Schematic plan · World War II (Italy 1944)

Battle of Lariano

1 June 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(+), 22,641 men under Mg Coulter) attacked Germany (Ger Hermann Goering Pz Div(1/3)(+), 13,012 men under Mg Schmaltz) in Italy. The CAA Database of Battles records 26.5 hours of fighting on a front of 5 km, a frontal attack against prepared defense, and that USA won. Losses: USA 329 (1%), Germany 1,178 (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 Coulter

Unit	Arm	Men
USA left wing	Infantry	4,893
USA centre	Infantry	6,524
USA right wing	Infantry	4,893
USA reserve	Infantry	4,077
USA artillery (115 guns)	Artillery	1,725
USA armour (106 tanks)	Armour	530
Mg Coulter	Commander	—
In this plan		22,642

Germany

Mg Schmaltz

Unit	Arm	Men
Germany left wing	Infantry	2,684
Germany centre	Infantry	3,578
Germany right wing	Infantry	2,684
Germany reserve	Infantry	2,236
Germany artillery (112 guns)	Artillery	1,680
Germany armour (30 tanks)	Armour	150
Mg Schmaltz	Commander	—
In this plan		13,012

What the sources report

	USA	Germany
Strength, this plan	22,641	13,012
Losses, this plan	329	1,178

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 453, “Lariano”, compiled for the US Army to study what decides battles. These are the figures a what-if engine can be calibrated against.

Fighting: 26.5 hours
Winner: the attacker
Terrain: Rolling, Mixed
Weather: Dry, Sunny, Temperate, Summer, Temperate
Defender’s posture: Prepared defense
Front width: 5 km (attacker), 5 km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
USAattacker	22,641	329	0	115	Frontal attack; Penetration
Germanydefender	13,012	1,178	0	112	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. 453 · 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.