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

Battle of Tel Shaar

11 October 1973
Syria
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 240th Armd Div, 14,700 men under Mg Laner) attacked Syria (Syr 1st Armd Div(+), 21,500 men under Col Juhni) in Syria. The CAA Database of Battles records 24 hours of fighting on a front of 3 km, a frontal attack against prepared defense, and that Israel won. Losses: Israel 280 (2%), Syria 900 (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

Israel

Mg Laner

Unit	Arm	Men
Israel left wing	Infantry	2,930
Israel centre	Infantry	3,907
Israel right wing	Infantry	2,930
Israel reserve	Infantry	2,442
Israel artillery (60 guns)	Artillery	900
Israel armour (318 tanks)	Armour	1,590
Mg Laner	Commander	—
In this plan		14,699

Syria

Col Juhni

Unit	Arm	Men
Syria left wing	Infantry	4,228
Syria centre	Infantry	5,637
Syria right wing	Infantry	4,228
Syria reserve	Infantry	3,523
Syria artillery (130 guns)	Artillery	1,950
Syria armour (387 tanks)	Armour	1,935
Col Juhni	Commander	—
In this plan		21,501

What the sources report

	Israel	Syria
Strength, this plan	14,700	21,500
Losses, this plan	280	900

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 595, “Tel Shaar”, 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, Bare
Weather: Dry, Sunny, Hot, Autumn, Temperate
Defender’s posture: Prepared defense
Front width: 3 km (attacker), 3 km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
Israelattacker	14,700	280	0	60	Frontal attack; Penetration
Syriadefender	21,500	900	0	130	Defensive plan; Withdrew

Attacker’s advantages leadership +1 · training +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. 595 · 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.