Schematic plan · World War II (Okinawa)

Battle of Ciechanow (Phase I)

14 January 1945
Poland
Draw

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.

USSR (Sov 90th Rifle Div, 10,800 men under Gen Lyashchenko) attacked Germany (Ger 7th Inf Div, 3,100 men under unrecorded commanders) in Poland. The CAA Database of Battles records 12 hours of fighting on a front of 2 km, a frontal attack against fortified defense, and that neither side won. Losses: USSR 685 (6%), Germany 145 (5%).

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

USSR

Gen Lyashchenko

Unit	Arm	Men
USSR left wing	Infantry	2,116
USSR centre	Infantry	2,821
USSR right wing	Infantry	2,116
USSR reserve	Infantry	1,763
USSR artillery (420 guns)	Artillery	1,620
USSR armour (73 tanks)	Armour	365
Gen Lyashchenko	Commander	—
In this plan		10,801

Germany

Unit	Arm	Men
Germany left wing	Infantry	618
Germany centre	Infantry	824
Germany right wing	Infantry	618
Germany reserve	Infantry	515
Germany artillery (78 guns)	Artillery	465
Germany armour (12 tanks)	Armour	60
Germany command	Commander	—
In this plan		3,100

What the sources report

	USSR	Germany
Strength, this plan	10,800	3,100
Losses, this plan	685	145

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 513, “Ciechanow (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: 12 hours
Winner: the draw
Terrain: Rolling
Weather: Wet, Light precipitation, Cold, Winter, Temperate
Defender’s posture: Fortified defense
Front width: 2 km (attacker), 2 km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
USSRattacker	10,800	685	0	420	Frontal attack; Penetration; Stalemate
Germanydefender	3,100	145	0	78	Defensive/offensive plan; Frontal attack; Stalemate

Attacker’s advantages morale +1 · momentum +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. 513 · 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.