Schematic plan · World War II (Eastern Front)

Operation Citadel (Southern Sector)

5 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 4th Pz Army, 140,000 men under Gen Hoth) attacked USSR (Sov 6th & 7th Gds Armies, 75,000 men under Lg Chistyakov) in USSR. The CAA Database of Battles records 12 hours of fighting on a front of 30 km, a frontal attack against prepared defense, and that Germany won. Losses: Germany 3,180 (2%), USSR 4,900 (7%).

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 Hoth

Unit	Arm	Men
Germany left wing	Infantry	30,866
Germany centre	Infantry	41,155
Germany right wing	Infantry	30,866
Germany reserve	Infantry	25,722
Germany artillery (470 guns)	Artillery	7,050
Germany armour (868 tanks)	Armour	4,340
Gen Hoth	Commander	—
In this plan		139,999

USSR

Lg Chistyakov

Unit	Arm	Men
USSR left wing	Infantry	15,114
USSR centre	Infantry	20,152
USSR right wing	Infantry	15,114
USSR reserve	Infantry	12,595
USSR artillery (2,115 guns)	Artillery	11,250
USSR armour (155 tanks)	Armour	775
Lg Chistyakov	Commander	—
In this plan		75,000

What the sources report

	Germany	USSR
Strength, this plan	140,000	75,000
Losses, this plan	3,180	4,900

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 494, “Operation Citadel (Southern Sector)”, compiled for the US Army to study what decides battles. These are the figures a what-if engine can be calibrated against.

Fighting: 12 hours
Winner: the attacker
Terrain: Rolling, Mixed
Weather: Wet, Light precipitation, Temperate, Summer, Temperate
Defender’s posture: Prepared defense
Front width: 30 km (attacker), 30 km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
Germanyattacker	140,000	3,180	0	470	Frontal attack; Penetration
USSRdefender	75,000	4,900	0	2,115	Defensive/offensive plan; Frontal attack; Repulse

Attacker’s advantages 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. 494 · 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.