Mauna Loa Bombs Found Unexploded After 78 Years

Kawika Singson of Everything Hawai‘i has shared photos and a video account of his discovery of 2 unexploded bombs on a lava flow on the north side of Mauna Loa volcano. "I just happened to be randomly hiking through the lava field and I found the bomb," according to Singson. "These bombs were dropped on either the 1935 or 1942 lava flows in an attempt to divert the lava flow from possibly flowing into Hilo. I stumbled across these bombs while hiking, I did notify DLNR and met up with 3 officers at distant location from these bombs," Singson wrote on Facebook. “I’m in this little lava tube, very small, and I came across … this. What is that? That is an unexploded bomb that was dropped from an airplane, and it penetrated the top of the lava and apparently didn’t explode and it’s stuck in the ceiling,” Singson narrates on his video post. He adds, "The lava tube that this bomb is hidden in, is in a very remote location, it’s isolated, there’s no one around, not even near for miles and miles and miles, and the lava that I was trekking through to get to it is pretty dicey, it’s pretty precarious." "I felt the gravity of the situation when I looked up and saw the front half of the bomb protruding from the ceiling. I took my video and pics and got the heck outta there!!!" he wrote in a subsequent update on Facebook, adding photos which appear to include a second bomb without its tail fins as well as a landscape shot of the first bomb near a skylight with the island's Saddle and Mauna Kea in the backdrop. The find will likely be destroyed by experts in Explosive Ordinance Disposal, as "leaving it there is not an option" despite its remote location. Singson closes, "Dang, that’s some pretty fascinating stuff that I come across while I’m out there, but by far this is the most exciting thing that I’ve ever come across and probably will ever come across on the lava fields on the Big Island of Hawai‘i." Links to the original posts: https://www.facebook.com/kawika.singson/posts/10218827161744379 https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10218833489942580&set=pcb.10218833581864878