Schematic plan · World War II (Italy 1944)

Battle of Castellonorato

14 May 1944
Italy
Victory for USA

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 85th Inf Div(+), 16,458 men under Mg Coulter) attacked Germany (Ger 94th Inf Div(-)(+), 7,500 men under Mg Steinmetz) in Italy. The CAA Database of Battles records 21 hours of fighting on a front of 5 km, a frontal attack against fortified defense, and that USA won. Losses: USA 537 (3%), Germany 442 (6%).

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 Coulter

Unit	Arm	Men
USA left wing	Infantry	3,247
USA centre	Infantry	4,329
USA right wing	Infantry	3,247
USA reserve	Infantry	2,706
USA artillery (154 guns)	Artillery	2,310
USA armour (124 tanks)	Armour	620
Mg Coulter	Commander	—
In this plan		16,459

Germany

Mg Steinmetz

Unit	Arm	Men
Germany left wing	Infantry	1,512
Germany centre	Infantry	2,016
Germany right wing	Infantry	1,512
Germany reserve	Infantry	1,260
Germany artillery (73 guns)	Artillery	1,095
Germany armour (21 tanks)	Armour	105
Mg Steinmetz	Commander	—
In this plan		7,500

What the sources report

	USA	Germany
Strength, this plan	16,458	7,500
Losses, this plan	537	442

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 436, “Castellonorato”, compiled for the US Army to study what decides battles. These are the figures a what-if engine can be calibrated against.

Fighting: 21 hours
Winner: the attacker
Terrain: Rugged, Bare
Weather: Dry, Sunny, Temperate, Spring, Temperate
Defender’s posture: Fortified defense
Front width: 5 km (attacker), 5 km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
USAattacker	16,458	537	0	154	Frontal attack; Penetration
Germanydefender	7,500	442	0	73	Defensive plan; Withdrew

Attacker’s advantages momentum +1 · 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. 436 · 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.