Northwood R-76
Encyclopedia
The Northwood R-76 was a submachine gun
Submachine gun
A submachine gun is an automatic carbine, designed to fire pistol cartridges. It combines the automatic fire of a machine gun with the cartridge of a pistol. The submachine gun was invented during World War I , but the apex of its use was during World War II when millions of the weapon type were...

 of Rhodesian origin. It was intended as a 'Land Defence Pistol' during the Rhodesian Bush War
Rhodesian Bush War
The Rhodesian Bush War – also known as the Second Chimurenga or the Zimbabwe War of Liberation – was a civil war which took place between July 1964 and December 1979 in the unrecognised country of Rhodesia...

 era. Its layout is somewhat much like a Vz.61 Skorpion and the TEC-9. It was available with a spike bayonet, retractable wire stock and removable bipod which predates this use on submachine guns like the CBJ-MS
Saab Bofors Dynamics CBJ-MS
The Saab Bofors Dynamics CBJ-MS is a Personal defense weapon/Submachine gun manufactured by Saab Bofors Dynamics for Sweden. It is chambered for both 6.5×25 CBJ-MS and 9×19mm Luger/Parabellum cartridges.-Development:...

. Another variant, the R-77 came with a longer barrel and stock enabling the weapon to be used as a carbine
Carbine
A carbine , from French carabine, is a longarm similar to but shorter than a rifle or musket. Many carbines are shortened versions of full rifles, firing the same ammunition at a lower velocity due to a shorter barrel length....

.

The R-76 submachine gun was manufactured by Northwood Development Pvt-Ltd out of Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe). The weapon was designed by Roger Mansfield, a former Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Formed on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world...

 engineer who emigrated from the UK to Rhodesia, and developed keeping mind to the needs of Rhodesian farmers, ranchers and citizens living in outlying areas where ZIPRA
ZIPRA
Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army was the armed wing of the Zimbabwe African People's Union, a political party in Rhodesia. It participated in the Second Chimurenga against white minority rule in the former Rhodesia....

 & ZANLA forces were especially active. "Home grown" in Rhodesia with the majority of parts produced from local materials, ease of manufacture and minimal machining requirements were key factors; as such, the R-76 was largely manufactured out of metal sheet stampings
Stamping (metalworking)
Stamping includes a variety of sheet-metal forming manufacturing processes, such as punching using a machine press or stamping press, blanking, embossing, bending, flanging, and coining. This could be a single stage operation where every stroke of the press produce the desired form on the sheet...

, with grip cheeks made either in wood, stamped aluminium or plastic (generally mid-quality or low-end molds).

The R-76 submachine gun was a selective-fire (semi-automatic/full-automatic) weapon with an average rate of fire ranging about 500 rounds per minute. It was chambered for the 9mm "Parabellum" (9x19mm) caliber, and fed by 13-round "Browning High-Power" pistol magazines, or by locally-produced 20 or 30 round magazines. It was operated by simple blowback, with a bolt running on two recoil springs like in the US made M3 "Grease Gun"
M3 submachine gun
The M3 was an American .45-caliber submachine gun adopted for U.S. Army service on 12 December 1942, as the United States Submachine Gun, Cal. .45, M3. The M3 was designed as a more cost-effective alternative to the Thompson, optimized for mass production...

, and was provided with either a 6 or 8 inch, 24-groove "Microgroove"-rifled barrel. Early versions could be found with a peer rear sight as opposed to latter simple V-notch rear sights. The collapsing wire-stock could be removed and re-installed in a reverse position so that the metal stock butt could serve as a front pistol grip to fire the weapon from the hip. The bolt retraction handle was located on the left side of the receiver, was spring-loaded and remained forward after the first round was fired

A machine-carbine version, called the R-77, was also available; the R-77 was available with a fixed wooden stock, and with a 9 or 10-inch barrel with bipod, flash hider and bayonet lug options available.

The R-76 submachine gun was deployed with some Rhodesian Army units like the "Selous Scouts
Selous Scouts
The Selous Scouts was a special forces regiment of the Rhodesian Army, which operated from 1973 until the introduction of majority rule in 1980. It was named after British explorer Frederick Courteney Selous , and their motto was pamwe chete, which, in the Shona language, roughly means "all...

", and sold to civilians. After the change of political regime in Rhodesia, the production of the R-76 submachine gun and the R-77 machine-carbine did not reprise in the Republic of South Africa, unlike other Rhodesian-grown gun projects like the "Rhuzi" (produced in South Africa as the "Kommando LDP
Kommando LDP
The Kommando LDP , also known as the Lacoste LDP is a submachine gun of Rhodesian origin manufactured by Kommando Arms and Lacoste Engineering during the Rhodesian Bush War as a 'Land Defence Pistol' for white Rhodesian farmers...

"), the Rhogun the Mamba
Mamba Pistol
The Mamba is a semi-automatic pistol developed in Rhodesia and later produced in the Republic of South Africa, intended for military and police duty...

(engineered in Rhodesia but never manufactured there, produced for a short time in South Africa and then by Navy Arms Inc. of Ridgefield, NJ, USA, before going out of production) or the ADP pistol (engineered by a Rhodesian police officer, Alex DuPlessis, produced in South Africa, in Italy, then currently in the United States, where DuPlessis currently resides and works as an engineer for Wilson Combat, LLC.). The R-76 submachine guns manufactured during the short production run in the 1970s remained around in Zimbabwe and South Africa for a while, exported by expats, and were mostly destroyed during the years. However some can be found in good conditions, although non-firing, on the deactivated guns market in the United Kingdom. Several R-76 submachine guns are also known to have made their way in Australia.
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