French Airborne Operations in Indochina

The full title of the thesis written by Gordon A. Cromley B.A., The Ohio State University is "Using Digital & Historical Gazetteeers to Geocode French Airborne Operations during the French Indochina War." - "The French Indochina War has been given many nicknames but perhaps one of the most insightful was “the war of the vast empty spaces” which was memorialised in Bernard Fall’s (1961) book The Street Without Joy. Another historian, Douglas Porch also characterised the War as the “Paratrooper’s War” (Porch, 1991). However, there are very works in English that discuss this aspect of the French Indochina War in any systematic detail. It is the purpose of this thesis to provide a spatial understanding of French Paratroop Operations (Operations Aeroporte) or OAPs by developing a spatial database of airborne operations so that future research can examine the nature of airborne operations during the French Indochina War and how the spatial experiences of those involved in it influenced counterinsurgency doctrine used by militaries across the globe."