Schematic plan · Arab-Israeli War, 1973 (October War)

Second Battle of Mount Hermon

8 October 1973
Syria
Victory for Syria

All battles The event in the chronicle Wikipedia

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 Golani Bde(-), 2,692 men under Col Drori) attacked Syria (Syr Para Bde(-), 1,583 men under unrecorded commanders) in Syria. The CAA Database of Battles records 12 hours of fighting on a front of 1 km, a frontal attack against fortified defense, and that Syria held. Losses: Israel 50 (2%), Syria 100 (6%).

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

Col Drori

Unit	Arm	Men
Israel left wing	Infantry	592
Israel centre	Infantry	789
Israel right wing	Infantry	592
Israel reserve	Infantry	493
Israel artillery (12 guns)	Artillery	180
Israel armour (9 tanks)	Armour	45
Col Drori	Commander	—
In this plan		2,691

Syria

Unit	Arm	Men
Syria left wing	Infantry	317
Syria centre	Infantry	423
Syria right wing	Infantry	317
Syria reserve	Infantry	264
Syria artillery (24 guns)	Artillery	237
Syria armour (5 tanks)	Armour	25
Syria command	Commander	—
In this plan		1,583

What the sources report

	Israel	Syria
Strength, this plan	2,692	1,583
Losses, this plan	50	100

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 593, “Mount Hermon 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 defender
Terrain: Rugged, Mixed
Weather: Dry, Sunny, Hot, Autumn, Temperate
Defender’s posture: Fortified defense
Front width: 1 km (attacker), 1 km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
Israelattacker	2,692	50	0	12	Frontal attack; Repulse; Withdrew
Syriadefender	1,583	100	0	24	Defensive plan

Attacker’s advantages initiative +1 · air superiority +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. 593 · ODC-BY-1.0Strengths, losses, front widths, hours of fighting, tactics and outcome.
Wikipedia contributors, Second Battle of Mount Hermon · CC-BY-SA-4.0

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.