On December 27, 1935, something unusual happened in the skies above Hawaiʻi. US military aircraft dropped 40 bombs, not on an enemy, but on a river of molten lava pouring down the slopes of Mauna Loa. The eruption had begun a month earlier inside the volcano's summit caldera, and by late December, a fast-moving lava flow was heading straight for Hilo and the water supply that fed it. Officials were desperate. Scientists believed that explosives could break apart the underground channels carrying lava toward the town, forcing it to spread out and slow down. What followed became one of the earliest recorded attempts at lava flow diversion, and a story still argued over nearly a century later. There's something fitting about George Patton, a man who'd later become famous for decisive military action, being caught up in an operation whose actual effectiveness nobody could ever quite confirm one way or the other.
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