Schematic plan · World War II (Italy 1944)

Moletta Offensive

23 May 1944
Italy
Draw

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 5th Inf Div(+), 17,345 men under Mg Gregson-Ellis) attacked Germany (Ger 4th Para Div, 12,569 men under Col Trettner) in Italy. The CAA Database of Battles records 19.3 hours of fighting on a front of 8.5 km, a river crossing against fortified defense, and that neither side won. Losses: Great Britain 234 (1%), Germany 468 (4%).

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 Gregson-Ellis

Unit	Arm	Men
Great Britain left wing	Infantry	3,761
Great Britain centre	Infantry	5,014
Great Britain right wing	Infantry	3,761
Great Britain reserve	Infantry	3,134
Great Britain artillery (100 guns)	Artillery	1,500
Great Britain armour (35 tanks)	Armour	175
Mg Gregson-Ellis	Commander	—
In this plan		17,345

Germany

Col Trettner

Unit	Arm	Men
Germany left wing	Infantry	2,685
Germany centre	Infantry	3,580
Germany right wing	Infantry	2,685
Germany reserve	Infantry	2,238
Germany artillery (92 guns)	Artillery	1,380
Col Trettner	Commander	—
In this plan		12,568

What the sources report

	Great Britain	Germany
Strength, this plan	17,345	12,569
Losses, this plan	234	468

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 442, “Moletta Offensive”, compiled for the US Army to study what decides battles. These are the figures a what-if engine can be calibrated against.

Fighting: 19.3 hours
Winner: the draw
Terrain: Flat, Mixed
Weather: Wet, Light precipitation, Temperate, Spring, Temperate
Defender’s posture: Fortified defense
Front width: 8.5 km (attacker), 8.5 km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
Great Britainattacker	17,345	234	0	100	River crossing; Penetration; Repulse; Withdrew
Germanydefender	12,569	468	0	92	Defensive/offensive plan; Frontal attack; Penetration; Stalemate

Attacker’s advantages 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. 442 · 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.