Schematic plan · World War II (European Theater)

Battle of Schnee Eifel Center

16 December 1944
Germany
Victory for Germany

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.

Germany (Ger 293rd Vgrgt, 18th Vgd, 4,100 men under Col Hoffman-Schonborn) attacked USA (US 423rd Inf, 106th Id, 3,900 men under Col Cavender) in Germany. The CAA Database of Battles records 72 hours of fighting on a front of 1 km, a frontal attack against prepared defense and fortified defense, and that Germany won. Losses: Germany 200 (5%), USA 3,700 (95%).

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

Germany

Col Hoffman-Schonborn

Unit	Arm	Men
Germany left wing	Infantry	824
Germany centre	Infantry	1,099
Germany right wing	Infantry	824
Germany reserve	Infantry	687
Germany artillery (68 guns)	Artillery	615
Germany armour (10 tanks)	Armour	50
Col Hoffman-Schonborn	Commander	—
In this plan		4,099

USA

Col Cavender

Unit	Arm	Men
USA left wing	Infantry	871
USA centre	Infantry	1,162
USA right wing	Infantry	871
USA reserve	Infantry	726
USA artillery (18 guns)	Artillery	270
Col Cavender	Commander	—
In this plan		3,900

What the sources report

	Germany	USA
Strength, this plan	4,100	3,900
Losses, this plan	200	3,700

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 620, “Schnee Eifel Center”, compiled for the US Army to study what decides battles. These are the figures a what-if engine can be calibrated against.

Fighting: 72 hours
Winner: the attacker
Terrain: Rugged, Heavily wooded
Weather: Dry, Cold, Winter, Temperate
Defender’s posture: Prepared defense, Fortified defense
Front width: 1 km (attacker), 1 km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
Germanyattacker	4,100	200	0	68	Frontal attack; Penetration; Repulse; Breakthrough
USAdefender	3,900	3,700	0	18	Defensive plan; Annihilated

Attacker’s advantages training +1 · momentum +1 · intelligence +2 · initiative +1 · surprise +3

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. 620 · 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.