Schematic plan · World War II (Italy 1944)

Battle of Valmontone

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 3rd Inf Div(+), 26,607 men under Mg O'daniel) attacked Germany (Ger Hermann Goering Pz Div(2/3)(+), 10,111 men under Mg Schmaltz) in Italy. The CAA Database of Battles records 31 hours of fighting on a front of 5.5 km, a frontal attack against hasty defense and prepared defense, and that USA won. Losses: USA 710 (3%), Germany 568 (6%).

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 O'daniel

Unit	Arm	Men
USA left wing	Infantry	5,709
USA centre	Infantry	7,612
USA right wing	Infantry	5,709
USA reserve	Infantry	4,757
USA artillery (146 guns)	Artillery	2,190
USA armour (126 tanks)	Armour	630
Mg O'daniel	Commander	—
In this plan		26,607

Germany

Mg Schmaltz

Unit	Arm	Men
Germany left wing	Infantry	2,025
Germany centre	Infantry	2,701
Germany right wing	Infantry	2,025
Germany reserve	Infantry	1,688
Germany artillery (110 guns)	Artillery	1,517
Germany armour (31 tanks)	Armour	155
Mg Schmaltz	Commander	—
In this plan		10,111

What the sources report

	USA	Germany
Strength, this plan	26,607	10,111
Losses, this plan	710	568

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 455, “Valmontone”, compiled for the US Army to study what decides battles. These are the figures a what-if engine can be calibrated against.

Fighting: 31 hours
Winner: the attacker
Terrain: Rolling, Mixed
Weather: Dry, Sunny, Temperate, Summer, Temperate
Defender’s posture: Hasty defense, Prepared defense
Front width: 5.5 km (attacker), 5.5 km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
USAattacker	26,607	710	0	146	Frontal attack; Penetration
Germanydefender	10,111	568	0	110	Defensive/offensive plan; Frontal attack; Repulse; 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. 455 · 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.