Schematic plan · World War II (Italy 1944)

Battle of Anzio-Albano Road

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 1st Inf Div(+), 17,313 men under Mg Penney) attacked Germany (Ger 65th Inf Div, 6,653 men under Mg Ziehlberg) in Italy. The CAA Database of Battles records 24 hours of fighting on a front of 6 km, a frontal attack against fortified defense, and that neither side won. Losses: Great Britain 194 (1%), Germany 107 (2%).

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	3,752
Great Britain centre	Infantry	5,003
Great Britain right wing	Infantry	3,752
Great Britain reserve	Infantry	3,127
Great Britain artillery (100 guns)	Artillery	1,500
Great Britain armour (36 tanks)	Armour	180
Mg Penney	Commander	—
In this plan		17,314

Germany

Mg Ziehlberg

Unit	Arm	Men
Germany left wing	Infantry	1,334
Germany centre	Infantry	1,779
Germany right wing	Infantry	1,334
Germany reserve	Infantry	1,112
Germany artillery (96 guns)	Artillery	998
Germany armour (19 tanks)	Armour	95
Mg Ziehlberg	Commander	—
In this plan		6,652

What the sources report

	Great Britain	Germany
Strength, this plan	17,313	6,653
Losses, this plan	194	107

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 443, “Anzio-Albano Road”, compiled for the US Army to study what decides battles. These are the figures a what-if engine can be calibrated against.

Fighting: 24 hours
Winner: the draw
Terrain: Flat, Mixed
Weather: Wet, Light precipitation, Temperate, Spring, Temperate
Defender’s posture: Fortified defense
Front width: 6 km (attacker), 6 km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
Great Britainattacker	17,313	194	0	100	Frontal attack; Repulse; Withdrew
Germanydefender	6,653	107	0	96	Defensive/offensive plan; Frontal attack; Penetration; 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. 443 · 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.