PMP electro-mechanical engineer here. For those who are not used to production processes, I must clarify that Ian's performance deserves an Oscar for "Best Universal Interpretation of Real Events." Greetings from Patagonia Argentina.
I have attended and chaired many, many design review meetings. None would have happened like this one. If they had, I would have been fired so fast, I would have passed myself on the way out the door. 🚪
South African here, born, bred and still in country. You had me howling with laughter acting out the Mamba meeting. Reminds me very much of our current public sector, however, the standards of manufacturing in our private sector are very much better now!
Oh, I've seen that Doom Loop. Carol: "Bob, Alice just quit, so I need you to find out what she messed up and fix it." Bob: "Hell, no, you're not pinning that on me. Also, _I_ quit."
Reminds me of that old flick in the 70's "Bob Carol, Ted and Alice" about wife swapping back then. It was a great comedy for it's time, I suppose now days the concept would be a bit out of place,
About 35 years ago I was a trainee in an electronics factory where they were also using unskilled labour to install components. One lady was instructed to install resistors, diodes etc. to a circuit board and shown what goes where... but no one explained why it was important and where she could get more components when she ran out. As it was paid per assembled item everyone wanted to make as many as possible in a workday. So she proceeded to use up all of her component stock, at first everything was correct but then she ran out of one component and was replacing it with another and so on and everything was revealed only when the units started to fail testing. Out of a lot of 1000 only about 120 were assembled correctly.
Sounds like a lot of today's workers. I don't really understand how it was removed from the school curriculum but now days a lot of people are graduating with no common sense. I guess I should not put all the blame on schools, think my dad had a lot to do with the instillation of common sense in my brain, he used a razor strop to get my attention. It was applied liberally across my bare bottom when I screwed up on our farm. I picked up on that common sense rapidly and was then able to sit comfortable at the dinning room table come supper time.
@@JerryEricsson The worker was not informed of important information, nor were they likely paid enough to feel comfortable stopping work when they could just continue building. The people in charge just threw a person at it with insufficient training to save costs and got what they paid for.
I was a fly on the wall for a few of those meetings in my days in the Air Force. Original manufacturer & depot checking out why a 3rd party's parts didn't work. The 💩 did fly.
Ditto. I finally realized that there was nothing I could do to keep my employers from making and shipping utter crap and decided that I had to just walk away.
What an absolute fustercluck. I was a gun nut kid in South Africa at the time when these were being developed and the hype and expectation was as huge as the disappointment would be.
Spent most of my time '78-'21 as an industrial grunt; Fabricating / welding, plastic injection molding, 21+ years production CNC machining. I've sat thru meetings like that. I've witnessed and been party to fiascos like that. "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe!" I could probably write a 92 page report.
For the sake of humanity, Sir, please do write about your experiences. If not as a horror story to scare and warn all of our future engineers, then please at least write as a comedy to make this grim reality a tiny bit more bearable for everyone. I for one would love to read it or listen to such podcast.
Just an excerpt, " .. the one thing i'm a little bit concerned about is that I have been told by two members of our team here that those drawings [of the slide] had been checked and were correct and on that basis were signed off... but the guy said and I quote again, a myriad of problems in that there will be an overall dimension and then you add up the dimensions that arrive at that dimension and there's NO similarity between those two dimensions." Yeah these guys encountered a complete cluster-fudge of issues with apparently people who can't add.
Green mamba definitely looks like pistol from Sovier Union - Red Army armories - painting everything green (including car engines, iside of radios etc...) was metod they believed rustproof any military material.
As a retired production process auditor the sad tale that Ian narrated was one I heard more than once. Changing process and or materials without due diligence cost one company a very substantial contract, several people their jobs, and the (very new) MD used a few more to mop the floor with... Just don't do it, even if you think it's the best idea since sliced bread.
You know, Dilbert was famous for engineers everywhere flat-out believing that the author had a spy in their organization. This echoes so much of situations I've been dropped into over the years....
Ian, one of the near-universal things you mention is proof marks. If you haven't, could you do a video on what goes in to the "proof" process? Like, what happens to a specific gun before it receives a proof mark?
I went to the Navy Arms/Blue Sky/Arlington Ordnance storage warehouse in the mid 90s to go through their recent offerings at the time. This was a unique opportunity and mind-blowing considering the amount and variations of imported firearms available. I met Val Forget and his son. They were cordial and a wealth of information.
Until it morphs into a 'white' mamba after some usage.... (whereas that snake doesn't even exist). But seeing how bad the gun looks already (let alone how/if it works), maybe you would be better off with a black mamba - it will definitely scare off your opponent: fast and lethal - something one couldn't say of that gun 😆
Very entertaining and a joy to watch. I was interested in firearms from my childhood on and in the pre-internet time only gun books were my source of informations. And where were only few authors publishing material of that subject (at least here in Europa). And on of them was Ian Hogg. And during a language holliday in England I bought an old gun book in one of those many antique book shops in England (which existed at least in the 1990's - I don't know if that is still the case) And that gun book from the 80's had some pictures and short informations about "modern" handguns and that were, amongst few others, the Mamba as top notch modern handgun and milestone of the future to come: High capacity 9x19mm ("the ideal combat/self defence ammunition"), stainless steel, Double Action/Single Action combat pistol! *insert manly male roar here* Later published gun books never mentioned the Mamba. So the Mamba occupied a bit of my youth and so it's for me extremly cool to watch Ian performing the Mamba-saga and solving the mystery why that "ultimate combat gun" sunk into the realms of the forgotten weapons. By the way, that old gun book gave a fair amount of text and pictures to the Dardick Pistol. Due to the fact that people like Ian present the history and function of guns some false informations in those gun books were corrected. And maybe it would be fun to create a TV drama about the Mamba.
Re: the re-snactment of the meeting... Holy Jesus... I've had program and product managers who would have been throwing pens across the room and peeling the paint off the walls with their language. Sounds like a bigger ball of suck, fail, and sadness than the L85 design team.
Ah what a wonderful morning, coffee with Ian. I used to drool over these when they were advertised in :="Soldier of Fortune" Magazine. Sure glad I didn't have a chance to buy one. Back then I was looking for a Stainless gun, my gun buddy had an AMT Hardballer and I thought it was very cool, I eventually got one and it was a piece of shit, jammed all the time, the screw in the adjustable sight was too long, when I got it zeroed, the damn firing pin kept falling out because of that screw. I got rid of it and bought an Interarms Silver Cup which was just a bunch of surplus parts on an Interarms lower, the slide was Remington. It was a good basic .45 and served me well on the PD for years.
Well having been a machinist for over 50yrs,that's poor. Even in commercial engineering,those flaws in the slide wouldn't have got thru an inspection. To have flaws like that in firearm is shocking.
The frustration of working on a project that is so bad can be felt in the quotes from the minutes. You have to feel for the guys involved, even if it was down to them in the first place!
Had a good chuckle over this. I worked as a design/production engineer. The last company i worked for had exactly these issues. On vendor had issues making a part, called the designer on the drawing & got a verbal change which caused havoc on the production line. Took a couple of years to get that issue filed so I could unmask assembly issues
Thank you for the morning comic relief Ian, it isn't every day that you get to hear the actual "fly on the wall" view of how what should have been a good project, go so horribly wrong. It almost sounded like the Three Stooges started a gun company, and the end results from the whole debacle look very much so. Clearly nobody was working on the same page in the room from which those meeting minutes were from, and not keeping each other in the loop when there were unexpected problems. Sounded like a severe leadership issue was going on as well.
I was a machine setter for a car parts company in Avon mouth nr Bristol UK and we had a SPC chart and I had to adjust flange for a go-no go gauge. The tooling was pre ww2 and the nut where rounded so I had a hammer in one hand and a micro metre in the other..... Then we had to fill out the chart...... You could not make it up......
Fantastic. Anyone who is interested in a career in any kind of manufacturing should read this document, because many times I've seen companies struggling with the same foundational problems - lack of experience (And no desire to bring in anyone to consult), lack of clear decision hierarchy and communication channels, poor or absent record keeping, etc. Every field requires expertise, every field has experts, and it can only be gained through years and years of experience. Now I crave Ian performing the meeting minutes of Cobray complete with hawaiian shirt, full tint shades and ripping lines of angel dust.
Anyone who sincerely complains about project administration, change tracking, and reporting etc has never had to deal with the consequences of not doing those things 😂😂😂
Maybe it's been brought up already, but for historical preservation purposes, it would be neat to have Headstamp republish those meeting minutes in some form.
This is why consensus and collaboration or so important… This is a perfect example of how a really cool idea can go catastrophically wrong. Thanks for highlighting it! It's morbidly hilarious… Lol
Shades of Les Rogak, Hudson, and so many others who shouldn't have tried what they did and failed because they didn't know how to do it properly. It's been said to never let an enthusiast design anything because they will be blind to the faults and problems of what they're doing. I can certainly understand this...
I remember when Sarco Inc had some for sale 20 years ago for just under $1k, while you could find used ones for $300. I think the Sarco pistols came with modified Beretta 92 mags, since original mags weren't available or didn't work.
Clowning on SA when the country was under embargo is kind like of kicking a guy when he's down. The pistol looks like the kind of thing which could have been good, but sadly was not due to mismanagement.
Thanks for this series. I’ve always found the Mamba fascinating. Maybe it’s the name or the Rhodesian connection. I’m not sure. I had some dealings with Val Forgett a few years ago and he’s an interesting character as well.
I feel like the engineers in the comments have been in this meeting before, at 8:00 AM, staring blankly into the distance, knowing that unraveling this catastrophe will consume your time and sanity for the next {depressingly large number} of months...
Story as old as time. Some entrepeneur-hobbyists pitches with prototype that they think is a complete product because they built a 100 in garge somewhere. Then you are a-hole engineer not wanting to do the work to get it to production because you can spot 3 serious design flaws and there is a single complete specification of any part.
That frame and slide set with the proof marks doesn't make sense. Proof marks are only applied after test-firing, thus it must havr been a virtually-complete pistol at some point (grip panels may not have been fitted, but everything else should have been there). Is there a chance it became a part-donor for warranty repairs?
I am looking at page 469 of "Firearms Developed and Manufactured in Southern Africa 1949-2000" where there is picture of a patch: "MAMBA (image of pistol) SIMPLY THE BEST". Sigh. Last paragraph on page 468: "One of the entrenched clauses in the Mamba contract was that the representative of the Rhodesian parties, Joe Hale, would have absolute control of the technical specifications. This eventually turned out to be the prime cause of the failure of the Mamba project". Sigh again.
This is your last chance to win this very rare Mamba pistol!
www.fanathem.com/forgottenweapons
DEADLINE to ENTER is TONIGHT 12/20/24 @11:59 PM PST
I guess this is a re-upload?
@@mrbjorndekker That or Ian became european and invented 10 extra months
@@mrbjorndekker mistype, he meant 12/22/24
Sorry for the date ; it should’ve said 12/20 (today)
PMP electro-mechanical engineer here.
For those who are not used to production processes, I must clarify that Ian's performance deserves an Oscar for "Best Universal Interpretation of Real Events."
Greetings from Patagonia Argentina.
Muchachooos 😂
@@pablodesantis6463 Exactamente jajajaja
I agree and I thought of that but I hadn't thought to comment about it that's why I'm chiming in here ✌️
I have attended and chaired many, many design review meetings. None would have happened like this one. If they had, I would have been fired so fast, I would have passed myself on the way out the door. 🚪
Change a few words, and I've been in software development meetings that sounded like that.
South African here, born, bred and still in country. You had me howling with laughter acting out the Mamba meeting. Reminds me very much of our current public sector, however, the standards of manufacturing in our private sector are very much better now!
Glad to know something has changed for the better while some things are sadly the same.
Oh, I've seen that Doom Loop.
Carol: "Bob, Alice just quit, so I need you to find out what she messed up and fix it."
Bob: "Hell, no, you're not pinning that on me. Also, _I_ quit."
Reminds me of that old flick in the 70's "Bob Carol, Ted and Alice" about wife swapping back then. It was a great comedy for it's time, I suppose now days the concept would be a bit out of place,
Sounds like a perfect sidearm for the Elbonian military police
About 35 years ago I was a trainee in an electronics factory where they were also using unskilled labour to install components. One lady was instructed to install resistors, diodes etc. to a circuit board and shown what goes where... but no one explained why it was important and where she could get more components when she ran out. As it was paid per assembled item everyone wanted to make as many as possible in a workday. So she proceeded to use up all of her component stock, at first everything was correct but then she ran out of one component and was replacing it with another and so on and everything was revealed only when the units started to fail testing. Out of a lot of 1000 only about 120 were assembled correctly.
Sounds like a lot of today's workers. I don't really understand how it was removed from the school curriculum but now days a lot of people are graduating with no common sense. I guess I should not put all the blame on schools, think my dad had a lot to do with the instillation of common sense in my brain, he used a razor strop to get my attention. It was applied liberally across my bare bottom when I screwed up on our farm. I picked up on that common sense rapidly and was then able to sit comfortable at the dinning room table come supper time.
Not her fault, that’s down to shit management employing cheap Labour.
@@JerryEricsson
The worker was not informed of important information, nor were they likely paid enough to feel comfortable stopping work when they could just continue building. The people in charge just threw a person at it with insufficient training to save costs and got what they paid for.
Slight PTSD from that minute of the meeting.
Been there, seen that.
I was a fly on the wall for a few of those meetings in my days in the Air Force. Original manufacturer & depot checking out why a 3rd party's parts didn't work. The 💩 did fly.
I guess I was blessed that the my design reviews were very disciplined. This never would have happened.
Ditto. I finally realized that there was nothing I could do to keep my employers from making and shipping utter crap and decided that I had to just walk away.
What an absolute fustercluck. I was a gun nut kid in South Africa at the time when these were being developed and the hype and expectation was as huge as the disappointment would be.
My wife uses the C-F alarmingly frequently.
Unhinged Ian performance was brilliant. And matches manufacturing very much.
"Jesus wept, I don't believe this" is an apt emotional summary of so many meetings
"Gun Jesus wept..."
"And this ladies and gentleman.... is Mamba No 5."
Spent most of my time '78-'21 as an industrial grunt; Fabricating / welding, plastic injection molding, 21+ years production CNC machining. I've sat thru meetings like that. I've witnessed and been party to fiascos like that. "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe!"
I could probably write a 92 page report.
If you aint doing much, write it up and try to sell it as a book.
@@slimjim2584 Yeah, don't let it "lost in time, like tears in rain"!
For the sake of humanity, Sir, please do write about your experiences. If not as a horror story to scare and warn all of our future engineers,
then please at least write as a comedy to make this grim reality a tiny bit more bearable for everyone.
I for one would love to read it or listen to such podcast.
Dude, right a book about it. If this video was a blast to watch, your experiences are going to be a blast to read. 👍
Firearm Manufacturing Theater starring Ian McCollum. Christmas came early!
I loved this minutes reading dramatization. It would have been funnier if you changed into various French uniforms for each person.
Man, what an opportunity to use his hat collection!
Mamba Dev Team: No gun experience
SA-80 Dev Team: 👀
"I mean how hard could it be, you just"
Having been employed by a failing company when I was younger that reading brought back a very familiar stress headache.
The doom-loop of "Well, the guy who messed this up quit, so _I'm_ not going to fix it. Also, I quit."
@ don’t worry we hired some consultants from New York. They’ll know what to do.
Just an excerpt,
" .. the one thing i'm a little bit concerned about is that I have been told by two members of our team here that those drawings [of the slide] had been checked and were correct and on that basis were signed off... but the guy said and I quote again, a myriad of problems in that there will be an overall dimension and then you add up the dimensions that arrive at that dimension and there's NO similarity between those two dimensions."
Yeah these guys encountered a complete cluster-fudge of issues with apparently people who can't add.
Green mamba definitely looks like pistol from Sovier Union - Red Army armories - painting everything green (including car engines, iside of radios etc...) was metod they believed rustproof any military material.
Oh, man - that dramatic re-enactment was great.
He should have done the two Ian split screen he did in that other video.
The skit in the middle was a thoroughly hilarious change of pace. 😂
When are we going to get the Forgotten Weapons Sketch Show
Seconded
As a retired production process auditor the sad tale that Ian narrated was one I heard more than once. Changing process and or materials without due diligence cost one company a very substantial contract, several people their jobs, and the (very new) MD used a few more to mop the floor with...
Just don't do it, even if you think it's the best idea since sliced bread.
Last time i was this early, the heat treat on the Mamba still worked.
Well, that is far earlier than my slow self made it here ..
These minutes would make a better movie than most of what Hollywood is currently producing.
Office Space 2.0!
Why does this sound suspiciously like the start of Ural Motorcycles...? Oh the hole doesn't fit the bolt, we'll just make a new nonstandard bolt. 🤷♂️
Crashing a machine as a routine part of your production process? Now that sounds like a recipe for success if I've ever heard one.
You know, Dilbert was famous for engineers everywhere flat-out believing that the author had a spy in their organization. This echoes so much of situations I've been dropped into over the years....
in a way he did. he said a lot of his wildest shit was straight out of stories people sent him.
Ian, one of the near-universal things you mention is proof marks. If you haven't, could you do a video on what goes in to the "proof" process? Like, what happens to a specific gun before it receives a proof mark?
If I’m not wrong, either he or TFB TV have done that. It was a factory tour in Serbia or Czechia, I want to say.
I went to the Navy Arms/Blue Sky/Arlington Ordnance storage warehouse in the mid 90s to go through their recent offerings at the time. This was a unique opportunity and mind-blowing considering the amount and variations of imported firearms available. I met Val Forget and his son. They were cordial and a wealth of information.
The Green Mamba is *literally* "Mr. Yuck" poison warning green. 😂
Until it morphs into a 'white' mamba after some usage.... (whereas that snake doesn't even exist). But seeing how bad the gun looks already (let alone how/if it works), maybe you would be better off with a black mamba - it will definitely scare off your opponent: fast and lethal - something one couldn't say of that gun 😆
@@ibubezi7685 A Mamba that sheds its skin! 🐿
All I can think of is a bunch of unskilled labor absolutely stoned listening to "papa loves mambo" on factory speakers making this
I would love a longer video of just reading the minutes from the Mamba meetings
Between the acting and the upload, this is actually one of your finest pieces to date. Thank you!
Very entertaining and a joy to watch. I was interested in firearms from my childhood on and in the pre-internet time only gun books were my source of informations. And where were only few authors publishing material of that subject (at least here in Europa). And on of them was Ian Hogg. And during a language holliday in England I bought an old gun book in one of those many antique book shops in England (which existed at least in the 1990's - I don't know if that is still the case) And that gun book from the 80's had some pictures and short informations about "modern" handguns and that were, amongst few others, the Mamba as top notch modern handgun and milestone of the future to come: High capacity 9x19mm ("the ideal combat/self defence ammunition"), stainless steel, Double Action/Single Action combat pistol! *insert manly male roar here*
Later published gun books never mentioned the Mamba. So the Mamba occupied a bit of my youth and so it's for me extremly cool to watch Ian performing the Mamba-saga and solving the mystery why that "ultimate combat gun" sunk into the realms of the forgotten weapons.
By the way, that old gun book gave a fair amount of text and pictures to the Dardick Pistol. Due to the fact that people like Ian present the history and function of guns some false informations in those gun books were corrected.
And maybe it would be fun to create a TV drama about the Mamba.
Re: the re-snactment of the meeting...
Holy Jesus... I've had program and product managers who would have been throwing pens across the room and peeling the paint off the walls with their language.
Sounds like a bigger ball of suck, fail, and sadness than the L85 design team.
Ah what a wonderful morning, coffee with Ian. I used to drool over these when they were advertised in :="Soldier of Fortune" Magazine. Sure glad I didn't have a chance to buy one. Back then I was looking for a Stainless gun, my gun buddy had an AMT Hardballer and I thought it was very cool, I eventually got one and it was a piece of shit, jammed all the time, the screw in the adjustable sight was too long, when I got it zeroed, the damn firing pin kept falling out because of that screw. I got rid of it and bought an Interarms Silver Cup which was just a bunch of surplus parts on an Interarms lower, the slide was Remington. It was a good basic .45 and served me well on the PD for years.
I'd love to listen to the meeting minutes read by Ian.
It's such chaos
Sounds like a management meeting where I work... all us non managers looking in thinking they're all nuts.
That “chit” 8:17 was perfect.
Maybe Headstamp should publish a copy of those minutes as an example.
Softcover, with suitably whimsical illustrations, just take my money please.
Sounds like most meetings I've been subjected to
Hear me out: Forgotten Weapons Audiobooks!!
Well having been a machinist for over 50yrs,that's poor. Even in commercial engineering,those flaws in the slide wouldn't have got thru an inspection. To have flaws like that in firearm is shocking.
I just looks bad already.... like Soviet bloc or (early) Chinese production.... poor materials, poor machining, poor finishing....
Theater of Ian should make a regular appearance.
If you imagine those meeting minutes in Saffer or Rhodesian accents...
The frustration of working on a project that is so bad can be felt in the quotes from the minutes. You have to feel for the guys involved, even if it was down to them in the first place!
I'm on record saying this was a great video. Thanks. Manufacturing is always under appreciated by those who haven't done it.
Full dramatised version of the meeting please!
That meeting skit had me in stitches 🤣🤣🤣
Had a good chuckle over this. I worked as a design/production engineer. The last company i worked for had exactly these issues. On vendor had issues making a part, called the designer on the drawing & got a verbal change which caused havoc on the production line. Took a couple of years to get that issue filed so I could unmask assembly issues
Thank you for the morning comic relief Ian, it isn't every day that you get to hear the actual "fly on the wall" view of how what should have been a good project, go so horribly wrong. It almost sounded like the Three Stooges started a gun company, and the end results from the whole debacle look very much so. Clearly nobody was working on the same page in the room from which those meeting minutes were from, and not keeping each other in the loop when there were unexpected problems. Sounded like a severe leadership issue was going on as well.
Now i want a full reading of the document like that! No wonder the gun never worked....
POV: you're just impressed at Ian's mad acting skillz.
I was a machine setter for a car parts company in Avon mouth nr Bristol UK and we had a SPC chart and I had to adjust flange for a go-no go gauge. The tooling was pre ww2 and the nut where rounded so I had a hammer in one hand and a micro metre in the other..... Then we had to fill out the chart...... You could not make it up......
At least mamba doesnt cause entire country to lost war like what Type 63 did in Sino-Vietnam war
Oooh! In festive green and red!
Anyone that’s tried building firearms will learn about stacking tolerances.
Fantastic. Anyone who is interested in a career in any kind of manufacturing should read this document, because many times I've seen companies struggling with the same foundational problems - lack of experience (And no desire to bring in anyone to consult), lack of clear decision hierarchy and communication channels, poor or absent record keeping, etc. Every field requires expertise, every field has experts, and it can only be gained through years and years of experience.
Now I crave Ian performing the meeting minutes of Cobray complete with hawaiian shirt, full tint shades and ripping lines of angel dust.
Anyone who sincerely complains about project administration, change tracking, and reporting etc has never had to deal with the consequences of not doing those things 😂😂😂
4:05 tolerance chain...
4:06 intolerance chain...
Holy crap. That reading was like something out of the Goon Show. A miracle any working pistols got made. 😂😂😂
I recently learned that Navy Arms is currently located about 15 minutes from me. Wild
So the perspective buyer of the company was at that meeting?!
Maybe it's been brought up already, but for historical preservation purposes, it would be neat to have Headstamp republish those meeting minutes in some form.
PDF link does not work
Me too
Ian replied to someone else that it should go live approx 0830 Eastern.
It should be up now, sorry
@@ForgottenWeapons Works now, thank you! Fascinating lecture!
I would love an audiobook of the whole Mamba minutes. That excerpt was beautiful.
This is why consensus and collaboration or so important… This is a perfect example of how a really cool idea can go catastrophically wrong. Thanks for highlighting it! It's morbidly hilarious… Lol
the meeting scene is gold
Elbonian service pistol??
Yes, but chambered in 10mm for maximum efficiency.
"Jesus wept" That entire acting bit was good but that in particular struck a chord with me in particular, not sure why.
~07:00- ~08:40 = Comedy Gold
Shades of Les Rogak, Hudson, and so many others who shouldn't have tried what they did and failed because they didn't know how to do it properly.
It's been said to never let an enthusiast design anything because they will be blind to the faults and problems of what they're doing. I can certainly understand this...
I remember when Sarco Inc had some for sale 20 years ago for just under $1k, while you could find used ones for $300. I think the Sarco pistols came with modified Beretta 92 mags, since original mags weren't available or didn't work.
great report, thank you
Clowning on SA when the country was under embargo is kind like of kicking a guy when he's down. The pistol looks like the kind of thing which could have been good, but sadly was not due to mismanagement.
That was a hilarious and informative reenactment!
Very cool. I like these deep dives into older firearms. Reminds me of the old FW.
Thanks for this series. I’ve always found the Mamba fascinating. Maybe it’s the name or the Rhodesian connection. I’m not sure.
I had some dealings with Val Forgett a few years ago and he’s an interesting character as well.
08:35
It's refreshing to hear "Jesus wept" being said without a drunken Scottish accent and outside of a movie review!
I love your meeting reenactment. You should film that whole thing and post it behind a pay-wall
pdf link not working
It will go live in about an hour, sorry. It’s pre scheduled and I’m in a deer blind now.
Thank you for the upload!
I feel like the engineers in the comments have been in this meeting before, at 8:00 AM, staring blankly into the distance, knowing that unraveling this catastrophe will consume your time and sanity for the next {depressingly large number} of months...
Amazing story. Sadly the pdf link 404s
6:45 every management meeting I have ever had the mispleasure of sitting in.
Thanks for the great content.
Story as old as time.
Some entrepeneur-hobbyists pitches with prototype that they think is a complete product because they built a 100 in garge somewhere.
Then you are a-hole engineer not wanting to do the work to get it to production because you can spot 3 serious design flaws and there is a single complete specification of any part.
They look like a old smith an a 1911 mix
That frame and slide set with the proof marks doesn't make sense. Proof marks are only applied after test-firing, thus it must havr been a virtually-complete pistol at some point (grip panels may not have been fitted, but everything else should have been there). Is there a chance it became a part-donor for warranty repairs?
"This is the nicest one I've seen"
Ian you own Chinese mystery pistols that look better made.
Whoever bought the mamba production, he has hired the best salesman ever.
As a fabrication engineer every bit of this upsets and terrifies me.
Having people who know manufacturing oversee the manufacturing... WHAT A NOVEL IDEA ! ^^
Each Mamba video has me quoting kill bill in my brain the whole time...
I am looking at page 469 of "Firearms Developed and Manufactured in Southern Africa 1949-2000" where there is picture of a patch: "MAMBA (image of pistol) SIMPLY THE BEST". Sigh. Last paragraph on page 468: "One of the entrenched clauses in the Mamba contract was that the representative of the Rhodesian parties, Joe Hale, would have absolute control of the technical specifications. This eventually turned out to be the prime cause of the failure of the Mamba project". Sigh again.
That is hilarious. That would have been a great meeting to hear from just outside the room.
These manufacturers probably had long careers in government, with this level of incompetence.
Whereas they had a very sophisticated defence industry - I guess these guys were 'freelancers'... (as in, cowboys).
Ian you should do an audio book reading out the Mamba Minutes. It'll be hysterical.
Interesting video as always. These look very much like the third generation Smith & Wesson pistols with the exception of the 1911 style safety.
The Mamba was born only a year before that, in 1977.
Damn that's a lot of bots