Schematic plan · World War II (Italy 1944)

Battle of Tarto-Tiber

3 June 1944
Italy
Victory for Great Britain

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 & 5th Inf Div(+), 38,011 men under Mg Penney) attacked Germany (Ger 4th Para Div, 10,855 men under Col Trettner) in Italy. The CAA Database of Battles records 24 hours of fighting on a front of 7 km, a frontal attack against fortified defense, and that Great Britain won. Losses: Great Britain 572 (2%), Germany 850 (8%).

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	8,317
Great Britain centre	Infantry	11,090
Great Britain right wing	Infantry	8,317
Great Britain reserve	Infantry	6,931
Great Britain artillery (200 guns)	Artillery	3,000
Great Britain armour (71 tanks)	Armour	355
Mg Penney	Commander	—
In this plan		38,010

Germany

Col Trettner

Unit	Arm	Men
Germany left wing	Infantry	2,214
Germany centre	Infantry	2,953
Germany right wing	Infantry	2,214
Germany reserve	Infantry	1,845
Germany artillery (125 guns)	Artillery	1,628
Col Trettner	Commander	—
In this plan		10,854

What the sources report

	Great Britain	Germany
Strength, this plan	38,011	10,855
Losses, this plan	572	850

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 456, “Tarto-Tiber”, 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 attacker
Terrain: Flat, Mixed
Weather: Dry, Sunny, Temperate, Summer, Temperate
Defender’s posture: Fortified defense
Front width: 7 km (attacker), 7 km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
Great Britainattacker	38,011	572	0	200	Frontal attack; Penetration
Germanydefender	10,855	850	0	125	Defensive plan; Withdrew

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. 456 · 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.