Schematic plan · World War II (European Theater)

Operation Goodwood

18 July 1944
France
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.

Great Britain (Br 2nd Army, 76,213 men under Lg Dempsey) attacked Germany (Ger 86th Corps(+), 57,500 men under Gen Eberbach) in France. The CAA Database of Battles records 29.8 hours of fighting on a front of 21 km, a frontal attack against fortified defense, and that Germany held. Losses: Great Britain 4,011 (5%), Germany 5,000 (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

Great Britain

Lg Dempsey

Unit	Arm	Men
Great Britain left wing	Infantry	14,056
Great Britain centre	Infantry	18,742
Great Britain right wing	Infantry	14,056
Great Britain reserve	Infantry	11,714
Great Britain artillery (720 guns)	Artillery	10,800
Great Britain armour (1,369 tanks)	Armour	6,845
Lg Dempsey	Commander	—
In this plan		76,213

Germany

Gen Eberbach

Unit	Arm	Men
Germany left wing	Infantry	12,115
Germany centre	Infantry	16,154
Germany right wing	Infantry	12,115
Germany reserve	Infantry	10,096
Germany artillery (292 guns)	Artillery	4,380
Germany armour (528 tanks)	Armour	2,640
Gen Eberbach	Commander	—
In this plan		57,500

What the sources report

	Great Britain	Germany
Strength, this plan	76,213	57,500
Losses, this plan	4,011	5,000

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 459, “Operation Goodwood”, compiled for the US Army to study what decides battles. These are the figures a what-if engine can be calibrated against.

Fighting: 29.8 hours
Winner: the defender
Terrain: Rolling, Mixed
Weather: Dry, Sunny, Temperate, Summer, Temperate
Defender’s posture: Fortified defense
Front width: 21 km (attacker), 21 km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
Great Britainattacker	76,213	4,011	0	720	Frontal attack; Penetration; Stalemate
Germanydefender	57,500	5,000	0	292	Defensive plan

Attacker’s advantages logistics +1 · surprise +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. 459 · 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.