Japanese Couldn’t Believe He Built a Gun From Aircraft Parts – Until He Killed 20 of Them
Japanese Couldn’t Believe He Built a Gun From Aircraft Parts – Until He Killed 20 of Them
In the 1945 Battle of Ewima, US forces walked straight into the bloodiest death trap of the entire Pacific War.
Pre-invasion estimates predicted the island would be secured in just 5 days.
Yet, a mere 2 hours after the landings commenced, the US Fifth Marine Division was brutally pinned down on a beach head barely 300 yd wide.
The Japanese had carved out an underground fortress with 11 miles of tunnels.
Turning the landing zone into a blood soaked slaughterhouse with allencompassing crossfire.
Tanks bogged down in thick volcanic ash were reduced to sitting ducks.
Naval bombardment failed to penetrate the deeply buried camouflage bunkers.
The offensive ground to a complete halt and the forward assault units stared down the imminent threat of total annihilation at any moment.
No one could have foreseen that the one to break this suicidal deadlock would be none other than 23-year-old Jewish American Corporal Tony Stein and his Stinger, a weapon he’d modified overnight from a bombers’s aircraft machine gun.
Facing Japanese bunkers spewing fire a mere 75 yards away, he stood barefoot in wide open, completely unprotected ground, ditched his helmet to use himself as bait, and unleashed a blistering rate of fire of 1,200 rounds per minute.
In just 90 seconds, he single-handedly obliterated two critical bunkers, took out five Japanese machine gunners, and ripped apart the fire network that had pinned the beach head down for two full hours.
And this was only the start of his one-man saga that would rock the entire Pacific theater of operations.
The story of Tony Stein began in 1921 in Dayton, Ohio.
His parents were Jewish immigrants from Austria who had crossed the ocean to the United States to flee the rising tide of anti-semitism sweeping across Eastern Europe and settled in Dayton.
From an early age, Stein demonstrated an extraordinary mechanical aptitude.
As a teenager, he could expertly disassemble and reassemble all manner of mechanical devices with an almost innate feel for lathe work and die and mold machining.
As an adult, he took a job as a lathe operator at Patterson Field in Dayton and later went on to work as a tool and die maker at Del Corporation.
This trade honed his precision metalwork and mechanical modification skills to a razor edge.
A craft that would ultimately be forged into a weapon that would strike terror into Japanese forces on the battlefields of the Pacific.
In September 1942, 10 months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, 21-year-old Tony Stein enlisted in the United States Marine Corps.
Rather than taking a rear echelon maintenance post, he volunteered for the Marine Parachute battalions, becoming a frontline assault infantryman.
Marine paratrooper units imposed extraordinarily rigorous standards for a soldier’s physical fitness, tactical proficiency, and adaptability.
And it was here that Stein completed his transformation from a skilled machinist to an elite infantryman.
In 1943, Stein deployed with his unit for the Buganville campaign, his first taste of combat.
During the fighting, he displayed phenomenal marksmanship and battlefield adaptability.
In a single day, using his M1 Garand rifle, he killed five Japanese snipers concealed in the jungle, eliminating a deadly threat to his unit’s flank.
It was also during this campaign that Stein’s mechanical modification skills were noticed by his comrade, Sergeant Mel Gravich.
During the jungle fighting on Buganville, Stein identified a fatal tactical flaw in the Marine Corps infantry squad’s fire support setup.
At the time, the squad’s supporting firepower relied on two primary weapons.
The Browning M1919 medium machine gun and the Browning automatic rifle, better known as the BAR.
The standard issue Browning M1919 had an unloaded weight of 31 lb and a cyclic rate of fire of just 400 rounds per minute.
Bulky and unwieldy, it required a two to threeman gun crew to operate, needed extensive setup time to imp place and fire, and was only suited for defensive combat in fixed positions.
It simply could not keep pace with the advance of assault rifle platoon.
All too often, infantry men would close in on Japanese fortifications, only for the gun crew to remain pinned down by enemy fire in open ground behind them, unable to deliver timely fire support and severely crippling the entire unit’s offensive momentum.
The Browning automatic rifle, by contrast, could be carried and fired on the move by a single soldier, but its 20 round magazine capacity and rate of fire of just 500 rounds per minute left it critically lacking in sustained firepower.
Against Japanese reinforced concrete bunkers, it was completely incapable of delivering longduration effective suppressive fire.
During the island hopping campaigns across the Pacific, Japanese defensive doctrine centered on concealed bunkers and cave fortifications to build impenetrable crossfire networks, pinning US infantry down in open terrain before inflicting casualties one by one with mortar and machine gun fire.
For US infantry to break through these defenses, they needed sustained high rate of fire supporting weapons that could be fired on the move alongside advancing assault troops.
Yet, not a single standard issue weapon in service at the time could meet this requirement.
This tactical flaw inflicted catastrophic casualties on US forces in every single island hopping battle.
Frontline Marines were desperate for a lightweight, high rate of fire assault weapon that could be carried by one man and fired accurately on the move.
And Tony Stein, with his mastery of mechanical modification, had found the perfect solution to this problem.
The core of his solution came from the AN/M two aircraft machine gun.
The standard defensive armament fitted to the US Navy’s SBD Dauntless dive bomber.
This aircraft machine gun had an unloaded weight of just 21 pounds, a full 10 lbs lighter than the standard M1919 machine gun, yet boasted a blistering cyclic rate of 1,200 to 1,500 rounds per minute, delivering more than three times the fire density of the M1919.
Originally designed as a defensive weapon for bombers, the gun combined exceptional reliability with an ultra lightweight frame that made it perfectly suited for individual carry.
But it had one fatal flaw.
Built exclusively for aircraft use, it came fitted with a spade grip, no buttstock, and no infantry mechanical sights.
It was impossible for a single soldier to fire from the shoulder, let alone deliver stable, accurate fire on the move.
This was the core challenge of the modification.
In November 1944 at Camp Terawa in Hawaii, Stein and Gravich set to work modifying the A/M two aircraft machine gun.
Using their nighttime rest hours, they holed up in the camp’s maintenance shed, grinding, welding, and modifying scrap gun parts and metal scrap piece by piece until they finally built a manportable machine gun perfectly tailored to the needs of infantry assault.
Stein took charge of the core modifications to the gun’s receiver fit and firing mechanism.
From a decommissioned M1 Garand rifle, he cut a fully intact buttstock and buffer tube and through precision lathe work perfectly mated it to the rear of the A/M2’s receiver.
This gave the aircraft machine gun a buttstock for stable shoulder firing, solving the core problem of individual operator control.
At the same time, he fabricated a new electromagnetic trigger mechanism from scrap metal.
Refining the trigger travel to enable stable, controlled fire on the move, capable of both short, accurate burst fire for precision strikes and sustained fully automatic fire for suppression.
Gravich, meanwhile, handled modifications to the gun’s stabilization and sighting system.
He removed a folding bipod from a decommissioned bar rifle and welded it beneath the A/M2’s barrel, giving the gun a stable rest for prone firing and improving long range accuracy.
He also fitted the rear sight assembly from a bar rifle paired with the gun’s existing front sight post to build a complete infantrygrade mechanical sighting system, completely resolving the aircraft machine gun’s inability to be accurately aimed.
The final modified weapon tipped the scales at a mere 25 lb, 6 lb lighter than the standard M19/19 machine gun.
It could be easily carried by a single soldier and even fired while running.
Fed by a 100 round ammunition box, it could empty an entire box in just 5 seconds at its 1,200 round per minute rate of fire.
Stein gave the weapon he had built with his own two hands a fearsome lethal name, the Stinger.
Stein built a total of six Stinger machine guns, all issued to his own company A and adjacent infantry squads.
But from the start, this homemade weapon was met not with approval from officers and enlisted men alike, but with widespread skepticism.
Many veteran Marines argued that this weapon, cobbled together from bomber parts, was completely unsuited for the brutality of infantry combat.
They warned that under sustained highintensity fire, it would inevitably suffer catastrophic failures, jams, an overheated barrel that could melt, or even a catastrophic breach explosion.
On a rapidly changing battlefield, an unreliable weapon would only get you and the Marines beside you killed.
Faced with this skepticism, Stein did not argue.
Instead, he took the Stinger straight to the camp’s firing range and in front of the entire company, put it through a full battery of firing tests, prone, kneeling, standing, and on the move.
Its 1,200 round per minute barrage shredded targets 100 yards away in an instant.
And even while running, Stein landed accurate hits dead on target.
He fired three full ammunition boxes, 300 rounds in total, without a single jam.
The barrel grew hot, but showed no signs of warping or melting whatsoever.
The results of the range test silenced all skepticism for good.
This homemade Stinger machine gun delivered fire density and mobility far beyond any standard issue weapon, perfectly fixing the firepower gap that had plagued Marine infantry assaults.
In the end, Stein’s modified weapons received formal approval at both company and battalion level, clearing them for use with the unit in the upcoming invasion of Ewima.
And those six stingers were about to write their own legend into the volcanic ash of Ewima.
February 19th, 1945, 9:00 a.m.
The black volcanic sand landing beaches of Ewima.
The first wave of US landing forces riding in tracked amphibious tractors, LVTs, stormed the beaches of Eoima.
In stark contrast to pre-invasion US intelligence estimates, the beach fell deathly silent in the first minutes of the landing.
The Japanese did not fire a single bullet, not a single artillery round.
Marines disembarked from their LVTs without incident and stepped onto the black volcanic sand of the beach.
But they quickly discovered that this deceptively calm beach was a deadly trap.
The sand of Ewima was not ordinary sand, but fine, loose volcanic ash that sank to the ankle with every step.
LVTs bogged down and became immobilized, and the tanks that followed them onto the beach were all trapped in the volcanic ash.
unable to advance, unable to traverse their turrets, reduced entirely to stationary targets for Japanese artillery.
The moment the landing forces packed the beach and were completely stripped of their mobility, Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi gave the order to open fire.
In an instant, Japanese artillery, mortars, and heavy machine guns concealed within the slopes of Mount Surabachi and the northern highlands opened fire simultaneously.
A hailtorm of concentrated fire blanketed the entire beach head.
The landing zone was transformed into a slaughter house in the blink of an eye.
With nowhere to take cover, Marines could only lie prone in the soft volcanic ash, helpless against the withering Japanese fire.
Bullets kicked up plumes of black soot as they struck the ash, while the blast waves of exploding artillery rounds hurled entire lines of soldiers through the air.
Screams of the wounded, thunderous explosions and the staccato rattle of machine gunfire merged into a single cacophony, turning the entire beach head into a living hell.
US naval gunfire attempted to provide fire support for the landing forces, but every single Japanese firing position was hidden within underground fortifications, meticulously camouflaged and fused into the volcanic rock, making precise targeting impossible.
Naval rounds struck only the barren rock faces of the island, inflicting no meaningful damage on the Japanese defenders.
The tanks trapped in the volcanic ash, completely immobilized, could only barely traverse their turrets to fire sporadic shots at Japanese positions and were quickly picked off one by one by Japanese anti-tank guns.
One hour after the landings began, the US offensive had ground to a complete halt.
All landing forces were trapped on a beach head barely 300 yd wide, unable to advance an inch.
The forward elements of the fifth marine division had suffered 43 killed in action and over 200 wounded in that single morning hour.
At that rate of casualties, the entire forward assault force would be completely wiped out on the beach by midday.
And Tony Stein was right there with that forward assault force.
One of the first Marines to storm the beach, he clutched his Stinger machine gun tight in his hands.
The moment he landed, he was pinned down in the volcanic ash alongside his fellow Marines by the overwhelming Japanese fire.
He watched helplessly as the men beside him fell one after another to enemy machine gun rounds.
The offensive trapped in a total hopeless dead end.
Stein knew he could wait no longer.
If they held back any longer, the entire landing force would be annihilated on the beach head.
Someone had to stand up and shatter this deadlock.
And the stinger in his hands was the only hope to turn the tide.
And that led to the moment that opened this story.
Before the stunned eyes of his fellow Marines, Stein sprang to his feet, fully exposing himself to the Japanese crossfire.
His plan was simple.
Use his own body as bait.
Force the Japanese firing positions to open fire and reveal their locations.
Bullets came screaming in from all directions in an instant, grazing his helmet, skimming past his shoulder and slamming into the volcanic ash at his feet.
But Stein did not flinch.
He fixed his gaze on the ridge line ahead, locking onto the flash of every muzzle.
75 yards away, the embraasure of a reinforced concrete bunker lit up with blinding muzzle flash.
A Japanese heavy machine gun raking the US troops on the beach head with relentless fire.
Stein instantly raised the gun, shouldered it, and squeezed the trigger.
The Stinger unleashed a deafening roar, a 1,200 round per minute barrage, blanketing the bunker’s firing slit in an instant.
In just 3 seconds, dozens of rounds tore through the embraasure, and the rattle of the Japanese machine gun inside fell silent at once.
Without pausing, Stein dragged the machine gun and moved laterally, swinging his muzzle toward a second bunker 40 yard to his right, where a Japanese gunner had already lined up his sights on him.
A split second before the Japanese machine gun could open fire, Stein’s stinger roared again.
A hail of bullets punched straight through the bunker’s embraasure, killing the Japanese gunner instantly.
In 90 seconds, Stein had completely destroyed the two core firebunkers, blockading the beach head.
Stein’s actions ignited the fighting spirit of his comrades in an instant.
Marines who had been pinned face down in the volcanic ash rose to their feet one after another, charging the Japanese lines right behind Stein.
Shouldering the stinger, he led the charge at the front of the formation, using his high rate of fire barrage to suppress and destroy Japanese firing positions one by one.
His firing rhythm was devastatingly precise.
short controlled burst to strike bunker embraasers with pinpoint accuracy.
Sustained full auto fire to suppress Japanese infantry, carving out a safe path of advance for the Marines behind him.
But soon Stein faced a fatal problem.
The Stinger’s rate of fire was simply too blistering.
Its 100 round ammunition box could be emptied in just 5 seconds.
Less than two hours after the landings began, the four ammunition boxes he had carried with him were completely exhausted.
Without ammunition, the Stinger was nothing more than useless scrap metal.
The ammunition resupply point was 200 yd back on the beach head with nothing but open ground in between, completely exposed to Japanese sniper fire and mortar bargages with zero cover.
Crossing that open ground was almost certainly a death sentence.
But Stein did not hesitate for a moment.
He dropped his empty ammunition boxes, turned and sprinted straight for the supply point on the beach head.
Japanese snipers instantly locked onto the running figure out in the open.
Round after round, chasing his footsteps and kicking up black ash beside him.
Mortar rounds exploded relentlessly behind him.
Shock waves slamming him to the ground again and again.
But every time, Stein scrambled right back to his feet and kept running forward at full tilt.
To pick up speed and cut down on weight, Stein shed his heavy combat boots midrun, his bare feet hitting the coarse volcanic ash and sharp volcanic rock.
He tore off his helmet and threw it aside, all to run just a little faster.
The jagged volcanic rocks sliced deep gashes into the soles of his feet, blood streaming down and leaving a trail of red footprints across the black volcanic ash.
But he paid it no mind, pushing his body to the limit as he raced for the supply point on the beach head.
Reaching the supply point, Stein quickly filled eight 100 round ammunition boxes, slung them over his shoulders, turned, and charged straight back for the front line.
And this time he did not come back empty-handed.
On his return run, he spotted a comrade hit in the leg by Japanese gunfire, lying helpless in the open and waiting for rescue.
A Japanese sniper had the wounded soldier in his sights, ready to open fire on anyone who dared to approach.
Stein did not hesitate.
He raced to the wounded Marine side, heaved him over his shoulders, shielded him from Japanese fire with his own body, and kept running for the front line.
Bullets whizzed past his body.
Artillery rounds exploded beside him, but he never let go of the comrade on his shoulders, racing all the way back to friendly lines and handing the wounded man off to the corman.
The corman later confirmed that the soldier had suffered a severed femoral artery in his leg and would have bled to death within minutes if not for the timely evacuation.
And this was only the first comrade Stein would save.
Over the next 8 hours, Stein made eight such deathdeying round trips.
Every time he crossed 200 yards of open ground, fully exposed to Japanese fire, hauling heavy ammunition from the beach head supply point back to the front line.
And on every single trip, he rescued one or more wounded comrades, pulling them back from the brink of death.
In a single day, Stein evacuated a total of nine wounded Marines, many of whom would have died from blood loss without his urgent intervention.
In between his resupply runs, Stein remained at the very tip of the assault, using his Stinger machine gun to systematically destroy Japanese bunkers and firing positions.
He knew the Japanese defensive tactics inside out, understood that their firing positions were built into a mutually supporting crossfire network, and that destroying its core nodes would make the entire system collapse.
During one assault, Stein and his platoon were pinned down in open ground by an arcing crossfire network made up of eight interconnected bunkers.
The fire system was designed for mutual cover and support.
If US forces attacked any single bunker, the other seven would open fire on the advancing troops simultaneously, making a breakthrough all but impossible.
Faced with this lethal fire network, Stein once again did the unthinkable.
Shouldering his stinger, he burst out of cover and sprinted laterally along the flank of the arcing fire network.
As he ran, he squeezed the trigger, using the Stinger’s high rate of fire barrage to suppress the embraasure of every bunker in turn.
He moved so fast that Japanese gunners could not lock onto his position.
Yet his barrage landed with pinpoint accuracy on every bunker’s firing slit, pinning the Japanese gunners down and leaving them unable to lift their heads to fire.
Seizing the window of opportunity while Japanese fire was fully suppressed, Stein raced to close the distance on the arcing fire network, destroying the bunkers one by one.
Starting with the closest, he used short controlled bursts to drive rounds straight through the bunker embraasers, killing the Japanese gunners inside.
The moment one bunker was destroyed, he shifted to the next without a second of hesitation.
In just 5 minutes, Stein single-handedly destroyed five of the eight bunkers.
The Japanese soldiers in the remaining three were completely broken by his ferocious assault, abandoning their bunkers and fleeing into the tunnels behind them.
The arcing crossfire network that had blocked the US advance for a full hour was completely breached by Stein alone, and his extraordinary feats were far from over.
As his unit advanced, a Japanese sniper hidden in a rock crevice locked onto Stein, firing three consecutive rounds that struck the volcanic rock right beside him.
Stein instantly pinpointed the sniper’s position.
Instead of dropping to the ground to take cover, he shouldered the stinger and charged straight for the sniper’s hiding spot.
The Japanese sniper never could have imagined the American soldier would run directly at his gun.
And in his panic, he fired another shot that missed wide.
In the split second he worked the bolt to chamber another round.
Stein’s stinger erupted in flame.
A dense hail of bullets blanketing the rock crevice and killing the Japanese sniper instantly.
During the fighting on D-Day, Stein’s stinger was hit directly by Japanese gunfire twice.
The first time a round struck the barrel, bending it and rendering the gun inoperable.
Braving Japanese fire, Stein raced back to cover, used the tools he carried with him to urgently straighten the barrel, and returned to the fight.
The second time, a bullet struck the receiver directly, damaging the trigger mechanism.
In less than three minutes, Stein repaired the trigger right there in the line of fire using scrap parts, and the stinger was roaring once again.
From 9:00 a.m. when he landed to 5:00 p.m. that afternoon, for eight full hours, Stein did not get a single minute of rest.
He ran barefoot across the volcanic ash, his body riddled with shrapnel wounds, his feet sliced to ribbons.
Yet, he remained at the very front of the assault.
In a single day, he single-handedly destroyed more than 15 Japanese bunkers and firing positions, killed 20 Japanese soldiers, and helped his company A advance 400 yardds inland in a single day, making it the farthest advancing unit in the entire fifth Marine Division, the first to reach the foot of Mount Surabachi.
At 5:00 p.m. that afternoon, company A was ordered to establish a defensive position at the foot of Mount Surabachi and hold it through the night.
By this point, Stein had been in continuous combat for 8 hours.
He was utterly exhausted, his feet lacerated and bleeding through his socks, the multiple shrapnel wounds on his body still oozing blood.
His Stinger machine gun was also heavily damaged with a warped barrel and multiple dents to the receiver.
Even so, through the night, Stein remained at the forward edge of the position with his stinger in his arms, repelling two Japanese infiltration attempts and holding the hard one ground.
February 20th, 1945, 800 a.m.
The foot of Mount Surabachi, Ewoima.
The 28th Marine Regiment of the US Fifth Marine Division launched a full-scale assault on Mount Surabachi.
The dominant high ground in southern Ewoima, standing 160 m tall, Mount Surabachi housed the Japanese’s most elaborate defensive system.
The entire mountain had been hollowed out, fitted with more than 60 bunkers and cave fortifications with multi-level tunnels connecting them into a 360° no blind spot fire network.
Advancing US Marines were forced to charge up the bare volcanic rock slopes, completely exposed to Japanese fire with no cover whatsoever, paying a terrible price in blood for every meter they climbed.
Overnight, the company’s armorer had worked through the night to repair Stein’s stinger, replacing damaged receiver parts and straightening the warped barrel.
But after eight hours of sustained fire and two direct bullet hits the day before, the Stinger’s performance was drastically reduced.
The bend in the barrel could not be fully fixed, and its rate of fire and accuracy were a far cry from what they had been on D-Day.
Even so, Stein took the battered weapon in his arms and stood at the very front of the assault formation.
The attack horn sounded and Stein was the first to burst out of cover, shouldering the stinger and charging up the mountain slope.
He used the stinger’s barrage to continuously suppress the Japanese fortifications halfway up the mountain, pinning the Japanese gunners inside their bunkers and leaving them unable to lift their heads to fire.
Seizing the window while Japanese fire was suppressed, the demolition teams behind him raced forward to the bunkers with satchel charges, shoving them into the embraasers and destroying the Japanese fortifications one by one.
Under Stein’s covering fire, the assault force successfully destroyed four core bunkers halfway up the mountain, advancing 100 yards up the slope.
But at that moment, disaster struck.
A Japanese hand grenade was thrown from a cave in the mountainside, landing less than three meters from Stein and detonating instantly.
The blast sent countless shrapnel fragments flying in all directions.
With no time to take cover, Stein was hit in his right arm, right leg, and torso.
Blood surging out instantly and soaking through his uniform.
Agonizing pain ripped through his entire body, but he did not fall.
He kept a death grip on his stinger, continuing to fire on the Japanese fortifications.
The corman rushed over to treat his wounds, ordering him to evacuate immediately to the hospital ship offshore, but Stein flatly refused.
He told the corman the assault on Mount Surabachi had only just begun, and his unit needed his firepower.
He could not leave.
He had the corman dress his wounds only enough to stop the major bleeding, then shouldered the stinger once again and kept charging up the mountain back into the fight.
By this point, Stein was riddled with shrapnel wounds.
Every movement sent searing, tearing pain through his body, and blood loss left his vision blurring, his body trembling uncontrollably.
Yet he did not retreat, continuing to use the stinger to suppress Japanese fire and cover his comrad’s advance.
For two full more hours, Stein fought on with his grievous wounds.
It was only when blood loss left him dizzy, his vision narrowing to a tunnel, barely able to stand, no longer capable of controlling the stinger with steady aim, that he knew he could fight no longer.
He handed his stinger to a comrade beside him, urging him to use the weapon to keep covering the unit’s advance.
Only then, supported by his fellow Marines, did he reluctantly withdraw from the front line, taken to the hospital ship on the beach head for treatment.
Aboard the hospital ship, doctors performed emergency surgery on Stein, removing most of the shrapnel from his body and stitching his wounds closed.
They told him his injuries were extremely severe, that he would need at least a month of recovery, and that he must never return to the front line, lest his wounds reopen and put his life at risk.
The hospital ship’s medical officer also issued him a strict medical order, forbidding him from leaving the ship or taking part in combat again.
But Stein’s heart never left the battlefields of Ewima, never left his comrades beside him.
Every day he followed the progress of the fighting on Ewima, asking for news of company A.
On February 25th, 1945, a wounded soldier evacuated from the Ewoima front line brought news that made Stein unable to sit still any longer.
The 28th Marine Regiment had encountered the fiercest Japanese resistance yet during its assault on Hill 362A in northern Eoima, suffering catastrophic casualties.
His Company A had lost more than 30% of its strength, and many of the comrades he had fought beside day in and day out had been killed in the fighting.
Hearing the news, Stein could not stay in the hospital ship a moment longer.
His brothers in arms were fighting and dying in a hellish battlefield, and he could not sit safely recovering while they fell.
He had to go back to the front, back to his company to fight alongside his comrades.
On the morning of February 26, 1945, Stein defied the doctor’s orders and the medical officer’s command, sneaking out of his ward on the hospital ship.
He found a landing craft heading for the Ewima beach head, convinced the coxin to take him along and returned to the island.
As the landing craft beed on Ewima, Stein jumped off and set foot once again on the black volcanic ash sand.
He first went to the Beach Head Supply Depot where he drew an M1 Garand rifle, a number of hand grenades, and ammunition.
Then turned and began the six-mile hike on foot to Hill 362A.
By this point, Ewima was no longer just the beach head battlefield of D-Day.
Every inch of the island had been pulverized by countless artillery barges, pockmarked with craters, littered with the bodies of fallen soldiers and destroyed equipment.
Japanese snipers hid in every corner, ready to fire a fatal shot at any moment.
Still carrying his unhealed grievous wounds, Stein walked alone across the shell torn battlefield for six full miles, finally reaching Company A’s positions on Hill 362A.
When Stein appeared at the forward edge of the position, the officers and men of Company A were stunned.
They had all thought Stein had been evacuated to a hospital in the rear, never to return.
No one could have imagined that the grievously wounded corporal would defy medical orders, cross six miles of battlefield alone, and come back to this hellish front line.
By this point, company A had suffered devastating losses.
What had once been a 240 strong infantry company had been reduced to just 63 men after 7 days of brutal fighting.
The surviving Marines had not had a full night’s sleep or a hot meal in eight days.
They were utterly exhausted and their ammunition was nearly gone.
And what they faced was relentless Japanese counterattacks and even more elaborate defensive fortifications.
Stein’s return was a shot in the arm for the company on the brink of collapse.
With no stinger machine gun available, he took up the M1 Garand rifle and hand grenades in his hands and threw himself immediately into close quarters combat.
He led the surviving Marines in clearing out Japanese cave fortifications one by one, using grenades to destroy enemy firing positions and repelling Japanese night counterattacks.
With his actions, he inspired every man around him, reigniting the fighting spirit of the exhausted unit.
March 1st, 1945, 7 a.m. forward positions on Hill 362A.
Company A received orders from battalion command to form a 19-man reconnaissance patrol to advance 400 yards ahead of the position to the ridgeel line, locate the Japanese bunker complex dug in behind the ridge, and provide fire coordinates for the follow-up assault.
The orders were explicit.
The patrol was to conduct reconnaissance only, strictly forbidden from engaging Japanese forces or launching an offensive.
Thanks to Stein’s extensive battlefield reconnaissance and adaptability, the company named him the patrol’s assistant leader to work alongside the patrol leader and guide the unit through the mission.
Before departure, the patrol leader once again emphasized the mission rules to every man.
Recon only, no combat, and immediate withdrawal to friendly lines once the targeting was complete.
At 7:30 a.m., Stein and 18 fellow Marines left the position and advanced toward the ridge line ahead.
They spread out into a combat formation, keeping low, moving forward step by step under the cover of shell craters and rock formations.
The battlefield was deathly silent, broken only by the distant rumble of artillery fire and the howl of wind across the volcanic rock.
At 7:52 a.m., the patrol reached the ridge line without encountering any Japanese resistance.
The patrol leaders signaled for the men to halt, spread out, and take cover, and begin locating the Japanese bunker complex behind the ridge.
Stein walked to a rock outcrop on the ridge line, leaning out half his body to get a clear view of the Japanese fortification layout behind the ridge.
At that moment, a single muffled gunshot split the silence of the battlefield.
A round fired from a hidden position 200 yards away struck Stein directly in the head.
He never even had time to make a sound.
He fell to the ground, killed instantly.
He was only 23 years old.
The patrol members dropped to the ground instantly, taking cover behind the rock formations while quickly locking down the general location of the Japanese sniper.
The patrol leader made an immediate decision, calling in the battalion’s mortar positions to lay down a covering barrage on the sniper suspected location.
At the same time, he ordered the men to complete the remaining reconnaissance mission, locking in the precise coordinates of the Japanese bunker complex.
Mortar rounds screamed down on the Japanese snipers suspected position, the smoke and dust of the explosions blanketing the entire area.
In the end, however, US forces were never able to confirm whether the Japanese sniper who had killed Stein was eliminated in the barrage.
The reconnaissance mission was completed successfully with the patrol securing the precise coordinates of the Japanese bunker complex.
They lifted Stein’s body and carried him back down the path they had come, step by step, to friendly lines.
On March 2nd, 1945, Corporal Tony Stein was laid to rest in the fifth Marine Division cemetery on Ewima.
Buried alongside him were thousands of his fellow Marines who had given their young lives on that tiny volcanic rock island.
On March 26th, 1945, 36 days after the landings began, the United States formally declared full control of Euoima.
A campaign originally predicted to last just 5 days had stretched on for 36 full days, becoming the bloodiest island hopping battle of the entire Pacific War.
In the battle, the US suffered a terrible cost.
Nearly 7,000 killed in action and 20,000 wounded.
Total US casualties exceeded the total number of Japanese killed in action.
It was the only battle of the Pacific War where the total casualties of the US landing force exceeded those of the Japanese defenders.
Of the 21,000 Japanese defenders garrisoned on Ewima, fewer than 1,000 survived and were taken prisoner by US forces.
Every other Japanese soldier fought to the death or took their own lives in a final bonsai charge.
Not a single unit surrendered voluntarily.
Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi committed sapuku in the final hours of the battle, fulfilling his oath to defend to the death.
The outcome of the battle of Eoima has long been set in stone by history, but the tactical and strategic logic behind the battle is still studied repeatedly by militaries around the world to this day.
From a strategic perspective, the core reason the US ultimately captured Eoima was its absolute naval and air firepower superiority paired with unrivaled logistics and resupply capability.
During the campaign, the US deployed more than 500 ships and thousands of aircraft, pouring more than 100,000 tons of ordinance onto Eoima to establish an overwhelming firepower advantage.
At the same time, the US military’s formidable logistics capability could continuously deliver ammunition, supplies, and troops to frontline forces, sustaining the brutal 36-day war of attrition.
The Japanese defensive system, while demonstrating extraordinary tactical ingenuity and inflicting catastrophic casualties on US forces, had a fatal strategic flaw.
Kuri Bayashi’s defense in-depth tactics could slow the US advance, but they could not overcome the Americans absolute firepower and troop strength superiority.
The Japanese had no logistics resupply, no naval or air support.
Every round of ammunition, every piece of supplies, every soldier was a finite resource expended with every fight until they were eventually whittleled down to nothing by the US military.
From the very beginning, the battle was doomed to end in Japanese defeat.
From a tactical perspective, Tony Stein and his Stinger machine gun delivered revolutionary inspiration to the infantry squad firepower configurations of future generations.
The core of Stein’s modification was resolving the contradiction between mobility and sustained firepower for infantry assault.
Before him, armies around the world held that high rate of fire machine guns required multi-man crews were only suited for defensive operations and could not keep pace with infantry assaults.
But with his modification, Stein proved that a lightweight, high rate of fire manportable machine gun could deliver devastating tactical impact in offensive operations.
The tactical value of the Stinger machine gun was fully and irrefutably validated on the battlefields of Euima.
It delivered three times the fire density of the standard M1919 machine gun, yet was lighter in weight, operable by a single soldier, and capable of accurate fire on the move.
Perfectly suited to the Marine Corps’s assault tactics.
In the fighting on D-Day, it was the stinger in Stein’s hands that broke the Japanese fire blockade and tore open a lifeline for the landing force.
Its tactical support for frontline infantry and its psychological suppression effect on Japanese defenders are undeniable.
While there remains some debate among historians over the strategic impact of the Stinger machine gun on the broader battle of Eoima, what cannot be denied is that Tony Stein, with his mechanical genius and battlefield courage, pointed an entirely new direction for the development of manportable automatic weapons for generations to come.
After the war, armies around the world began to develop and field lightweight squad automatic weapons, what we know today as generalpurpose machine guns.
And the origin of all of this can be traced back to that stinger, modified overnight by Stein in that maintenance shed in Hawaii.
Tony Stein’s extraordinary feats were never forgotten by his comrades.
In May 1945, after the end of the Battle of Ewima, the Fifth Marine Division formally submitted a recommendation for Tony Stein to be awarded the Medal of Honor.
The recommendation received unanimous approval across the entire chain of command, Regimental, Divisional, Fleet, Marine Force Pacific, and Pacific Ocean Areas Command.
The citation detailed Stein’s heroic actions on D-Day, referenced his homemade Stinger machine gun, and honored his feats of single-handedly killing 20 Japanese soldiers, destroying more than 15 core firing positions and crossing the Japanese fire net eight times to rescue nine wounded comrades.
On February 19th, 1946, the one-year anniversary of the Ewoima landings, the United States military held a formal Medal of Honor presentation ceremony at the Ohio State House.
Stein’s widow, Joan, accepted the United States military’s highest honor on his behalf.
Stein’s mother was also in attendance, witnessing her son receive this long overdue recognition.
In December 1948, Tony Stein’s remains were exumed from the cemetery on Ewima and returned to his hometown of Dayton, Ohio.
The US military held a full military honors funeral for him, laying him to rest at Calvary Cemetery.
He was the only serviceman from Dayton to receive the Medal of Honor during World War II.
In 1972, the United States Navy formally named a brand new Knoxclass frigot, the USS Stein, in honor of the heroic Marine.
The frigot served in the US Navy for 21 full years, sailing hundreds of thousands of nautical miles before being formally decommissioned in 1993.
To this day, the United States Marine Corps still includes the story of Tony Stein in the mandatory curriculum for recruit training, holding him up as the embodiment of the CORE’s core ethos.
Improvise, adapt, overcome, passing his legacy down through the generations.
Of the six Stinger machine guns built by Stein’s own hands, none have survived to the present day.
During the Battle of Ewima, two were destroyed by Japanese fire, one suffered a permanent, irreparable jam from overheating during sustained fire, and the remaining two were lost on the battlefield after the campaign ended.
Not a single original example remains.
But the legend of the Stinger did not end there.
Today, firearms enthusiasts and history researchers around the world continue to replicate and recreate this legendary modified weapon.
The prominent firearms history channel, Forgotten Weapons, has produced dedicated programming detailing the Stinger’s design philosophy and modification details.
The Canadian Historical Weapons Museum has even built a fully functional firing replica, allowing people today to still experience the devastating firepower of this homemade weapon built more than 70 years ago.
The story of Tony Stein is the epitome of the countless forgotten heroes of the Pacific War.
They were not highly decorated generals, not household names.
They were ordinary soldiers who used their ingenuity and courage to forge their own legends on a hellish battlefield.
Their stories deserve not to be forgotten by history, not to be lost to time.
