The Virtual Wall® - The Coffelt Database

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The Coffelt Database

The Background
In the early 90's, several veterans independently worked voluntarily to provide a database of Vietnam War casualties that could be used on small computers. They expended a considerable amount of personal effort to combine the Defense Department's Southeast Asia Combat Area Combined Casualty File (the 1993 "CACCF") and the Army Adjutant General's casualty database (the "TAGCEN" file) into a dBase III format database (the "gold standard" for PC-based databases at the time). Tom Holloway and Chris Shepard made their database available on a web site they developed for that purpose: "The Vietnam Casualty Search Page" at www.no-quarter.org. Gary Roush, webmaster for the Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association also provided his database to others at no cost.
Those databases were and remain a tremendous resource for anyone who is interested in the Vietnam War, but they had three shortcomings:

While casualties from all service branches were included, there was no unit-of-assignment information except for Army casualties (taken from the TAGCEN file), and that was limited to the Division or separate Brigade levels.

No provision for routine updating and correction was made, since the information was considered to be of a static nature.

The DoD CACCF and TAGCEN file contain numerous errors in the spelling of place and personal names, and some errors in the Army unit assignment data.
As an entirely separate event, Korean War Army veteran Richard Coffelt became aware that there was no reliable information available on unit assignments for our Vietnam dead, and he determined to develop a reliable data set for the Army's Vietnam dead. Coffelt began by collecting names from unit memorials, gravestones, and other similar sources before beginning a truly major effort: he funded, from his own pocket, research in the Nixon and Johnson Presidential Libraries to collect and collate information from the Presidential Letters of Condolences stored in the two Libraries. Two Vietnam veterans, David Argabright and Richard Arnold, learned of Coffelt's project and joined him in collecting and collating unit of assignment data. As additional resources became available, the Coffelt effort grew from an Army-only to an all-branches identification effort.
A third effort was started within the Department of the Navy by retired Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, who had served as Commander, U. S. Naval Forces Vietnam, before culminating his career as the Chief of Naval Operations. In the early '90s, Admiral Zumwalt persuaded the Navy to subsidize an effort to identify the unit-of-assignment for the Navy's Vietnam dead, and retired Chief Warrant Officer Ralph Fries was chosen to do the work. Fries ended up viewing the Bureau of Naval Personnel and National Archives records for every Navy casualty in Vietnam.
A fourth effort was begun by the staff of The Virtual Wall®, who collected and collated some 20,000 assignment records from a variety of available sources, predominantly memorial requests for The Virtual Wall and internet-based unit memorials. The sources used were "softer" than the official-records approach used in the Coffelt and Zumwalt/Fries initiatives, and the information gathered consequently less certain.
These separate efforts came together in early 2002, with the Navy and Virtual Wall data integrated with the Coffelt data. The resulting compilation has been named "the Coffelt Database" in honor of Richard Coffelt, and was turned over to the National Archives in June 2002 as a public domain document.
However, the Coffelt Database is not a static resource. When it was turned over to the National Archives, the Coffelt Database contained over 54,000 casualty records with unit identification down to Company level or equivalent (except for those men and women assigned to higher echelons). The database continues to be updated as additional information is uncovered and the data integration and conflict resolution process is not yet completed. The evolving nature of the Coffelt Database demands a central point for maintaining and publishing the "current" version of the database.
In addition to records for our Vietnam dead, the Coffelt Database contains records for

the 30 men who were captured and escaped captivity;
the 628 returned prisoners of war; and
25 records for persons whose names are on the Wall but who survived.

The Coffelt Database previously was available for download on The Virtual Wall in an Excel version and as a Windows program which allowed look-up and data extraction for individuals and specified groupings. Because certain people and/or organizations downloaded the Coffelt Database and used the information for commercial purposes, the Coffelt Group decided to stop providing the CDB as a readily accessible download. Persons who wish specific data extracts (for example, a specific unit) may e-mail The Virtual Wall webmaster who will pass the request along to the Coffelt Group.
The Virtual Wall staff cannot provide CDB extracts and cannot dictate the Coffelt Group's decision to grant or deny a particular request ... we can only pass the request along.

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Last updated on 25 Apr 2006