Schematic plan · World War II (European Theater)

Operation Cobra

24 July 1944
France
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 7th Corps, 126,000 men under Mg Collins) attacked Germany (Ger 84th Corps(-) & 2nd Para Corps(-), 30,700 men under Lg Cholitz) in France. The CAA Database of Battles records 48 hours of fighting on a front of 11 km, a frontal attack against fortified defense, and that USA won. Losses: USA 1,510 (1%), Germany 5,000 (16%).

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 Collins

Unit	Arm	Men
USA left wing	Infantry	26,609
USA centre	Infantry	35,478
USA right wing	Infantry	26,609
USA reserve	Infantry	22,174
USA artillery (792 guns)	Artillery	11,880
USA armour (650 tanks)	Armour	3,250
Mg Collins	Commander	—
In this plan		126,000

Germany

Lg Cholitz

Unit	Arm	Men
Germany left wing	Infantry	6,188
Germany centre	Infantry	8,251
Germany right wing	Infantry	6,188
Germany reserve	Infantry	5,157
Germany artillery (318 guns)	Artillery	4,605
Germany armour (62 tanks)	Armour	310
Lg Cholitz	Commander	—
In this plan		30,699

What the sources report

	USA	Germany
Strength, this plan	126,000	30,700
Losses, this plan	1,510	5,000

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 460, “Operation Cobra”, compiled for the US Army to study what decides battles. These are the figures a what-if engine can be calibrated against.

Fighting: 48 hours
Winner: the attacker
Terrain: Rolling, Mixed
Weather: Dry, Sunny, Temperate, Summer, Temperate
Defender’s posture: Fortified defense
Front width: 11 km (attacker), 11 km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
USAattacker	126,000	1,510	0	792	Frontal attack; Breakthrough
Germanydefender	30,700	5,000	0	318	Defensive plan; Withdrew

Attacker’s advantages logistics +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. 460 · 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.