Overview

This visualization shows the percentage of deaths by age of service members for each military branch.

For example, 26.7% of all Marines killed in the war were 20 years old, compared to the Air Force wherein only 3% of all airmen killed in the war were 20.

The Air Force age profile distribution is markedly different from the other branches of service. We attribute this difference to the fact that the number one casualty category for the Air Force is "Pilot". Generally, pilots were required to have a bachelors degree to be appointed as officers and thus tended to be older at time of death in comparison to their Army/Navy/Marine counterparts.

Overview

This visualization shows the total number of suicides and homicides for each service, and the number within each bar shows the percentage of deaths from all suicides and homicides from all services during the war.

For instance, there were 557 suicides and homicides in the Army during the war. Of this number, 354 (57.9% of the total deaths) were suicides, and 203 were homicides (32.9% of the total deaths).

Note that the Army had 2.5 times as many casualties in the war as the Marine Corps, but had 15 times the number of members who committed suicide, and nearly 9 times as many members who died due to homicide.

This difference raises a number of questions. For instance, did the Army endure more violent combat that would cause those service members to become more violent? Were there differences in deployment or qualifications that could explain the different level of suicides and homicides?

Overview

This interactive map allows you to view deaths by category. Service members were from all 50 states and Puerto Rico. The size of the circle gives an indication to the number of casualties that are from a particular area.

Looking at this map, it can be seen that casualties are clustered in large metropolitan areas, especially the Northeast and the Midwest. It appears that most casualties were due to either KIA or an accident.

Overview

This interactive map allows you to view casualties by military branch. Service members were from all 50 states and Puerto Rico. The size of the circle gives an indication to the number of casualties that are from a particular area.

The interactive map for Military Branch shows that a majority of the casualties are from the Army in all geographic locations.

Clicking on one of the colored Member Service Branches in the far right box allows you to include or exclude service branches for greater refinement.

Overview

This interactive map allows you to view casualties broken out by ethnicity. Service members were from all 50 states and Puerto Rico. The size of the circle gives an indication to the number of casualties that are from a particular area.

Of note is the general patterns of racial dispersion in the US. Asians were predominantly clustered in the West. Blacks/African Americans were clustered in the South and along the East Coast as well as major metropolitan areas. American Indians were scattered across the U.S. with some pockets in the Midwest and Southwest. And all "Native Hawaiians or Pacific Islanders" were clustered in Hawaii.

Clicking on one of the colored ethnicity categories in the far right box allows you to include or exclude ethnicities for greater refinement.

Overview

The tree map uses area to represent the number of deaths for a particular occupation code (MOS).

In the tree map to the right, the orange rectangular region represents the proportion of service members in the Army who died during the war. The occupation category that had the largest number of casualties was Army infantryman, followed by Marine Corps rifleman.

This makes sense, given that the Vietnam War was primarily fought by ground combat forces against the North Vietnamese Army and Vietcong guerillas.

Overview

As the title suggests, this visualization breaks out deaths due to accident over time broken out by service branch. A filter in the upper right-hand corner of the graph allows the user to add or remove services to aid in comparisons across services.

Of note is the difference in accident profiles across the services. Army and Marine Corps accident rates are correlated with increasing troop levels in Vietnam. The Navy and Air Force, on the other hand, do not follow this general pattern, but instead, trend toward relatively low accidents rates with occasional spikes.

When spikes are observed it generally indicates a disastrous single event, such as a ship fire or plane/helicopter crash.

Overview

The following bar chart is a simple, yet effective breakdown of the percentage of casualty categories and their distribution among different military branches. The air force and marines military branches had a much higher rate of accidents than the air force and navy, and a lower rate of KIA compared to the other military branches. This is likely due to the nature of the army and marines, who were much more likely to be in the thick of it.

Another interesting finding was the percent of air force casualties in the "Declared Dead" category. This seemed to be a trend across multiple years, with no underlying information in our dataset giving insight into why it was this way.

Overview

We were a far less diverse nation than we are today (2019), and Hispanics/Latinos were not broken out separately in the dataset. We did consider manually categorizing Hispanics/Latinos by last name, but decided against this course of action to avoid inaccurate placements.

It's clear from this graph that Whites formed the vast majority of all the service branchs with a particularly high percentage (95%+) in the Navy. Undoubtedly, a comparison of the ethnic makeup of the services between then and now would look very different.

Overview

This visualization allows you to search Vietnam War casualties by name, and view where they were from as well as other personal identifying additional information.

Type a name (last or first) into the search bar and once the icon shows on the map, you can hover over the icon to see additional information about the individual.

Be sure to spell the names correctly as the search tool will show no results if names are misspelled.