Rhodesian Cobra SMG/Carbine

Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on Forgottenweapons.com, I'm Ian McCollum And today we are taking a look at a cobra submachine gun sort of a submachine gun It's actually semi-automatic only and fires from a closed bolt The semi-automatic-only feature is pretty typical of Rhodesian in South African domestic Self-defense type firearms. The closed bolt feature is rather unusual Most of these guns fired from an open bolt despite being semi-auto. Now, the cobra is kind of one of the nicer Guns of this sort that was... that came out of Rhodesia. It was initially developed in 1977 it was actually introduced at the Bulawayo Armory, like, trade fair in 1977 designed by two guys by the name of Tommy Steele and Bruce White and While it was introduced in 77, it actually took a little bit of time to get government authorization for production, uh, the Rhodesian president at the time Ian Smith apparently really wanted... there were a whole lot of guns like this that were Popping up and being manufactured by various small entrepreneurial firms and apparently he really wanted a lot of these guys to just work together and come up with one good design and Manufacture it in quantity which makes a lot of sense, um, but that's not what happened instead You ended up with a bunch of different guns like this one. So it wouldn't be until 1978 that the gun actually Started to... actually went into production. There were a lot of delays as one might expect for a small new firm trying to produce a gun and They managed to produce guns for an entire month Before they went out of business before they went bankrupt the company that started this was called Stellite and that's a combination of steel and white two guys names when they ran out of money and and their company failed Production was taken over by a new company called Bulawayo armory and they continued to produce them for I think a couple of years Total production is estimated to be something like 2,500 to 3,000 of the guns. There are a couple variations of them So this is a very early one that has a vertical front grip the the majority of them have a horizontal grip out in the front They also made a pistol only version that has no stock and a much shorter barrel that was called the Scorpion I don't know exactly how many of those they made but it was much much lower production than the actual Cobra so on the inside There are actually a couple of neat features in particular the way that the... this is a blowback system, But the way that it's designed is is a little bit interesting and unusual. So let's pull it apart and take a look at that So we have a top folding stock here The most distinctive thing on this is probably the grip It has a molded grip with the the Cobra name And an actual Cobra intertwined around it. Very cool The only other marking on the gun is the serial number on the front of the receiver This one is BW 150 and that BW is Bulawayo armory so you can see even by number 150 that was The original stellite production didn't even get to 150 guns the rear sight is Just a plain aperture there. You can see that there's a little hex head screw You can loosen that and that allows you to adjust the windage in order to zero the gun Front sight is a fixed post with a couple of protective wings very simple sights Basically impossible to use in pistol form, but they are at least somewhat practical I think with the stock extended When you unfold the stock there's a little hole here and a detent in the side of this Clamp so we can snap it into place there and it's actually pretty stable it locks in nicely in order to un.. in order to fold the stock you take these and squeeze them together and that Brings the detent here out of its little hole the butt plate is held in place by That catch right there in order to refold the butt plate as it moves a bit but you can't fold it unless you take this button here and push it forward and then Then you can fold the butt plate down and That's going to fit over the top of the gun You can push it all the way down But it locks in really tight and I'm going to be un-folding this to take it apart. So we're gonna leave it like that Charging handle is on the top like a Mac, Mac 10 Mac 11 type pistol There are some other features like that on the inside as well the magazine... well the magazine release is here on the side because the Cobra uses a standard, unmodified, normal UZI magazine which locks on the side Safety lever is here on the side of the trigger, that's safe, push it forward for fire That's it for controls It is semi-automatic only they did make a full auto prototype to try and get some interest in the Rhodesian army But the Rhodesian army was really not particularly interested in a gun like this Now for disassembly we have to pull this pin That pin is held in place by a c-clip Running right there. I've already taken this off just to speed up the process That pin comes out Then we can pull the upper assembly forward and lift it. Yep. There we go lift it up and out of the lower another element very similar to the Mac pistols is the combination of a recoil spring in the corner Of the bolt and this guide rod here is actually the ejector Go ahead and pull the bolt out. There's the bolt And we can also pull out the charging handle Now by the way, we're left with this upper receiver, has a barrel fixed in it And because the bolt is of a telescoping type the barrel comes all the way back to here So it's for a submachine gun sort of thing, it's actually a relatively long barrel. Probably something like 10 inches there Is this little tray at the front which isn't going to do anything as a compensator But I believe that's there as a handguard to make sure that your hand doesn't wander up in front of the muzzle That's definitely a good thing to have And then this receiver is basically plain square stock hardware store tubing, you know, if you're gonna try and manufacture a gun under difficult circumstances having the simplest materials possible and the least amount of Machining necessary is certainly a good thing The bolt is actually really quite a lot lighter than I would have normally expected You can see the walls down here are really thin I don't know if it I would quite call it fragile But it's it's definitely lighter than I anticipated it because it fires from a closed bolt It is has a spring-loaded firing pin and uses a hammer to fire The hole up top here is for the recoil spring and this little hole right there is for the ejector pin So when the bolt travels backward that pin protrudes through this hole below the firing pin hole and that's what ejects the empty case Line that up like that Ejector pin goes in there And you can see it come through just like that Note that the spring guide rod also protrudes through the front of the bolt here and that's going to act as a guide rod To keep everything lined up Now what Steel and White did that's kind of clever is They're able to have a very lightweight bolt in part because they actually use the hammer, It has a fairly stiff hammer spring and that's used to help delay opening of the gun So when you fire and the bolt starts moving backwards because it is just plain blowback the first thing it has to do is actually push that hammer down and re-cock it and so that You'll notice has a linear spring in it. The sear engagement surface is actually right there So when I pull the trigger, there's a transfer bar right here. That's going to push backwards Can see it moving right there That is going to push our sear right here backwards Right like that when that move backwards moves backwards it lifts off This surface on the hammer which allows the hammer to fall forward Return spring for the hammer is right here or the return spring for the trigger and Then this is the disconnector So when you fire, you can see that pushes back on the transfer bar when the bolt the bolt then going to cycle backward Push down on this which drops it below the engagement surface there and forces you to reset the trigger in order to fire a second shot Thus rendering it semi-automatic now, I'm not sure if this was a government thing or just a private thing that Bulawayo armory did but there is actually a little proof mark on the bolt a triangle with a P in it and We also see that same mark on the front of the receiver So someone did some sort of proof testing with this, although I don't know exactly who that was Because this is such a rare and distinctive and cool gun We thought it'd be really neat to go out and do some shooting footage with it for you So we tried unfortunately, it didn't really work The first ammunition we tried using was a truncated cone, flat nosed truncated cone and that gave a lot of feeding problems but we were able to get a few shots off and Looking at the brass when we did it was a little disturbing because the brass is actually bulged out at the base Here are a couple of those cases and if you look at this you can see that the case is actually bulged out On well on all of them and the reason for that one's not quite so bad There you go. That's a good example. The reason for that is that the bolt is too light The recoil spring is too light. The hammer spring is not doing a sufficient additional job of holding back the bolt and these are Extracting while pressure is still very high So the cartridge is getting a couple millimeters out of the case while there's still enough pressure to bulge out the brass like that We also had some issues that you can see on the primers So this one is actually a completely pierced primer. We have this one that flowed quite a bit so you can see that the primer is... Has flowed back around the firing pin. That's also a sign of high pressure under extraction and ejection. So Not so successful there So in addition to experiencing failures to feed we were also experiencing failures with the trigger to reset Not entirely sure. What was causing that but we figured we'd at least try a better bullet shape. So we loaded five rounds of 125, or 115 grain Round-nose standard, you know nine-millimeter FMJ into the mag That did fix the feed problems however Our trigger reset issues became a big issue because the hammer followed through and it dumped all five rounds extremely quickly as you can see (rapid fire intensifies) (Ian giggles) So I apologize we're gonna try and get some shooting for you I guess technically we did get some shooting for you but not not exactly the Results we were hoping for but you know what I suppose This is something to be expected of a firearm like this one that really is Put together in duress. It's really a sort of prototypey crude low production Type of gun so it was pretty cool to try it Hopefully you guys enjoy the failures to fire as much as the regular shooting footage that I was hoping to get It's interesting to me how similar a lot of these Rhodesian production firearms are to the Confederacy in the United States, because in both situations you have countries that are either effectively or very literally under arms embargo trying to come up with ways to make firearms with limited industrial infrastructure and the guns they come up with and the problems that those companies... that the Obstacles that those companies have to overcome in order to produce guns are just very similar You see a lot of parallels there So things like this with the receiver being made out of what appears to be totally standard like hardware store square steel tubing those sorts of things I think would be Immediately recognizable to anyone in the US Confederacy who was trying to make guns a hundred years earlier the other interesting thing about these is a lot of these including this one in particular were developed right at the end of of the Rhodesian wars, so In 1978 when this gun first became available. That was actually the same year that Rhodesia became Rhodesia-Zimbabwe with the first attempt at a Mutual rule of the country that didn't work well and by 1980 the war was over and it became Zimbabwe, and with these in particular there the Cobras are very scarce guns to find today the vast majority of them appear to have been Collected up by the Zimbabwean government and deactivated. And so most of the ones that you see out there, virtually all of them, are deactivated guns very cool to have gotten a chance to take a look at this one, which is still live and fully Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video if you did if you enjoy seeing this thing on the web Please do consider taking a look at my patreon account It is the patreon account and the member support system on the website it is the guys there you guys there who make it possible for me to travel and find guns like this and bring them to You thanks for watching

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Views: 317,456

Rating: 4.9675632 out of 5

Keywords: rhodesian cobra, Cobra, Rhodesia, Parabellum, Bruce Whyte, Bulawayo Armoury, /carbine, smg, mrap, semiautomatic compact carbines, civilian self-defense weapons, Forgotten Weapons, rural farming families, Tommy Steele, horizontal front grip, vertical front grip, guns, dangerously high pressure, rhodesia, zimbabwe, stellyte, 9mm, carbine, semiauto, mamba, south africa, bush war, border war, history, development, disassembly, shooting, firing, shoot, fire, mccollum, inrange, inrangetv

Id: SM4tWc5BpIc

Length: 14min 54sec (894 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 03 2018