Schematic plan · Arab-Israeli, 1956

Battle of Rafah-El Arish

1 November 1956
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, 10,000 men under unrecorded commanders) attacked Egypt (Egy Div, 10,050 men under unrecorded commanders) in Sinai. The CAA Database of Battles records 12 hours of fighting on a front of 6 km, a frontal attack against fortified defense, and that Israel won. Losses: Israel 229 (2%), Egypt 3,433 (34%).

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	2,155
Israel centre	Infantry	2,874
Israel right wing	Infantry	2,155
Israel reserve	Infantry	1,796
Israel artillery (32 guns)	Artillery	480
Israel armour (108 tanks)	Armour	540
Israel command	Commander	—
In this plan		10,000

Egypt

Unit	Arm	Men
Egypt left wing	Infantry	1,921
Egypt centre	Infantry	2,561
Egypt right wing	Infantry	1,921
Egypt reserve	Infantry	1,601
Egypt artillery (130 guns)	Artillery	1,508
Egypt armour (108 tanks)	Armour	540
Egypt command	Commander	—
In this plan		10,052

What the sources report

	Israel	Egypt
Strength, this plan	10,000	10,050
Losses, this plan	229	3,433

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 652, “Rafah-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: 12 hours
Winner: the attacker
Terrain: Flat, Bare
Weather: Dry, Hot, Autumn, Desert
Defender’s posture: Fortified defense
Front width: 6 km (attacker), null km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
Israelattacker	10,000	229	0	32	Frontal attack
Egyptdefender	10,050	3,433	0	130	—

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. 652 · 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.