13:28: "Normally, notches cut in a gun reflect kills. In this case, I think this means this has fired three shots successfully." Oooo... that's a good burn!
@@darrengarcia4937 Well Colt is bankrupt, S&W is living off a practical but rather plain series of well-made carry automatics and revolvers (some of which I believe have even been adopted as service pistols), while Ruger is doing rather well with many well selling practical designs, from guns like the LCP, to the well-reviewed (although practically entry level as far as precisions go) Ruger Precision rifles and Ruger Precision rimfire (I own one, absolute tack driver), to it's AR series which is no slouch, to it's something like 60+ year production of the 10/22 and the .22 pistols it makes? How about that new, very well reviewed FiftySeven? Just above a taurus? Dude, what are you saying? Ruger is killing it, has been for the last decade.
@@darrengarcia4937 Ruger produces quality firearms, "a step above Taurus" (y'know, guns that explode or go off unintentionally) is severely undervaluing them as a company
I knew Joe Hale. He could talk the leg off a Donkey. He ended up running a small gun shop in Florida a Suburb of Johannesburg. The shop went belly up and Joe disappeared. Which I assume was quite normal for him. I can assure you he would be the last person I would allow to specify heat treatment of SS steel.Thanks for a highly interesting series.
What I learned from this video was that in the late '70s, at least among southern African practical shooters, the Smith & Wesson Model 59 was considered the best combat handgun in the world.
And the day came whereupon Gun Jesus did sit down amongst the serpents and did hold a mamba within his hands. "Lord Gun Jesus, " cried his followers, "be ye not afraid that the serpent taken up thusly may bite thee?" "No," spake Gun Jesus, "for this serpent is one of metal and is as dangerous and useful as is a scrotum upon a cow." And his followers did see the wisdom of his words and contemplated upon the scrotum burdened cow. Yet one questioned Him thusly; "But Lord, thou art the Gun Jesus. Can you not turn this thing of crap unto a thing of firing fun-ness?" Gun Jesus looked upon him and smiled upon him and it was as if the sun did rise for him, "No you tit," saith Gun Jesus, "I wouldst rather spend my time with the angel made Browning, Baretta, Smith and Wesson where it is known that ye can usually letteth rip more than 3 rounds before disappointment setteth in." And the one was chastened yet did he still follow Gun Jesus for He is good and righteous and he did know that he was a tit.
"The project went to New Jersey, and died. There are very few of these left." A tale as old as time, amiright? You can't make something better by making it in New Jersey.
No the zip 22 is worse . It failed to even look like a gun and you have to put your finger in front of the gun to charge a round . This gun looks like a gun and doesn't require placing any part of your body in front of the weapon to operate .
Would that put the Rogak in 3rd place then? I'm not sure I can agree with that batting order. I don't think Ian would have even tried to fire the Rogak (I think he'd have deemed it unsafe). He did fire the Zip .22, and I think he'd be ok with firing this pistol.
I think this one barely qualifies as a "production" pistol due to the small numbers produced, therefore it's difficult to compare to something like the Zip 22. This is more like an extended marketing campaign based on a couple hundred prototypes.
Large DA/SA semi-auto in 9x19, made almost entirely of castings (including the barrel), with a 15 round magazine? Sounds a lot like the Ruger P89, except that the P89 is actually a functional gun. 😂
I was about to say, p89 may be cast and ugly but it was my first semi auto I owned and I shot the crap out of it with everything I could find, hot hand loads, lead and even some Israeli Uzi surplus that was supposed to only be for smg and it never had a malfunction, I traded it later for a 92fs but it was definitely reliable and combat accurate lol
After the Bush War, Joe Hale moved back to the United States and reentered the firearms industry under the name "Ron Cohen." That's the only possible explanation for Kimber and Sig.
@@shinobi-no-bueno sig p320 is much much better than Glock in modularity, trigger, accuracy, durability, and I've seen tons of negligent discharges from Glocks, actually my ex gf got shot by one. You have to pull the trigger to break down a Glock and it has no safety. Firing upon re-holstering is the only not dummy proof part of a striker design. I have fnx-45, fn 509, and a sig p320 with three different frames, one of which is metal. They are all SO much better than a glock
@@shinobi-no-bueno And one day if you ever carry a gun everyday you will soon see the merits of a striker fired pistol vs like a 3 pound steel 1911 with 8 shots
I recall reading any number of magazine articles about this "wonder pistol" and then nothing....The only modern pistol that got more attention than the Mamba was the Bren Ten.....And we know how that one worked out even with Jeff Cooper beating the drums for it.
The Bren Ten wasn't a bad or poorly designed pistol but getting spare mags was and still is nearly impossible. The gun really does work but it was poorly marketed (even though it was Sonny Crockett's gun of choice in the first season of "Miami Vice").
@@marvindebot3264 I cannot and would not argue the point with you. However, here in the U.S.A. it was a near total flop. I knew three or four people who purchased Bren 10s new in the box and all but one of them, a collector who is also an avid shooter, found their pistols to be unreliable due to poor or at least substandard quality. Problems with feeding and extraction, jamming (primarily smokestack jams) topped the list of failures associated with the pistols that I know of. All but one of the above-mentioned pistols were sold after multiple trips to quality gunsmiths failed to rectify the problems the original owners had with the. Two were replaced by CZ-75s and one by a Colt's in 10mm. The fourth pistol ended up in the owner's substantial collection as a "non-shooter" after he spent a LOT of money trying to get it up to a level of dependability that would have made it trustworthy as a daily carry pistol. I've always suspected that the Bren 10s that entered this country were, for some reason, ammo sensitive but since I only came close to buying one myself, I have no hand experience, except for a few rounds fired from the fourth pistol mentioned above two of which resulted in two smokestack jams out of a single magazine. IF I recall correctly Norma ammo was utilized at one time or another by all four owners and, compared to other 10mm ammo available at the time, was considered "warm enough" to cycle the action MOST of the time. Carefully crafted handloads brought the reliability up, on that fourth pistol, to around 90%. I must confess that even the least reliable of the Bren 10s I crossed paths with were very, very accurate when they worked. I came so close to buying a Bren 10 back then that I had made it a point to research a couple of holsters and even tracked down a reliable source for Norma ammo and two extra magazines but once the men I knew, who had far and away greater financial resources that I could lay claim to started having problems with their pistols I took a hard pass on a Bren 10 and purchased a "GI" Browning in 9mm (my least favorite but by far more abundant chambering and ammo).
So, Lessons Learnt: 1. Never go away and actually build anything that got designed by a bunch of guys in a bar, 2. Never let a draughtsman double as a production engineer unless they're actually qualified to do so. Who'd a thunk it?
Harold Weaver Smith, the draughtsman isn't the one who was insisting on the weird engineering decisions (regarding the heat treatment). I'd suspect he was actually more qualified than that guy.
More lessons: a) the Browning Hi-Power wasn't so bad after all... (just look how widely it was used and for how long) b) John Browning and Dieudonné Saive really were genius gun inventors.
1) It depends on who the guys at the bar are. IE, the Ferrari Dino project started as a bar conversation between Enzo Ferrari, Dino Ferrari and Vittorio Jano on what would have been the best angle between the banks of a V6 engine.
IRRC the M82 Barrett was the same, couple of guys drinking and someone said 'Bet you can't make a rifle that shoots .50', Ronnie Barrett decided it was a bet worth taking
I don't really know anything about metallurgy, so the whole thing about the heat-treating cycle is flying over my head. Is a 24-hour cycle too long or too short? How does it affect/what does it have to do with the gun not working? In what specific way(s) does it "not work?" Basically, I think Ian left out a lot of important info on this one.
I think carburizing stainless is a lot harder than carburizing just steel. I heard carburizing steel is quite an easy process. Put the steel in a sealed container, heat it up to critical temperature and it's done. Green beetle channel demonstrated that quite a while ago. This process can "infuse" the carbon element up to 1 mm into the steel as far as I remember. However, I doubt this carburizing procedure cause this gun not working properly. Nevertheless I had never own a gun and had never carburize steel before so don't count me on this one. But I agree that gun jesus this time might cause me to have sleep deprivation due to this question. Why the hell does this gun not work.
It all really depends on the base alloy. Carburizing is forcing carbon atoms into the spaces between the iron atoms to increase the hardness through diffusion. The time is only one piece of the equation temperature also matters. This can be very finicky as you end up with metal of different hardness and or microstructure. If not done properly you have a surface or area of depth that is either to hard and brittle or too soft and weak. Hope this clears things up a little.
@@justforever96 Most carburizing is done by heating components in either a pit furnace, or sealed atmosphere furnace, and introducing carburizing gases at temperature. Gas carburizing allows for accurate control of both the process temperature and carburizing atmosphere (carbon potential). Carburizing is a time/temperature process; the carburizing atmosphere is introduced into the furnace for the required time to ensure the correct depth of case. The carbon potential of the gas can be lowered to permit diffusion, avoiding excess carbon in the surface layer. The 24 hours is critical because truncated Decarb begins well under 10 hours into the process, big fail.
@@justforever96 well metal can be too hard and shatter under pressure, or too soft and deform under pressure. Probably too hard in this case as i think the gun would still work if bits were slightly deformed with every use but just one shot and it shatters even one bit and obviously its not gonna work at all.
I think the issues with this are similar to the L85a1, in that the design itself is mostly sound with a few flaws, but the real issue is the method of manufacture, so things like an inadequately heat treated hammer or firing pin causing it to break, or things like brittle springs etc. Basically, decent design, but poor manufacturing leading to parts that easily break or malfunction.
Sounds like the Chevy Vega of the handguns. Started out with a great idea but ended up being poorly engineered and produced. Both were of similar time periods by the way.
yeah, there are four stages to design and production on which you can do a massive flop. 1. Market, 2. Design, 3. Technology, 4. Communication. Arguably the 1,3 and 4 are the most important bits.
IIRC, the Vega had an aluminum block. It was marketed well as they sold a bunch, but there was a a problem with step 2 -improper cooling and shifing cylindervsleeves.
I am one of the few people who got a good Vega. The worst problem I had with it was that the horsepower dropped to near zero when I would hit about 3,500ft above sea level. You know something is wrong when a VW microbus hauling a trailer can pass you but it made for some hilarious times wondering if we would make it to the top of a pass.
I worked the first 30 years of my adult life in the electronics industry, and there were lots and lot of much-hyped epic failures. Marketing types are cast from the same mold, just different alloys. Some actually did not lie through their teeth, but these tended to be less successful -- failures were always the fault of the Engineers (of which I was one). The more things change the more they stay the same. zNice vidoe - Very Interesting!
I have a March 1978 issue of Guns & Ammo that reviews the Navy Arms Mamba. It says that almost everything is cast stainless steel including the barrel, and claims Navy Arms will import castings to be finished in the US. A quote from the article: 'The secret is in the heat treating of the cast barrels, and beyond that Navy Arms has nothing to say'. The author says he didn't test it thoroughly because it was a first prototype, but it appeared to be very reliable. Also stated is that the magazine holds 14 rounds, and the DA trigger weighed 22lbs!
Most of what i hear in bars it's rubbish; even most of what i say in the bar it's also rubbish to be honest... i don't think that a bar is "the best place" to design a firearm.
The Marine Corps started in a bar. It seems to have worked out . I can't think of another example so it becomes more of the exception rather than the rule .
If I'm not mistaken, Gaston Glock started working on his pistol after some people made fun of him during a conversation at a cocktail party. Not a bar, but enough alcohol for some shit talking and Glock to get passed.
In that era stainless steel guns, even revolvers (what few there available), were ALL prone to galling with any kind of prolonged use. Its taken decades to get the right combination of metallurgy and heat treating to get it right. Guns & Ammo magazine did a light-weight puff piece article on the Mamba, with no test firing. Everyone wanted one. Nobody could get them. So in the end, we all went back to shooting tricked out 1911's and hi-powers. Because that's all there was, if you were serious about combat pistol craft. Nobody shot Smiths (39's or 59's).
Had they got the galling issue fixed it still would have been a flop. Look at the profile of the pistol; extremely high bore axis and almost square grip angle. That's a recipe for muzzle flip and I suspect discerning buyers would have dropped it pretty quick.
I remember this horror story, didn't help using the same grade of stainless steel for all the parts! I'm in South Africa and I bought all the Man and Man Magnum magazines for over forty years...
It looks like a S&W 645 but with a rounded trigger guard. The .45acp was very popular up until 2015 or so. Smith & Wesson had a few problems with the 645 but they were already going to roll out the 3rd gen lines in different calibers.
It is very, very *difficult* to re-heat treat any metal part after it has been initially carburized, annealed, tempered and whatever else this had done to it. It is _possible_ though, but you would probably have to go through several frames to get the process working properly.
"We made the best combat handgun ever!" -ALL THE PARTS ARE CRUDE CASTS... talk about ghetto... "Normally, notches cut in a gun reflect kills. In this case, I think this means this has fired three shots successfully."... ROFL
My local gun shop in Johannesburg had a gold plated one for sale. Serial number 003 if I remember correctly. Nobody back then wanted to buy a gold paper weight. Took them ages to sell it. Wish I had bought it but I was young and broke.
To prevent cracking and breakage of cast parts, even some stamped parts, I grind and polish cast flash and sharp edges. I also do it for aesthetic purposes. It's unfortunate that most manufacturers don't use this practice, but it is labor intensive and greatly increases manufacturing costs. It is a task left to end users and rebuilders.
I recall seeing a Mamba pistol approximately forty plus years ago in City Guns Hout Street Cape Town South Africa. I think it was gold in colour and when I held it in my hand I noticed that the slide to frame fit was very loose.
"I think it's worth pointing out that this is, in fact, objectively the INcorrect way to hold a pistol." Epic. As Ian describes him, Joe Hale reminds me a bit of Malcolm Bricklin, whose eponymous '70s car company was basically the prototype for DeLorean (gull wings doors, massive government grant scams in a place where no reasonable person would build a car factory, and all), and who then went on to found YugoCars, Inc., the company that imported the Zastava Koral to the US, badged as the notorious Yugo. Mind you, Bricklin also founded Subaru of America, so, y'know, stopped clock twice a day and all that. But the whole "super-confident serial entrepreneur who lurches bombastically from disaster to disaster" thing sounds very similar.
Today, the Mamba is a vary scarce pistol, for all the obvious reasons. Many thanks to the South African collection who provided this one for filming! e ⬆ typo in the description. I'm surprised it hasn't been caught in all these years.
Ian, I remember reading about this when it was being developed, and much hype was made of the 2 and 3 round bursts, both claimed to be effective, by not climbing too far out of the center mass of a human target.
Who the hell are these guys that created a list for an "ideal semi-auto" - that's made of CASTINGS instead of STAMPINGS??? And, they didn't even consider the truly superior, if completely unnecessary(I take it every idea in the list was completely unnecessary, sooo...), choice of them all - forgings??? It's like saying "I'm going to build the best engine ever - let's start with a cast crank, cast pistons, and cast rods!" - HUH??? I'm really REALLY into extremely weird, ridiculous, over the top, unnecessary, and even uniquely bad firearms(my dream arms collection would be a largely unshootable disaster of oddballs...), but I can honestly say that there is absolutely NOTHING redeeming about this. It isn't even noteworthy as a failure...
Among the desiderabile features of a firearm "no stamped parts" is probably at the bottom of the list. IE, in the same timeframe, the Benelli B76, that was a high quality firearm, with a competition-level trigger out of the box, had completely stamped frame and slide.
Yeah. Massive race to implement this amazing game-changing stamping technology a few decades before, and these guys are like "nah, we like the lower quality old expensive way better".
A race to the bottom fueled by hubris and ego. Giving control of technical details to a random jackoff worker who doesn't know what the hell he's doing is never a good idea.
Ironically, your description makes it quite appealing as a collector's item - the stupidest gun on earth. It's not stupid in any novel or interesting way, like the Zip22, and that just makes it even more stupid.
While I never saw a Mamba in the wild, I did drool over the adds. I did, however around that time have a Smith Model 59 that I carried as a duty weapon. I liked the gun overall but the trigger pull was awful, that was why I sold it off and went to a 1911A1. So much easier with a single action cocked and locked .45ACP pistol, the trigger, of course on the 1911 was lovely and I did have an adjustable for over travel long trigger installed in the pistol that made it even better, and a flat mainspring housing with the nice Pacmayer grips to help with the recoil of the full house FMJ rounds that I fed her. The Dakota's offer an interesting place to carry a .45, the cold winters mean that most everyone you encounter that might need shooting have a LOT of cloths between them and the outdoors what with sub zero weather common in winter. So I figured FMJ would give better penetration when the snow flies, and even in summer the extra punch of a FMJ just sounded right to me. Perhaps it was my 8 years as a Soldier back in the 70's that added to this thought, plus I liked the added functionality of FMJ rounds while I saw some fellows with .45's feeding them hollow points have jam problems where I never had a burp giggle or fart out of my old war horses.
What a blast from the past! I worked in Rhodesia in 1977 and 1978 and I remember the media hype about the Mamba. I recall reading about it in a South African magazine called SCOPE. People were wild about the idea that they might be able to buy a pistol. There were NONE for sale in Rhodesia - I had picked up a Star Super-B 9mm in Johannesburg on my way to Rhodesia. When I left in 78 I sold it in Salisbury for a good deal more than I had paid. Great video.
You know it's a good video when it starts with what sounds like a bad joke. "So two guys are sitting in a bar in Rhodesia..." Turns out it was a bad joke. All of it. This gun didn't even stop firing with certain ammo, or in certain environments. It's truly a failure when you can pull it straight out of the box and have it misfire on its maiden cartridge.
If I recall properly, the Add in Merc News said they would produce a "Black Mamba and a Green Mamba" I don't recall the differences other then the finish available on the guns though, wish I had my old copy. I never thought of merc work, sounded to off beat to me but I had a buddy who dreamed of it every day, and talked about it every damn time we were assigned to the same squad car.
I've heard of Ian mostly through other gun channels, and I have to say, I immediately love this guy. Great demeanor on screen, obviously very knowledgeable and VERY entertaining both through his thoroughness and obvious passion for the subject. Keep up the good work!!
Ian the Mamba was never touted as a weapon for the military.. in the field and in combat over the 1970 - 80 period we used Brownings, Barettas (branded as Vektor), CZ and a few old Colt pistols in this order .. all struggled with the fine dust in the bush and required lots of cleaning and oiling to be reliable and safe. Sandock never produced any firearms of note for SANDF but we're HUGE and world class in armoured vehicle production
The 'galling'; Ian could have gone into a bit more detail, but stainless steel doesn't like to slide against itself under heat and pressure. With all-stainless guns, the slide and frame have to be heat-treated differently to prevent galling. Until this became practical, stainless autos were not practical. For their other issues, Colts got it right; my stainless Combat Commander has been flawless.
The normally separate pieces of the gun will spontaneously weld themselves together in small spots. Then when they are forced apart you're left with little tears and bumps in the parts' surface. Generally terrible.
I wonder, if this trainwreck of a firearm had somehow worked out, where would the company have gone after its initial release? It was released the same year Rhodesia itself went kaput, and I don't know if the Zimbabwean government would've been okay with a group of what was persumably white Rhodesian loyalists manufacturing firearms in the country they just took from white Rhodesian loyalists.
this reminds me of the guy in africa that build a shed out of wavey sheetmetals. called it a controlroom. and now they try to build airplanes out of heavy steelbeams. motorized with a bikeengine. they crashed every time(of course!) the goal is to set up an international airport....
I recall seeing these as a full page (Back Page no less) Add on some Mercenary magazine that a buddy gave me years ago. Man I was drooling at the gun, thought it would be the best I could get by that add, thankfully I never got an opportunity to buy one, because I would have, I had a real knack for buying pretty much junk guns and thinking I had a collectors dream.
You know, the casting marks arent even that bad. What really makes me worry are the obvious shitty file marks on the bolt hold-open lever and the barrel.
Good ending: Ian decides to fix the Mamba, and shoots it Bad ending: Ian decides to shoot the Mamba without fixing it, the slide exploding off and hitting him in the nuts True ending: Ian never shoots it, it was never meant to be shot
Sounds like some of the idiots I have worked with in my industry. You have professionals telling you what they are doing isn't going to work, their ego gets in the way and the project fails. Love how history repeats itself so often across all industries.
I'm curious what the final "best of combat pistols" list was, because this pistol seems to suggest "Model 59, but what if it had a trick safety lever, was made of cast stainless, and it didn't work?"
