A few months ago (actually way back in September, 2010)
I posted a request for information on another forum asking about the weapon called Carolina Moon. My own research had been off and on over the years with little to show for it in hard information other than written descriptions of the weapon being used against a rather troublesome bridge in North Vietnam and the unsuccessful results of these attacks that had been made by a standard cargo carrying C-130 Hercules.
What I do know about the hardware (weapon) is summed up in this excerpt from the book titled "Gradual Failure: The Air War Over North Vietnam: 1965–1966" written by Jacob Van Staaveren and published by USAF History and Museums Program, United States Air Force, Washington, D.C.:
Operation Carolina Moon
The most creative bridge assault during the three-month period was against the Thanh Hoa rail and road bridge in route package 3 (RP3). Bombed repeatedly in 1965, the structure withstood Air Force and Navy bombs while ground fire inflicted considerable losses. To destroy its two heavy spans, the Air Force devised a special attack program nicknamed Carolina Moon. This called for dropping five huge 5,000-pound bombs from a Hercules C–130 cargo plane into the Song Ma River upstream from the bridge. The bombs would float towards the bridge and explode when they struck the superstructure. General Moore believed an upstream bomb drop was the only feasible method of attack, given the heavy air defenses in the vicinity of the bridge. Preparations for Carolina Moon began in late 1965 at the Air Force's Tactical Air Warfare Center at Eglin AFB, Florida. At the Center's Armament Development Laboratory, personnel constructed a number of high-explosive bombs, 96.0"wide and 31.5 high, with affixed sensors. The bomb weighed about 3,750 pounds, but the attachments increased the weight to about 5,000 pounds. During the extensive test and training period that followed, aircrews made about 80 test drops of the huge bombs from C–123 and C–130 aircraft, while two aircrews underwent special training in two C–130 Hercules planes that would conduct the mission in the war theater.
Suggestions were made by forum members to request the information through the Freedom of Information act. I was a bit reluctant to do so thanks to my first ever and absolutely last attempt to request information about the 280mm shell used with the Atomic Cannon that resulted in a visit from an FBI agent out of the local FBI office and his sidekick from the Naval Investigative Service at Naval Submarine Base, Bangor, WA. To put it mildly, I was not pleased with the attention that my request had generated from the local constabulary and I was told to not attempt any further requests for information on that particular subject. This kind of negativity will certainly make you think twice before trying to ask nicely for anything from the government. Anyway, to make this a happy ending, one of the other members on the forum stepped up and did the legwork and succeeded where I failed. He has now posted the results of his efforts at
Global Security with a diagram of the
launch sequence for the Carolina Moon device. The diagram is informative and also adds another question as to the actual shape of the device. The diagram depicts a device that is not the "hockey puck" shaped circular shape that I had envisioned based on the available descriptions, it shows instead what appears to be a multifaceted object that is hexagonal or octagonal in shape which further complicates my attempts to model this thing in SketchUp.