Schematic plan · World War II

Battle of Cambrai

13 May 1940
Northwest Europe
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 Div, 17,000 men under unrecorded commanders) attacked France (Fr Div, 12,143 men under unrecorded commanders) in Northwest Europe. The CAA Database of Battles records 96 hours of fighting on a front of 1.8 km, a frontal attack against a defensive position, and that Germany won. Losses: Germany unknown, France unknown.

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

Unit	Arm	Men
Germany left wing	Infantry	3,818
Germany centre	Infantry	5,091
Germany right wing	Infantry	3,818
Germany reserve	Infantry	3,182
Germany armour (218 tanks)	Armour	1,090
Germany command	Commander	—
In this plan		16,999

France

Unit	Arm	Men
France left wing	Infantry	2,629
France centre	Infantry	3,505
France right wing	Infantry	2,629
France reserve	Infantry	2,191
France armour (238 tanks)	Armour	1,190
France command	Commander	—
In this plan		12,144

What the sources report

	Germany	France
Strength, this plan	17,000	12,143
Losses, this plan	unknown	unknown

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 658, “Cambrai”, compiled for the US Army to study what decides battles. These are the figures a what-if engine can be calibrated against.

Fighting: 96 hours
Winner: the attacker
Terrain: Rolling, Mixed
Weather: Wet, Light precipitation, Temperate, Spring, Temperate
Front width: 1.8 km (attacker), null km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
Germanyattacker	17,000	—	0	—	Frontal attack; Penetration
Francedefender	12,143	—	0	—	Withdrew

Attacker’s advantages surprise +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. 658 · 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.