Could Leonardo da Vinci's tank design have worked?

[BrainGlutton]

I've seen pictures of it before -- conical-armored roof or shell on wheels, mouths of small cannon radiating out along the waist all around -- and always wondered, what was he thinking? If the shell is thick enough to be cannonball-proof, how can you get enough men or horses inside to move it at all? And putting them outside the shell to draw it defeats the purpose, if that were safe you wouldn't need the tank.

But apparently he did have a way in mind to move it (http://www.leonardo-da-vinci-biography.com/da-vinci-invention-tank.html) -- four men inside turning a hand-cranked mechanism. (Renaissance Woodpunk!) This page says there was a successful test, in getting the thing to move, but does not say it was ever tested against fire.

Would this have been practical for use in war? Or would it still, if tough enough to be worthwhile, have been too heavy to move?

[BrainGlutton]

Here's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DaVinciTankAtAmboise.jpeg) a reconstruction of the tank -- the shell, at least.

As for the mechanism, apparently Leonardo designed it to fail, but it works just right if you reverse the gears from the way he drew them. (http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/12/13/1039656218782.html) One of his little precautions.

[mac_bolan00]

many of those designs are not intended to be practical and realizable --even in the distant future. their value is mainly essaying one's ideas for posterity and possible to await a genius who could make a workable design. if leonardo was as smart as advertised, he would know in his gut gut that his flying machine (as drawn) wouldn't work.

leonardo's tank may very well be a mobile bunker or a self-propelled gun. it needs external drive to haul it. once positioned strategically, it serves as a bunker.

[cornflakes]

Nope, an Abrams would still win, hands down.

:D

[mac_bolan00]

ah, the abrams. american depleted uranium and german smoothbore cannon.

[notsoheavyd3]

Here's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DaVinciTankAtAmboise.jpeg) a reconstruction of the tank -- the shell, at least.

As for the mechanism, apparently Leonardo designed it to fail, but it works just right if you reverse the gears from the way he drew them. (http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/12/13/1039656218782.html) One of his little precautions.

I honestly have a hard time taking the author's point of view seriously. I mean he drew it wrong to "protect" it yet if you try to build the thing you can quickly see the right way to put in the gears? That makes no sense. (How was Leo protecting anything if by building it you can quickly figure out the right way? That's no protection at all.) Plus the fact that the design they ended up with was useless in a field or anywhere there were rocks. (You could see just how easily that thing would get jammed up on some rocks on uneven terrain.) I'm also guessing reloading one of the canons would be a bit of a problem. (Since you'd have to stop to do it.)

[Enright3]

Hey, it worked just fine in Assassin's Creed Brotherhood (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Txb6haeNvgc). FF to 9:00 minutes in to see it.

[Cheesesteak]

I mean he drew it wrong to "protect" it yet if you try to build the thing you can quickly see the right way to put in the gears? That makes no sense. People who have the benefit of 500 years worth of mechanical engineering advances can quickly see the right way to fix it. People of Leonardo's time would see this as the world's most advanced engineering, and may simply not have the knowledge to suss out what is wrong with the design.

[BrainGlutton]

I honestly have a hard time taking the author's point of view seriously. I mean he drew it wrong to "protect" it yet if you try to build the thing you can quickly see the right way to put in the gears? That makes no sense.

Dude, we're talking about a guy who kept his notes secret by writing them backwards. :rolleyes: He was a genius in many fields, just not cryptography.

[Telperion]

People of Leonardo's time would see this as the world's most advanced engineering, and may simply not have the knowledge to suss out what is wrong with the design.

Hardly. Mechanical clocks had already been around for centuries by Leonardo's days. In fact, the earliest pocket watches were constructed in Nuremberg during his lifetime.

[BrainGlutton]

Look, let's take the problem of making a working hand-crank mechanism as solved. Given that, still, is this tank practical? Could it have usefully been deployed on a battlefield in Leonardo's time? Four men inside can move it, that's a given, but how fast? And how much enemy fire can the hull take? And can the crew use the tank's own cannons effectively? Can they crank and fire at the same time?

[notsoheavyd3]

Hardly. Mechanical clocks had already been around for centuries by Leonardo's days. In fact, the earliest pocket watches were constructed in Nuremberg during his lifetime.

Well that and the fact gears had been around for centuries and it only took a small change to get it working. (As you say, the fact people could build pocket watches with loads of gears suggest they were pretty familiar with gears and would have gotten it working.) The simply answer is that Leo drew it up but never really tested it and simply made a mistake.

[notsoheavyd3]

Look, let's take the problem of making a working hand-crank mechanism as solved. Given that, still, is this tank practical? Could it have usefully been deployed on a battlefield in Leonardo's time? Four men inside can move it, that's a given, but how fast? And how much enemy fire can the hull take? And can the crew use the tank's own cannons effectively? Can they crank and fire at the same time?

I'm going with a flat out no. It has so little ground clearance it's only going to work on well maintained roads. (Since rocks and gulleys would stop that thing. Even then with only 4 people power it the thing would be fairly slow.) Furthermore at least as pictured the visibility is really bad. (I mean there's no peep holes actually near the canons so you could aim them effectively.) Oh that and the fact the canons would have been match locks. So you need a burning match inside that cramped space and you'd need to touch it to the lock to fire the canon. (You'd pretty much have to stop.) Oh I'm also thinking that the idea isn't that you'd fire in all directions at once. I'm guessing the idea with all the canons is that they'd be pre-loaded so to fire your next shot you'd turn to have a preloaded canon aimed at your target. (Given how little room there must have been in it I figure you probably can't reload while actually on a mission. So instead you'd fire one canon, then turn toward the target and fire again.) Of course there's also the issue those canons are small and low to the ground so the range on them is probably awful.

Of course the big wonder is what would a full sized canon aimed straight at it do. (Even with that sloped armor I wouldn't want to be in it if a canon ball hit it.)

[Boyo Jim]

Here's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DaVinciTankAtAmboise.jpeg) a reconstruction of the tank -- the shell, at least.

As for the mechanism, apparently [url=http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/12/13/1039656218782.html]Leonardo designed it to fail ...

So basically, he was a con artist.

[BrainGlutton]

So basically, he was a con artist.

[shrug] I've seen nothing to indicate he ever sold the tank design, or even promised it, to anyone.

[handsomeharry]

[QUOTE=BrainGlutton;14443369
As for the mechanism, apparently Leonardo designed it to fail, but it works just right if you reverse the gears from the way he drew them. (http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/12/13/1039656218782.html) One of his little precautions.[/QUOTE]

Not a precaution-you were looking at the negative.

hh

[Dissonance]

As for the mechanism, apparently Leonardo designed it to fail, but it works just right if you reverse the gears from the way he drew them. (http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/12/13/1039656218782.html) One of his little precautions.I'm not sure I'd seriously take Mr. Mosley as a reliable source. He rather fancifully describes DaVinci as Leonardo da Vinci inserted a series of deliberate flaws into his inventions, perhaps to prevent their being put to military use, according to researchers for a new television series.

"He was a gay, vegetarian pacifist and the paradox is that he then goes and works for warlords. He was very aware that they might try to put his inventions to military use, Mr Mosley said."
DaVinci sold his services as a military engineer building fortifications and upgrading existing ones; of course he was aware that his work was being put to military use, he was the one doing it. I'm not sure where the crew manning the guns was supposed to be, his sketch on the left of the bottom half of the tank has the wheels and gear taking up all of the space on the bottom. With those wheels it would be useless on anything but entirely flat, even terrain.

[Francis Vaughan]

I tend to think that people are taking this particular pair of sketches far too seriously. They strike me more as little more than idle doodles that Leo penned feeling bored one lazy day. The idea that they represent carefully considered engineering design is fanciful. They remind me more of the sort of doodlings I would have done as a kid bored in class. Leo was a good draftsman, so even his doodlings look good. (And vastly better than I could have done at any age.) He probably looked at the drawings later, and would have seen the issue of the gears and thought - "Oh yeah, of course" and just ignored it, because the whole thing simply wasn't important.

[njtt]

If the shell is thick enough to be cannonball-proof, how can you get enough men or horses inside to move it at all?

Even if it isn't cannonball-proof, it could still be proof against arrows, spears, musket fire, etc., and thus still pretty useful. Cannons, in Leonardo's time, were expensive and hard to aim, so they would not have been everywhere in every battle.

[Sage Rat]

Leonardo made a living by making military hardware. If he thought the idea would be practical in any sense, he would have had it built and made.

Considering that what he designed would be far less effective than a group of ten men, each with their own light cannon on its own set of wheels, the best you can say about it is that it shows that Leonardo had some vague inkling that there would be merit to going in the direction of developing a tank before there was such a thing as a tank. But what he drew is probably the best general concept that could be made during his time, with the materials science that they possessed and the level of precision that could be expected. If he had access to modern manufacturing techniques, materials, and engines, he might well have started the R&D towards creating something practical, but as was I'm sure he understood that most of his designs were unfeasible and not worth pursuing.

[Quercus]

Four men inside can move it, that's a given, but how fast? I'm not even sure that's a given. According to Wiki, the first WWI tanks were developed on engines of 45- 75 horsepower, and the first actual combat tanks had 105 hp engines. Now, Leonardo's design was lighter than the Mark I, but not 100 times lighter I don't think. And of course, Leonardo didn't have treads; he had wheels which take even more power to get through mud.

[BrainGlutton]

I'm not even sure that's a given. According to Wiki, the first WWI tanks were developed on engines of 45- 75 horsepower, and the first actual combat tanks had 105 hp engines. Now, Leonardo's design was lighter than the Mark I, but not 100 times lighter I don't think. And of course, Leonardo didn't have treads; he had wheels which take even more power to get through mud.

Well, in this test (http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/doing-davinci-tank-test.html) four guys could move it. (And shoot the guns effectively, too.) But, they were rolling over pavement, and I don't know of what they made the shell or how tough it is.

[BrainGlutton]

Of course, it would be different if the tank were moving on a treadmill.

[BrainGlutton]

Well, in this test (http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/doing-davinci-tank-test.html) four guys could move it. (And shoot the guns effectively, too.) But, they were rolling over pavement, and I don't know of what they made the shell or how tough it is.

Also, curiously:

1) They test firing the guns.

2) They test moving the tank with muscle-power.

3) They don't test the durability of the tank's hull by firing anything at it. That's a pretty important thing to know WRT a tank.