Schematic plan · World War II (Italy 1944)

Battle of Villa Crocetta

27 May 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 34th Inf Div(+), 18,000 men under Mg Ryder) attacked Germany (Ger 3rd Pz Gr Div(7/8)(+), 13,715 men under Mg Baade) in Italy. The CAA Database of Battles records 24 hours of fighting on a front of 5 km, a frontal attack against fortified defense, and that Germany held. Losses: USA 263 (1%), Germany 598 (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

USA

Mg Ryder

Unit	Arm	Men
USA left wing	Infantry	3,863
USA centre	Infantry	5,150
USA right wing	Infantry	3,863
USA reserve	Infantry	3,219
USA artillery (93 guns)	Artillery	1,395
USA armour (102 tanks)	Armour	510
Mg Ryder	Commander	—
In this plan		18,000

Germany

Mg Baade

Unit	Arm	Men
Germany left wing	Infantry	2,785
Germany centre	Infantry	3,714
Germany right wing	Infantry	2,785
Germany reserve	Infantry	2,321
Germany artillery (117 guns)	Artillery	1,755
Germany armour (71 tanks)	Armour	355
Mg Baade	Commander	—
In this plan		13,715

What the sources report

	USA	Germany
Strength, this plan	18,000	13,715
Losses, this plan	263	598

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 449, “Villa Crocetta”, 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 defender
Terrain: Rolling, Mixed
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	18,000	263	0	93	Frontal attack; Penetration; Repulse
Germanydefender	13,715	598	0	117	Defensive/offensive plan; Frontal attack; Repulse; 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. 449 · 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.