Schematic plan · Arab-Israeli, 1948

Battle of Ageila-Rafah (Ayin)

28 December 1948
Sinai
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 Div, 4,000 men under unrecorded commanders) attacked Egypt (Egy Div, 3,000 men under unrecorded commanders) in Sinai. The CAA Database of Battles records 216 hours of fighting on a front of 2 km, a frontal attack against prepared defense, and that Israel won. Losses: Israel 400 (10%), Egypt 600 (20%).

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

Unit	Arm	Men
Israel left wing	Infantry	842
Israel centre	Infantry	1,123
Israel right wing	Infantry	842
Israel reserve	Infantry	702
Israel artillery (16 guns)	Artillery	240
Israel armour (50 tanks)	Armour	250
Israel command	Commander	—
In this plan		3,999

Egypt

Unit	Arm	Men
Egypt left wing	Infantry	596
Egypt centre	Infantry	795
Egypt right wing	Infantry	596
Egypt reserve	Infantry	497
Egypt artillery (12 guns)	Artillery	180
Egypt armour (67 tanks)	Armour	335
Egypt command	Commander	—
In this plan		2,999

What the sources report

	Israel	Egypt
Strength, this plan	4,000	3,000
Losses, this plan	400	600

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 649, “Ageila-Rafah (Ayin)”, compiled for the US Army to study what decides battles. These are the figures a what-if engine can be calibrated against.

Fighting: 216 hours
Winner: the attacker
Terrain: Flat, Bare
Weather: Dry, Temperate, Winter, Desert
Defender’s posture: Prepared defense
Front width: 2 km (attacker), null km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
Israelattacker	4,000	400	0	16	Frontal attack
Egyptdefender	3,000	600	0	12	—

Attacker’s advantages none recorded

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. 649 · 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.