Schematic plan · World War II (Italy 1944)

Battle of Spigno

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 88th Inf Div(+), 18,308 men under Mg Sloan) attacked Germany (Ger 94th Inf Div(-)(+), 8,215 men under Mg Steinmetz) in Italy. The CAA Database of Battles records 11 hours of fighting on a front of 5.5 km, a frontal attack against delaying action, and that USA won. Losses: USA 343 (2%), Germany 730 (9%).

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 Sloan

Unit	Arm	Men
USA left wing	Infantry	3,498
USA centre	Infantry	4,663
USA right wing	Infantry	3,498
USA reserve	Infantry	2,915
USA artillery (166 guns)	Artillery	2,490
USA armour (249 tanks)	Armour	1,245
Mg Sloan	Commander	—
In this plan		18,309

Germany

Mg Steinmetz

Unit	Arm	Men
Germany left wing	Infantry	1,628
Germany centre	Infantry	2,170
Germany right wing	Infantry	1,628
Germany reserve	Infantry	1,357
Germany artillery (128 guns)	Artillery	1,232
Germany armour (40 tanks)	Armour	200
Mg Steinmetz	Commander	—
In this plan		8,215

What the sources report

	USA	Germany
Strength, this plan	18,308	8,215
Losses, this plan	343	730

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 437, “Spigno”, compiled for the US Army to study what decides battles. These are the figures a what-if engine can be calibrated against.

Fighting: 11 hours
Winner: the attacker
Terrain: Rugged, Bare
Weather: Dry, Sunny, Temperate, Spring, Temperate
Defender’s posture: Delaying action
Front width: 5.5 km (attacker), 5.5 km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
USAattacker	18,308	343	0	166	Frontal attack; Penetration
Germanydefender	8,215	730	0	128	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. 437 · 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.