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

Battle of Factory Counterattack

11 February 1944
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.

USA (US 45th Inf Div(+), 13,400 men under Mg Eagles) attacked Germany (Ger 715th Lt Inf Div(+), 7,077 men under Lg Hildebrandt) in Italy. The CAA Database of Battles records 14.5 hours of fighting on a front of 2 km, a frontal attack against fortified defense and prepared defense, and that Germany held. Losses: USA 101 (1%), Germany 206 (3%).

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

USA

Mg Eagles

Unit	Arm	Men
USA left wing	Infantry	2,650
USA centre	Infantry	3,533
USA right wing	Infantry	2,650
USA reserve	Infantry	2,208
USA artillery (155 guns)	Artillery	2,010
USA armour (70 tanks)	Armour	350
Mg Eagles	Commander	—
In this plan		13,401

Germany

Lg Hildebrandt

Unit	Arm	Men
Germany left wing	Infantry	1,410
Germany centre	Infantry	1,880
Germany right wing	Infantry	1,410
Germany reserve	Infantry	1,175
Germany artillery (102 guns)	Artillery	1,062
Germany armour (28 tanks)	Armour	140
Lg Hildebrandt	Commander	—
In this plan		7,077

What the sources report

	USA	Germany
Strength, this plan	13,400	7,077
Losses, this plan	101	206

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 430, “Factory Counterattack”, compiled for the US Army to study what decides battles. These are the figures a what-if engine can be calibrated against.

Fighting: 14.5 hours
Winner: the defender
Terrain: Flat, Mixed
Weather: Wet, Light precipitation, Temperate, Winter, Temperate
Defender’s posture: Fortified defense, Prepared defense
Front width: 2 km (attacker), 2 km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
USAattacker	13,400	101	0	155	Frontal attack; Repulse
Germanydefender	7,077	206	0	102	Defensive plan

Attacker’s advantages training +1 · initiative +1 · air superiority +1 · combat effectiveness +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. 430 · 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.