Download the PSYOPS sortie dataset

Downloads and caches the PSYOPS Sortie-A dataset recording individual aerial psychological operations aircraft sorties from 1970 to 1973. For district-level aggregated PSYOPS data, see get_psyops.

Usage

get_sortie(cache = TRUE, force = FALSE)

Format

A data frame with 41,199 rows and 18 variables. Key variables include:

district_id

District identifier.

prov_name

Province name.

dist_name

District name.

date_of_sortie

Date of the sortie.

conducting_agency

Agency conducting the sortie.

unit

Unit.

aircraft_type

Aircraft type.

unique_record_identifier

Unique record identifier.

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: Psychological Operations Information System, aerial sorties (SORTIE-A). 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 41,199 rows and 18 variables.

Details

Each row is a single sortie record.

References

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

See also

get_psyops

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
  sortie <- get_sortie()
  head(sortie)
} # }