Schematic plan · Arab-Israeli War, 1967 (Six-Day War)

Battle of El Arish

5 June 1967
Egypt
Victory for Israel

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.

Israel (Is Tal Div(-), 6,912 men under Bg Tal) attacked Egypt (Eg 7th Inf Div(-), 12,750 men under Mg Soliman) in Egypt. The CAA Database of Battles records 11 hours of fighting on a front of 7 km, a frontal attack against prepared defense and fortified defense, and that Israel won. Losses: Israel 135 (2%), Egypt 225 (2%).

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

Israel

Bg Tal

Unit	Arm	Men
Israel left wing	Infantry	1,378
Israel centre	Infantry	1,837
Israel right wing	Infantry	1,378
Israel reserve	Infantry	1,148
Israel artillery (48 guns)	Artillery	720
Israel armour (90 tanks)	Armour	450
Bg Tal	Commander	—
In this plan		6,911

Egypt

Mg Soliman

Unit	Arm	Men
Egypt left wing	Infantry	2,837
Egypt centre	Infantry	3,782
Egypt right wing	Infantry	2,837
Egypt reserve	Infantry	2,364
Egypt artillery (36 guns)	Artillery	540
Egypt armour (78 tanks)	Armour	390
Mg Soliman	Commander	—
In this plan		12,750

What the sources report

	Israel	Egypt
Strength, this plan	6,912	12,750
Losses, this plan	135	225

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 557, “El Arish”, compiled for the US Army to study what decides battles. These are the figures a what-if engine can be calibrated against.

Fighting: 11 hours
Winner: the attacker
Terrain: Flat, Mixed
Weather: Dry, Sunny, Hot, Summer, Temperate
Defender’s posture: Prepared defense, Fortified defense
Front width: 7 km (attacker), 7 km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
Israelattacker	6,912	135	0	48	Frontal attack; Breakthrough; Pursued
Egyptdefender	12,750	225	0	36	Defensive plan; Withdrew

Attacker’s advantages leadership +1 · training +1 · morale +1 · momentum +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. 557 · 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.