Japanese Couldn’t Believe He Built a Gun From Aircraft Parts — Until He Killed 20 of Them

At 0900 on February 19th, 1945, Corporal Tony Stein crouched behind a shallow depression in the black volcanic sand of Iwo Jima, gripping a weapon his sergeant had called a stupid idea three months earlier.

He was twenty-three years old, with six combat missions and zero conventional kills, facing a heavily fortified island where the Japanese had prepared eleven miles of interconnected tunnels and seventeen thousand defenders.

Stein was among the first men from Company A, First Battalion, Twenty-Eighth Marines, to establish a position beyond the beach, while all around him other Marines were pinned down by concentrated machine gun and mortar fire from hidden pillboxes.

By mid-morning, the Fifth Marine Division had already lost forty-three men, their bodies scattered across the terrace beach in the volcanic ash, because standard Browning machine guns were simply too heavy and slow for a rapid assault.

Stein had recognized this tactical problem months earlier in November 1944 at Camp Tarawa in Hawaii, watching crews struggle to keep up with advancing rifle platoons due to the thirty-one-pound weight and cumbersome setup of their standard weapons.

As a former tool and die maker from Dayton, Ohio, who had spent his teenage years working a lathe at Patterson Field and Delo Products, Stein understood machinery deeply and knew exactly what was needed to bridge the gap between firepower and mobility.

When Sergeant Mel Grevich showed him a salvaged AN/M2 aircraft machine gun from a crashed Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bomber during the Bougainville campaign, Stein immediately recognized its potential despite its lack of a stock, sights, or infantry mounting.

Weighing only twenty-one pounds and capable of firing up to fifteen hundred rounds per minute, the aircraft gun was vastly lighter and faster than standard infantry weapons, prompting the two men to spend their nights in a maintenance shed fabricating a workable solution.

Stein cut down an M1 Garand buttstock, fabricated a solenoid trigger mechanism from sheet metal scraps, and welded a Browning automatic rifle bipod to the front along with BAR rear sights, creating a twenty-five-pound weapon fed by a one-hundred-round ammunition box.

They called it the Stinger, and Stein built six of them for their company, overcoming early skepticism from fellow Marines who worried about jamming and overheating until test-firing proved the weapon could empty a full box at two hundred yards in under six seconds.

Now on the beach at Iwo Jima, with the Stinger already warm in his hands and his comrades suffering heavy casualties from unseen enemy positions, Stein made the decision to expose himself fully upright in the middle of a heavy crossfire to draw enemy attention.

Bullets snapped past his head and mortar rounds detonated nearby until he finally spotted a camouflaged pillbox seventy-five yards northwest with the barrel of a heavy machine gun protruding just inches from the volcanic rock and sand.

Lowering the Stinger, he squeezed the solenoid trigger as the weapon roared to life at twelve hundred rounds per minute, completely disintegrating the pillbox under a heavy torrent of thirty-caliber rounds and silencing the enemy position instantly.

Through the dust and smoke, Stein shifted his aim to a second pillbox forty yards to the left, unleashing another five seconds of continuous fire that overwhelmed the concrete structure and stopped the Japanese crew from shooting altogether.

Seeing the enemy positions suppressed, riflemen from Company A advanced from their shallow depressions in the sand as sergeants shouted orders and the assault moved forward once again across the treacherous terrain.

Stein charged the first pillbox to find three Japanese soldiers dead inside, then moved to the second pillbox to find two more enemy soldiers down, but he quickly realized that his ammunition box was completely empty after less than ten seconds of actual trigger time.

The Stinger was utterly devastating in combat, but it was also impossibly hungry for ammunition, forcing Stein to look back toward the distant resupply point near the water line two hundred yards away where landing craft were still unloading supplies.

He started running back across the open ground through loose volcanic sand that Marines compared to running through ball bearings, where every stride sank three inches deep and made movement exceptionally difficult under sporadic mortar fire.

Halfway to the beach, he passed a wounded private first class from the second platoon who had suffered a shrapnel wound to the left leg and could no longer walk, prompting Stein to sling the man over his shoulder and keep moving forward.

Carrying a one-hundred-sixty-pound marine, a twenty-five-pound Stinger, and a thirty-pound combat pack meant that Stein was hauling over two hundred and fifteen pounds through volcanic ash while Japanese mortars bracketed the entire area.

He reached the supply point at 0945, handed the wounded marine over to a corpsman, grabbed four ammunition boxes containing one hundred rounds of linked thirty-caliber ammunition each, and immediately turned back toward his platoon’s position.

The return trip took three minutes through black ash kicked up by Japanese snipers and nearby mortar detonations, but Stein did not stop until he reached Company A and received a pointer from his platoon sergeant regarding a third, larger reinforced concrete pillbox.

Covering the approach to the airfield with a Type 96 light machine gun, this larger bunker had already stopped two previous assaults and left four Marines dead in front of it, demanding immediate attention from anyone willing to take the risk.

Stein loaded a fresh ammunition box into the Stinger, checked the belt feed on the already hot weapon, stood up, and advanced on the pillbox alone while enemy rounds snapped past his head and chest.

At fifty yards, he opened fire with such an overwhelming rate of fire that the Japanese gunner could not adjust his aim fast enough, allowing Stein’s rounds to find the firing slit and silence the enemy gun permanently.

He charged the final twenty yards, dropped a grenade through the opening to kill the three-man crew inside, and realized with a start that his ammunition box was empty once again after only forty-six minutes of combat and three hundred expended rounds.

Recognizing the severe logistical bottleneck of his weapon, Stein started his second run to the beach, finding two more wounded Marines along the way and deciding to evacuate the man with a severe chest wound first before returning specifically for the second injured soldier.

By 1030, Stein had made four total trips to the beach and back, carrying a wounded Marine to safety every single time while returning with fresh ammunition as his platoon advanced two hundred yards inland and destroyed seven enemy positions.

His boots were now completely disintegrating from the abrasive volcanic ash and constant running, leaving the soles nearly gone and the leather cracked and torn so severely that every step sent sharp pains shooting straight through his arches.

Making a calculated mathematical decision that every second counted and that his boots were only adding friction and slowing him down, Stein unlaced them and kicked them off to run completely barefoot in the volcanic ash.

He also removed his two-and-a-half-pound steel helmet, shedding nearly five pounds of total equipment weight to gain better traction and speed in the loose sand, allowing him to feel the terrain and adjust his stride naturally despite the coarse glass-like texture of the ash.

His fifth run to the beach took just two minutes and forty seconds, enabling him to grab an unconscious marine with an abdominal shrapnel wound, deliver him to the corpsman, load up on ammunition, and run right back to his company’s position.

By 1100 hours, Stein had completed six trips to the beach, carried six wounded men to safety, brought back six hundred rounds of ammunition, and personally destroyed five more enemy positions as his platoon approached the first airfield.

Japanese resistance intensified as enemy soldiers emerged from an underground network of spider holes and bunkers to resume firing whenever an adjacent position fell, making the high-volume Stinger the only weapon capable of keeping multiple points suppressed simultaneously.

The weapon itself was beginning to suffer badly under the extreme heat, with its thin aircraft-grade steel barrel visibly glowing and the sheet-metal solenoid trigger showing signs of sticking and requiring occasional taps on the palm to reset properly.

Despite these mechanical degradations, the Stinger remained astonishingly effective at 1120 when the platoon encountered a reinforced concrete bunker with three firing slits that had completely stopped two other companies with interlocking machine gun fields of fire.

Two tank destroyers had already failed to knock it out after being hit by concealed anti-tank guns, and a missed air strike left the bunker fully operational, prompting Stein to advance alone, go prone at fifty yards, and empty a full box into the slits in seven seconds.

With at least thirty rounds penetrating the narrow openings, the guns inside went silent, allowing Stein to charge forward, drop grenades through the slits to eliminate the five-man crew, and permit Company A’s advance to resume without further delay.

His seventh trip to the beach came at 1150 as he carried a marine who had lost both legs below the knee to a mine, running the entire two hundred yards while the man bled heavily and earning praise from a corpsman who noted that thirty seconds slower would have meant death.

On his return trip, Stein encountered another marine carrying a burned-out, permanently jammed Stinger from Company G, but his own weapon was still functioning despite its purple discolored barrel, charred wooden stock, and loose bipod.

By 1230, as he completed his eighth trip to the beach with another wounded marine and another load of ammunition, other troops had taken notice of the barefoot corporal making repeated runs under heavy fire and whispered about his incredible bravery.

Stein, however, thought purely in terms of mathematics and logistics, knowing his platoon needed ammunition, wounded men needed evacuation, barefoot running was faster, and the Stinger provided the exact firepower required to keep moving forward.

On his eighth return trip, a Japanese sniper positioned on a ridge line two hundred yards east zeroed in on him, snapping a bullet within six inches of his head and forcing him to drop flat into the volcanic ash alongside his weapon.

Realizing he was pinned down with no natural cover in the flat terrain, Stein waited thirty seconds to control his breathing before rolling left, grabbing the Stinger, and sprinting perpendicularly toward the sniper to make himself a much harder target.

At one hundred and fifty yards, he spotted movement in a spider hole, dropped to one knee, and unleashed a twelve-hundred-round-per-minute burst that completely shredded the rock and surrounding terrain, instantly ending the sniper threat.

When he reached his platoon at 1300 hours, he found the situation severely deteriorated as Company A was pinned down by a semicircle of eight interlocking pillboxes that had inflicted a dozen casualties in twenty minutes and blocked all tank support in the soft ash.

Moving to the forwardmost position, Stein methodically worked his way across the arc from left to right, silencing pillboxes one by one with five-second bursts and giving riflemen the vital cover they needed to advance fifty yards at a time.

By 1330, Company A had broken through the defensive arc, destroying five pillboxes, forcing the abandonment of three others, and confirming seventeen enemy dead while Stein’s own weapon suffered a bullet strike that slightly bent the barrel and broke off the bipod.

During the assault on the sixth pillbox at 1345, a Japanese machine gun scored a direct hit that ripped the Stinger from Stein’s hands and threw it six feet backward into the ash, leaving him momentarily unarmed in front of active enemy fire.

Without hesitation, Stein sprinted into the open in a zigzag pattern, grabbed the damaged weapon, rolled behind a low ridge, cleared a jammed belt feed caused by bent guide rails, and loaded a fresh ammunition box to test-fire the gun.

Finding that it still worked, he stood up and emptied a full one-hundred-round box into the offending pillbox in seven seconds, completely obliterating the position and silencing the enemy gun permanently before continuing his assault.

By 1400 hours, Company A had advanced four hundred yards from the beach, destroying twenty-three enemy positions with Stein personally accounting for at least twelve of them, evacuating nine wounded men on his barefoot runs, and keeping a heavily damaged weapon operational.

The Stinger’s condition was now critical, featuring a visibly bent barrel, a reduced rate of fire of around nine00 rounds per minute, random three-to-five-round trigger bursts, and a wooden stock that was charred black and starting to crumble.

At 1430, a Type 99 rifle round struck the receiver during a trench assault, knocking the weapon from Stein’s hands for a second time and landing it ten feet away in a shell crater while a nearby grenade explosion showered him with shrapnel fragments.

Bleeding from small wounds in his left leg and back, Stein scrambled for the Stinger, dove into the crater, manually cycled the stiff action, loaded a fresh belt, and suppressed the trench with a reduced rate of six hundred rounds per minute to help riflemen clear the position.

By 1500 hours, after completing his eighth trip to the beach and back, firing over two thousand rounds, and carrying wounded men on every return, Stein’s feet were bloody, his uniform was soaked in sweat and blood, and his weapon was barely holding together.

Yet Company A had successfully reached its objective at the base of Mount Suribachi, the volcanic peak dominating the southern tip of the island that rose five hundred and fifty feet above sea level and served as an observation post for enemy artillery.

Ordered to establish a defensive perimeter at 1700 hours to hold their position overnight, Stein finally took a moment to assess his own torn, bleeding feet, infected cuts, and shrapnel wounds while resting alongside his battered Stinger in a fighting hole.

When Japanese infiltrators began probing Company A’s perimeter under the cover of darkness, Stein grabbed his damaged weapon and used its remaining volume of fire to eliminate an enemy soldier who crept within thirty yards of his position.

By dawn on February 20th, after twenty-two consecutive hours awake, Stein joined the rest of the Twenty-Eighth Marines at 0800 as the assault on Mount Suribachi began against steep volcanic slopes fortified with over sixty pillboxes, bunkers, and cave positions.

Carrying his repaired yet still damaged Stinger up the mountain, Stein encountered a reinforced bunker complex halfway up the southern slope at 0930 that had stalled the advance, prompting him to move forward and suppress the primary position for demolition teams.

At 1015, a Japanese grenade landed three feet away from him, detonating before he could get clear and filling his right arm, right leg, and torso with shrapnel wounds that caused heavy bleeding and forced corpsmen to urge him to evacuate.

Refusing to leave his engaged platoon while the Stinger was still desperately needed, Stein continued fighting and providing fire support for two more hours through heavy bandages until blood loss caused his vision to narrow and forced him to hand his weapon to another marine.

Transported to an offshore hospital ship on February 21st, Stein received treatment for severe blood loss and shrapnel wounds, with doctors planning to evacuate him to a rear area hospital in Hawaii or back to the United States because his combat days were seemingly over.

However, on February 25th, news reached him that the Fifth Marine Division was taking catastrophic casualties during the brutal assault on Hill 362A further north, and that Company A had lost thirty percent of its strength in two days along with his platoon sergeant and squad leader.

Against strict medical orders and effectively going AWOL from the hospital ship, Tony Stein climbed down into a landing craft on February 26th, reached the beach at 1400 hours, requisitioned new boots, grabbed an M1 Garand, and walked six miles north to rejoin his unit.

Reporting to his company commander on February 27th as part of a depleted company of just sixty-three surviving men, Stein went right back on the line for two days of brutal close-quarters combat around Hill 362A using a standard rifle and grenades.

On March 1st, 1945, assigned as assistant patrol leader for a nineteen-man reconnaissance patrol tasked with locating a complex of harassing enemy pillboxes four hundred yards ahead, Stein moved out through volcanic ridges and ravines at 0700.

At 0752, as the patrol observed potential cave entrances from a ridge line, a single rifle shot rang out from a concealed position two hundred yards northeast, striking Tony Stein in the head and causing him to drop instantly.

Despite corpsmen reaching him within seconds, the wound was fatal, and Corporal Tony Stein passed away at the age of twenty-three on the volcanic ash of Iwo Jima, leaving his grieving comrades to complete their mission, gather intelligence, and carry his body back.

Buried the next day in the Fifth Division cemetery with a simple wooden cross marking his grave, Stein left behind a legendary reputation that eventually prompted Lieutenant Colonel Chandler Johnson to submit a recommendation for the Medal of Honor in May 1945.

Endorsed by every officer in his chain of command, the recommendation detailed his extraordinary actions on February 19th, and on February 19th, 1946, exactly one year after the battle began, his widow Joan received the nation’s highest military honor from Governor Frank Lausche in Ohio.

His remains were eventually returned to Dayton in December 1948 for a formal burial at Calvary Cemetery, and the United States Navy later honored his memory by commissioning the Knox-class frigate USS Stein, which served for twenty-one years in the Pacific and Indian oceans.

Although none of the original six Stingers survived the postwar equipment disposal chaos, the legacy of the improvised aircraft gun and the barefoot corporal who wielded it became a permanent part of Marine Corps lore taught to every new recruit at Paris Island.

Military historians and firearms experts like Ian McCollum have extensively documented how Stein and Grevich solved a critical firepower problem through sheer mechanical ingenuity, proving that when standard equipment fails, true innovators will always improvise, adapt, and overcome.