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 Rhodesian and South African submachine gun.
Except it's actually semi-automatic only.
And this particular one was made in South Africa,
but these were also made simultaneously in Rhodesia.
So the gun was originally the idea of a guy named Alex Du Plessis, who was a Rhodesian.
And he put together one of these basically in his shed in his back yard.
... These have this nice plastic moulded lower assembly,
the first one he made out of basically epoxy putty, kind of cool.
And made the gun in the early 1970s, and actually took it to Ian Smith
(the President of Rhodesia at the time), to try and get interest from the army in it.
Smith ... referred him to an engineering company,
and he ended up working with a company called Lacoste Engineering.
And also eventually a financier by the name of Porter.
And so these original guns in Rhodesia
were marked with the initials LDP for Lacoste, Du Plessis and Porter.
The three ... organisations and people who were involved in their manufacture.
This is a pretty typical sort of ... situation: you have one guy who designs the gun,
one company that makes it, and one guy or company who finances it.
That's what happened here.
The guns went into production in 1975.
And by 1976 they were starting to export them into South Africa.
However, in order to legally sell this in South Africa it had to have a few changes.
And before we go into those changes, I think it's important to point out
that this is a semi-auto only gun.
A lot of people look at a gun like this and expect, "Oh, it's a submachine gun."
Because it absolutely looks like a submachine gun.
However, the gun laws in both Rhodesia and South Africa at the time
were not very permissive of ownership of machine guns at all.
So guns like this were often open bolt (this one is an open bolt firing gun),
but they were semi-automatic only.
And this was produced as basically a self-defence sort of weapon
aimed more at women than at men.
The idea is typically the man running around a farm or a family
would have a full-sized rifle, something like an FAL.
And this was a much more comfortable gun for a woman to use and shoot.
And having a stock (more or less a stock), and a longer barrel, and longer sights,
and handling like a submachine gun
made them more easily shootable, more accurately shootable, than pistols.
And this whole thing carries around in this little bag.
So ... it is larger than a pistol, but it's still not very big.
And the idea was you actually had this sling on the bag,
and if you wanted you could take it off the bag, and clip it onto the gun and carry it that way.
I guess before we take it apart there are a couple of things to look at on the outside.
We have the stock in the folded configuration here.
And when it's folded it's just kind of held in place by a couple of screws here.
... This pair of screws actually holds some internal parts in place as well.
So to deploy the stock, pop it over those screws and then we can fold it out around the magazine.
And then there's a latch back here.
And that's the reason for this extra loop on the stock is that loop snaps into a latch there,
and that locks the [stock] nice and securely in place.
This was actually one of the changes
that was made to the South African production version of the gun.
The model name is moulded into that plastic front handguard there, "Kommando".
... This is where LDP would be marked on the Rhodesian versions.
The later ... Rhodesian version, after it was no longer being made by LDP,
they had a metal plate here that said, I believe,
Kommando Arms ... [Manufacturing], like that.
There is a serial number, both on the bolt and on the barrel.
And this one actually starts with 78, which on a lot of the South African guns like this is the date.
So this is a 1978 production gun.
We have the serial number, 1282, and then this is a South African proof mark.
That serial number is repeated up on the top of the receiver tube right there.
There is a safety here on the side of the gun, just rotate this pin back and forth.
Forward is fire and back is safe.
The magazine release is a little bit awkward, it's this latch.
The reason it's down here is because this uses a straight, standard, unmodified Uzi magazine.
In fact one of the nicknames for this gun was the "Rhuzi", r-h-u-z-i,
the Rhodesian Uzi, ... a colloquial name that a lot of people gave it.
... Apparently LDP was mistaken by some people for meaning "Land Defence Pistol",
and by others as meaning "Lots of Dead People".
Actually it stood for the ... three guy's names.
And then the only other control on there is the bolt handle.
As I said, this fires from an open bolt so it locks open like so.
Now let's go ahead and take it apart.
Now there's nothing holding this rear end cap on, it's just threaded in place.
So I can unscrew that.
This rear end cap also holds a metal plate, right here, firmly onto the receiver tube.
That metal plate is connected to the lower assembly.
So this cap not just retains the bolt and the mainspring,
but it also solidly locks the lower to the upper.
Now normally you would expect this thing
to go flying off when it's unscrewed, but that doesn't happen.
Because on the Kommando there is actually a second plug at the back of the recoil spring.
And it's got this little detent on it that locks the plug into the receiver tube.
So in order to remove the spring I have to push that down,
which I may need a tool for.
Go back to a universal disassembly tool here, push that in, there we go.
Now I can pull out the bolt assembly.
Can pull this back to right here, and then the charging handle comes out, pretty typical.
Now that is atypical.
So ... this to me is like the most interesting mechanical element of the Kommando.
And it's the fact that the bolt is in two pieces.
So when the gun is firing it's in this configuration,
very much like the other telescoping ... submachine gun bolts out there,
especially for example the Czech guns, the Czech Model 23, 24, 25, 26.
However, this would be a relatively complicated part to manufacture.
If you separate it into two pieces like this,
you're left with two parts that are both very easy to manufacture.
The vast majority of this can be done on a lathe.
Turn the inside, turn the outside, and then you've just got a hole to drill,
mill that out, cut that sear notch.
Same thing on this, all the major elements of this can be turned on a lathe.
You put it together and it works exactly like a telescoping bolt.
... You've got your charging handle that holds these two pieces together here.
But much easier to manufacture, so that's really cool.
Because this fires from an open bolt it's able to use a fixed firing pin.
And then the ejector on the Kommando is a separate rod.
So there's a hole in the front of the bolt face right here,
and the main spring has what appears to be a guide rod in it, this is actually the ejector pin.
So this rod runs inside the bolt itself.
And when the bolt cycles backward that rod pokes out through the breech face,
and that's what kicks the empty cases out.
Now we can take the front end apart by unscrewing this retaining nut.
There we go. So that comes off, and then the barrel gets tapped back into the breech.
No, it doesn't want to.
We'll give it a little encouragement here with a hammer.
There we go.
We can drop the barrel out the back, very simple barrel.
Note that there's no feed ramp on the barrel.
And then the receiver tube slides off of the lower assembly.
There's basically nothing to the receiver tube here.
The sights are a round aperture on the back,
and a simple round post with a couple of protective wings in the front.
Those are both mounted on the receiver.
And then everything else of note is contained inside this lower housing.
First off we have this piece, which is actually the feed ramp
which pushes into position when you insert a magazine.
So that slides up. That acts as a feed ramp so you don't need one on the barrel,
which means the barrel is easier to fabricate.
It also means you don't have to pay attention to what orientation the barrel is in
when you install it in the gun, it's completely symmetrical.
Put it in however, and that feed ramp will do the job.
And then being semi-automatic only you need some sort of disconnector, and that is this.
So when I pull the trigger, this is the main sear.
It hooks onto this front flat section of the ... bolt.
Pull the trigger, sear drops, the bolt is going to go forward.
It's going to push this lever down.
That's going to depress this, which we'll get to in just a moment.
And when this disconnector goes all the way down,
there you go, it's going to pop the sear back up.
So that the bolt will come back, lock open, and only fire semi-automatic.
Now one of the problems with this gun originally,
is ... the first model made in Rhodesia didn't have this extra safety catch.
Now what they found could happen, and this ... is one of those things
that the South African government insisted on changing
in order to make it legally saleable in South Africa,
if you had really underpowered ammunition it was possible for the gun to fire,
the bolt to cycle back far enough to pick up a cartridge.
Because, remember, the sear is at the front, but ... the bolt face is actually much further back.
It could cycle far enough to pick up a cartridge,
not far enough to catch on the sear, and then come back forward and fire.
And it could double and triple, and fire in bursts unintentionally if you had weak ammo.
So this hook catches the bolt.
As soon as it's gone far enough back to pick up a cartridge,
the front of the bolt is behind this tab.
And if the bolt isn't in the correct position, this will catch it and stop it.
When you fire normally this drops that guy down.
Once these started being sold in South Africa they ... got a request
for licensed production in South Africa from a company called Maxim Parabellum.
And LDP worked out a deal: LDP continued to make guns in Rhodesia,
and Maxim Parabellum started up production in South Africa.
And there ... were like four or five different iterations of the Rhodesian version of the gun.
There's pretty much just one version of the South African one, which is this.
The most notable differences between the two are
the Rhodesian guns actually had a grip safety in them which the South African does not.
And the Rhodesian guns had a different style of stock.
Basically by the last iteration they had just a kind of a sheet metal snap retainer
that held the stock in the open position.
Where the ... South African version here has this stock latch that you already saw.
So in total LDP made about 1,000 of the guns.
LDP was actually eventually bought out by a different Rhodesian company called Armscor.
(Not the same as the Armscor that's currently in South Africa.)
In total we're looking at about 10,000 of these guns were produced.
And they are really one of the most common of the Rhodesian / South African
domestic production - you can call it a carbine or a semi-auto submachine gun.
So as far as ... this sort of gun goes, these are relatively common.
In fact you do even see them in the United States, sort of.
In 1980 the company made a deal with an American guy
who thought he had a market for these in the US.
He imported I think parts for 500.
Funding to make them, wasn't able to make them, ... I'm not sure the exact reasons.
But ultimately I assume it would be: it cost too much,
there were ... a bunch of other options out there on the market.
And the plan fell through.
So there aren't really any American-made Kommandos,
but you will occasionally find a set of parts for a Kommando in the US, that's pretty cool.
Anyway, hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
Hopefully you got a new appreciation for a ... more interesting than it ought to be, I think,
South African / Rhodesian semi-auto submachine gun.
Thanks for watching.