Great Britain left wing	Infantry	3,582
Great Britain centre	Infantry	4,776
Great Britain right wing	Infantry	3,582
Great Britain reserve	Infantry	2,985
Great Britain artillery (242 guns)	Artillery	2,696
Great Britain armour (71 tanks)	Armour	355
Mg Penney	Commander	—
In this plan		17,976

What the sources report

	Germany	Great Britain
Strength, this plan	15,317	17,976
Losses, this plan	366	62

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 424, “The Factory”, 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, Cold, Winter, Temperate
Defender’s posture: Hasty defense
Front width: 7 km (attacker), 7 km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
Germanyattacker	15,317	366	0	130	Frontal attack; Repulse; Withdrew
Great Britaindefender	17,976	62	0	242	Defensive plan

Attacker’s advantages initiative +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. 424 · 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.