It was never built, but it was drawn…in bits and pieces. Like many devices, inventions, and weapons of war, Leonardo Da Vinci dreamed it, sketched it, and left it for history to figure out. For a submarine, there are two hints within his codex…in the Atlanticus and Paris manuscripts…
Leonardo DaVinci knew full well the power undersea weapons could wield. A fleet of submarines however crude and simple, would be virtually unstoppable. Any contemporary naval force would have no defense against a weapon, or weapons, that could sneak from under the waves and drill holes in the bottoms of their ships, sending a whole fleets to the seabed. Consequently, Leonardo would not consider making this invention accessible, fearing the devices of evil men who would surreptitiously make war upon a virtually defenseless advisory to further their wicked motives. This, however, did not stop him from playing with the idea, and planting scribbled seeds within the doodles.
There are two distinct designs within his work that have been surmised to be underwater vessels…nothing positively defined, but given DaVinci’s writings, he would not assist “evil men” in committing assassination at the bottom of the sea but he was thinking about it and had the mechanics pretty much worked out on paper. Two separate “designs” have been identified. The first, which dates from about 1487 to 1490 A.D. shows what looks to be a small midget submarine, with a conning tower, a hatch, and the head of the operator sticking out (or perhaps an iron ring to pull the hatch open). There is nothing on the drawing suggesting propulsion (which would have been man powered) and no indication on how it would dive beneath the surface of the sea. That’s not surprising as he had already worked that out in other sketches, scribbled among other manuscripts. Sinking the submarine as well as lifting it back up to the surface, propulsion via some sort of “fin” device, these were already solved and simply needed to be built along with the submerging boat, and installed.
Next, he created another more detailed plan, albeit in pieces, that has to be “put together” for a full picture of the vessel. It’s shaped like a small boat, not to float, but to ride awash is the water. It has two cloth “ballast tanks” strapped along the top, and two paddles in the rear that look like the tails of a fish. The operator, lying in a prone position inside the craft, would use his feet to “peddle” fish tails which are connected to a series of gears. The submariner was operating the boat submerged in water himself wearing the medieval equivalent of swimming goggles to see while under the sea. Lastly, he had control of the rudder and forward diving planes in the form of operating handles in the front of the craft. Again, this was never built…it’s simply a design pieced together from a broken up drawing and just recently reconstructed as a scale model, theorizing what this craft might have looked like…had it been constructed by “evil men”…
