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