Schematic plan · World War II (Italy 1944)

Battle of Il Giogio Pass

13 September 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(+), 15,721 men under Mg Coulter) attacked Germany (Ger 12th Para Rgt, 3,700 men under Gen Schlemm) in Italy. The CAA Database of Battles records 96 hours of fighting on a front of 4 km, a frontal attack against fortified defense, and that USA won. Losses: USA 560 (4%), Germany 560 (15%).

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	3,167
USA centre	Infantry	4,223
USA right wing	Infantry	3,167
USA reserve	Infantry	2,639
USA artillery (145 guns)	Artillery	2,175
USA armour (70 tanks)	Armour	350
Mg Coulter	Commander	—
In this plan		15,721

Germany

Gen Schlemm

Unit	Arm	Men
Germany left wing	Infantry	784
Germany centre	Infantry	1,045
Germany right wing	Infantry	784
Germany reserve	Infantry	653
Germany artillery (29 guns)	Artillery	435
Gen Schlemm	Commander	—
In this plan		3,701

What the sources report

	USA	Germany
Strength, this plan	15,721	3,700
Losses, this plan	560	560

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 457, “Il Giogio Pass”, compiled for the US Army to study what decides battles. These are the figures a what-if engine can be calibrated against.

Fighting: 96 hours
Winner: the attacker
Terrain: Rolling, Mixed
Weather: Dry, Sunny, Temperate, Autumn, Temperate
Defender’s posture: Fortified defense
Front width: 4 km (attacker), 4 km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
USAattacker	15,721	560	0	145	Frontal attack; Penetration
Germanydefender	3,700	560	0	29	Defensive plan; Withdrew

Attacker’s advantages 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. 457 · 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.