Schematic plan · World War II (Okinawa)

Battle of Mutankiang

9 August 1945
Manchuria
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 5th Combined Arms Army, 147,000 men under Col Gen Krylov) attacked Japan (Jap 5th Army, 75,000 men under Gen Selichi) in Manchuria. The CAA Database of Battles records 168 hours of fighting on a front of 12 km, a river crossing against fortified defense, and that USSR won. Losses: USSR 10,000 (7%), Japan 36,000 (48%).

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

Col Gen Krylov

Unit	Arm	Men
USSR left wing	Infantry	29,064
USSR centre	Infantry	38,752
USSR right wing	Infantry	29,064
USSR reserve	Infantry	24,220
USSR artillery (1,786 guns)	Artillery	22,050
USSR armour (770 tanks)	Armour	3,850
Col Gen Krylov	Commander	—
In this plan		147,000

Japan

Gen Selichi

Unit	Arm	Men
Japan left wing	Infantry	15,772
Japan centre	Infantry	21,029
Japan right wing	Infantry	15,772
Japan reserve	Infantry	13,143
Japan artillery (584 guns)	Artillery	8,760
Japan armour (105 tanks)	Armour	525
Gen Selichi	Commander	—
In this plan		75,001

What the sources report

	USSR	Japan
Strength, this plan	147,000	75,000
Losses, this plan	10,000	36,000

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 516, “Mutankiang”, compiled for the US Army to study what decides battles. These are the figures a what-if engine can be calibrated against.

Fighting: 168 hours
Winner: the attacker
Terrain: Rolling, Mixed
Weather: Wet, Light precipitation, Temperate, Summer, Temperate
Defender’s posture: Fortified defense
Front width: 12 km (attacker), 12 km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
USSRattacker	147,000	10,000	0	1,786	River crossing; Breakthrough
Japandefender	75,000	36,000	0	584	Defensive plan; Annihilated

Attacker’s advantages morale +1 · intelligence +1 · technology +1 · initiative +1 · surprise +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. 516 · 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.