Schematic plan · World War II (Okinawa)

Battle of Seelow Heights

16 April 1945
Germany
Victory for USSR

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 57th Gds Rifle Div(+), 13,600 men under Mg Zalizyuk) attacked Germany (Ger 303rd Inf Rgt(+), 3,782 men under unrecorded commanders) in Germany. The CAA Database of Battles records 24 hours of fighting on a front of 2 km, a frontal attack against fortified defense, and that USSR won. Losses: USSR 474 (3%), Germany 150 (4%).

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

Mg Zalizyuk

Unit	Arm	Men
USSR left wing	Infantry	2,681
USSR centre	Infantry	3,574
USSR right wing	Infantry	2,681
USSR reserve	Infantry	2,234
USSR artillery (233 guns)	Artillery	2,040
USSR armour (78 tanks)	Armour	390
Mg Zalizyuk	Commander	—
In this plan		13,600

Germany

Unit	Arm	Men
Germany left wing	Infantry	808
Germany centre	Infantry	1,077
Germany right wing	Infantry	808
Germany reserve	Infantry	673
Germany artillery (26 guns)	Artillery	390
Germany armour (5 tanks)	Armour	25
Germany command	Commander	—
In this plan		3,781

What the sources report

	USSR	Germany
Strength, this plan	13,600	3,782
Losses, this plan	474	150

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 515, “Seelow Heights”, compiled for the US Army to study what decides battles. These are the figures a what-if engine can be calibrated against.

Fighting: 24 hours
Winner: the attacker
Terrain: Rugged, Mixed
Weather: Dry, Sunny, Temperate, Spring, Temperate
Defender’s posture: Fortified defense
Front width: 2 km (attacker), 2 km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
USSRattacker	13,600	474	0	233	Frontal attack; Breakthrough
Germanydefender	3,782	150	0	26	Defensive plan; Withdrew

Attacker’s advantages leadership +2 · training +2 · morale +2 · logistics +2 · momentum +1 · technology +2 · initiative +2 · air superiority +1 · combat effectiveness +2

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. 515 · 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.