Schematic plan · World War II (Eastern Front)

Battle of Oboyan-Kursk (Phase I)

4 July 1943
USSR
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.

Germany (Ger 48th Pz Corps, 62,000 men under Gen Knobelsdorff) attacked USSR (Sov 6th Guards Army, 45,000 men under Gen Chistyakov) in USSR. The CAA Database of Battles records 48 hours of fighting on a front of 16 km, a frontal attack against fortified defense, and that Germany won. Losses: Germany 1,364 (2%), USSR 5,680 (13%).

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

Germany

Gen Knobelsdorff

Unit	Arm	Men
Germany left wing	Infantry	13,020
Germany centre	Infantry	17,360
Germany right wing	Infantry	13,020
Germany reserve	Infantry	10,850
Germany artillery (410 guns)	Artillery	6,150
Germany armour (320 tanks)	Armour	1,600
Gen Knobelsdorff	Commander	—
In this plan		62,000

USSR

Gen Chistyakov

Unit	Arm	Men
USSR left wing	Infantry	9,114
USSR centre	Infantry	12,152
USSR right wing	Infantry	9,114
USSR reserve	Infantry	7,595
USSR artillery (1,180 guns)	Artillery	6,750
USSR armour (55 tanks)	Armour	275
Gen Chistyakov	Commander	—
In this plan		45,000

What the sources report

	Germany	USSR
Strength, this plan	62,000	45,000
Losses, this plan	1,364	5,680

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 493, “Oboyan-Kursk (Phase I)”, 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: 16 km (attacker), 16 km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
Germanyattacker	62,000	1,364	0	410	Frontal attack; Penetration
USSRdefender	45,000	5,680	0	1,180	Defensive plan; Withdrew

Attacker’s advantages leadership +1 · initiative +1 · air superiority +1 · combat effectiveness +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. 493 · 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.