Download the CONGA naval gunfire mission dataset

Downloads and caches the Combined Naval Gunfire Activity (CONGA) dataset covering U.S. Navy ship gunfire support missions in the Vietnam War from 1966 to 1973.

Usage

get_conga(cache = TRUE, force = FALSE)

Format

A data frame with 161,283 rows and 46 variables. Key variables include:

mission_firing_date

Date of the gunfire mission.

mission_start_time

Start time of the mission.

ship_name

Name of the firing ship.

ship_type_code

Ship type code.

Source

U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), College Park, MD. Electronic records collected by the U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV). Source file: Combined Naval Gunfire Activity (CONGA). See Smith (2025) and its Online Appendix for full archival accession details.

Arguments

cache

Logical. If TRUE (default), the downloaded file is saved locally and reused on subsequent calls without re-downloading.

force

Logical. If TRUE, re-downloads the file even if a cached copy already exists. Default is FALSE.

Value

A data frame with 161,283 rows and 46 variables.

Details

Each row is a discrete gunfire mission.

References

Smith, Gregory L. (2025). "Beyond body counts: Vietnam war ground combat data." Conflict Management and Peace Science. doi:10.1177/07388942251391081

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
  conga <- get_conga()
  head(conga)
} # }