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

Battle of Campoleone

29 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, 17,766 men under Mg Penney) attacked Germany (Ger 3rd Pz Gr Div, 15,098 men under Lg Graeser) in Italy. The CAA Database of Battles records 18.8 hours of fighting on a front of 11 km, a frontal attack against prepared defense, and that Great Britain won. Losses: Great Britain 742 (4%), Germany 221 (1%).

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	3,539
Great Britain centre	Infantry	4,719
Great Britain right wing	Infantry	3,539
Great Britain reserve	Infantry	2,949
Great Britain artillery (242 guns)	Artillery	2,665
Great Britain armour (71 tanks)	Armour	355
Mg Penney	Commander	—
In this plan		17,766

Germany

Lg Graeser

Unit	Arm	Men
Germany left wing	Infantry	3,070
Germany centre	Infantry	4,094
Germany right wing	Infantry	3,070
Germany reserve	Infantry	2,559
Germany artillery (123 guns)	Artillery	1,845
Germany armour (92 tanks)	Armour	460
Lg Graeser	Commander	—
In this plan		15,098

What the sources report

	Great Britain	Germany
Strength, this plan	17,766	15,098
Losses, this plan	742	221

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 425, “Campoleone”, compiled for the US Army to study what decides battles. These are the figures a what-if engine can be calibrated against.

Fighting: 18.8 hours
Winner: the attacker
Terrain: Flat, Mixed
Weather: Dry, Sunny, Cold, Winter, Temperate
Defender’s posture: Prepared defense
Front width: 11 km (attacker), 11 km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
Great Britainattacker	17,766	742	0	242	Frontal attack; Penetration; Stalemate
Germanydefender	15,098	221	0	123	Defensive plan; Stalemate

Attacker’s advantages initiative +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. 425 · 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.