Fabrica de Itajuba's first SMG prototypes - Part 4

This fourth assessment of the first 9x19mm submachine guns to come out of Brazilian Army’s — and IMBEL’s, after 1975– Fábrica de Itajubá (Itajubá Factory) will be somewhat of a flashback to the early 1970s. I have skipped the actual timeline back because the weapons involved here were quite different from the previously-described models of the mid-to-late seventies. It just so happened that in 1971 the guys at the facility’s Oficina de Protótipos (Prototypes Workshop) appeared to have given a better look at Israel’s Uzi buzzgun and decided to come out with a weapon with the same magazine-in-central-pistol-grip configuration.

The first prototype was designated FI Modelo 1971 (aka CE-971), an entirely conventional blowback-operated SMG that fired from the open bolt position and featured a cylindrical receiver and an involving bolt with a fixed striker. The fixed (reciprocating) cocking piece was a small cylindrical job that projected upward at about 45 degrees to the left, while the ejection window was to the right at about the same angle.

A small rectangular lower receiver housed the firing mechanism and possessed a lookalike Uzi selector switch with the settings “S”, “R”, and “A” in a back-to-front sequence on the left side, while the magazine catch on the lower pistol grip was no less inspired. Yes, a safety lever was also present at the rear of the pistol grip… “Shalom!” The forward end of the gun received a wooden handguard of cylindrical shape, a foldable tubular stock allowing the reduction of the overall length from 690 to 430mm (the barrel was 250mm long). Weight? About 3.5kg.