Schematic plan · World War II

Battle of Arras

21 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.

Great Britain (Brit Rgt, 11,821 men under unrecorded commanders) attacked Germany (Ger Rgt, 18,000 men under unrecorded commanders) in Northwest Europe. The CAA Database of Battles records 24 hours of fighting on a front of 5 km, a single envelopment against hasty defense, and that Germany held. Losses: Great Britain unknown, Germany 410 (2%).

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

Great Britain

Unit	Arm	Men
Great Britain left wing	Infantry	2,703
Great Britain centre	Infantry	3,604
Great Britain right wing	Infantry	2,703
Great Britain reserve	Infantry	2,252
Great Britain artillery (8 guns)	Artillery	120
Great Britain armour (88 tanks)	Armour	440
Great Britain command	Commander	—
In this plan		11,822

Germany

Unit	Arm	Men
Germany left wing	Infantry	4,058
Germany centre	Infantry	5,411
Germany right wing	Infantry	4,058
Germany reserve	Infantry	3,382
Germany armour (218 tanks)	Armour	1,090
Germany command	Commander	—
In this plan		17,999

What the sources report

	Great Britain	Germany
Strength, this plan	11,821	18,000
Losses, this plan	unknown	410

In the CAA Database of Battles

CDB90 no. 659, “Arras”, 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 defender
Terrain: Rolling, Mixed
Weather: Dry, Temperate, Spring, Temperate
Defender’s posture: Hasty defense
Front width: 5 km (attacker), null km (defender)

Force	Strength	Losses	Horse	Guns	Plan and outcome
Great Britainattacker	11,821	—	0	8	Single envelopment; Repulse
Germanydefender	18,000	410	0	—	Pursued

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, and which flank the envelopment fell on is a guess. 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. 659 · 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.