Theater History of Operations (THOR), is a painstakingly cultivated database of historic aerial bombings from World War I through Vietnam.

The value of THOR is immense, and has already proven useful in finding unexploded ordinance in Southeast Asia and improving Air Force combat tactics. Incorporating digitized paper mission reports from WWII, this database can be searched by date, conflict, geographic location and more than 60 other data elements to form a live-action sequence of the air war from 1939 to 1945.

This data visualization is an attempt to interface with a period of history that shaped the world as we know it. I hope that watching the titanic struggle unfold on a global scale brings to mind the human suffering that this era encapsulates, for nearly everyone it involved.

head(as.data.frame(raids_by_target_1944), 12)

   TGT_COUNTRY_CODE NUM_RAIDS   ORDNANCE                   TEXT
1               DEU     27019 1016809.00 Total Raids: <br>27019
2               FRA     15276  707280.00 Total Raids: <br>15276
3               ITA      7888  236475.37  Total Raids: <br>7888
4               PNG      6844   47908.50  Total Raids: <br>6844
5               MMR      4310   16674.92  Total Raids: <br>4310
6               IDN      3092   17816.00  Total Raids: <br>3092
7               AUT      2363   82601.50  Total Raids: <br>2363
8               CHN      2274    5981.00  Total Raids: <br>2274
9               PHL      1160   10085.00  Total Raids: <br>1160
10             <NA>      1113   32815.81  Total Raids: <br>1113
11              BEL       920   45704.00   Total Raids: <br>920
12              FSM       916    8120.00   Total Raids: <br>916