It should be noted that true (fully-blown) machine pistols (automatic pistol turned into full-automatic) will naturally have this layout, see for example: Notice while in inter-war years standard layout of sub-machine gun (introduced by MP18) was that whole moving parts are all time beyond barrel, but layout with mass wrapped around barrel was commonly found in automatic pistols of that era (FN 1910 just for example). “that Germans were during WWII developing a compact SMG in same layout as vz.23 series” The South African government required the addition of an extra safety device to prevent runaway firing with underpowered ammunition, and a number of details evolved through production, most notably the stock locking system. Eventually a total of about 10,000 were made between the two countries, making this one of the most common guns of its type made in that time and place. This led to an arrangement with a company called Maxim Parabellum to produce it in South Africa under the name Kommando. It uses unmodified Uzi magazines, and that along with it’s Uzi-like construction and styling led to one of its nicknames, the Rhuzi (the others were alternate interpretations of the LDP initials Land Defense Pistol and Lots of Dead People).Ībout one thousand LDP carbines were made in Rhodesia, and were also sold in neighboring South Africa. The gun is a quite simple design, a tube-receiver, open bolt gun with a fixed firing pin and an Uzi-type bolt which telescopes forward over the barrel.
It was manufactured by a company called Lacoste Engineering, and financed by a man named Hubert Ponter – and those initials were the name of the initial production version of the gun LDP. The Kommando was a semiauto SMG-type carbine designed by Alex du Plessis in Salisbury Rhodesia in the late 1970s.