Updated: August 25, 2023

Submitted by Bill Akins on 4/26/04

This items is available through Bill, and the asking reserve price is $3,000.

Here's many pics and the story of my submarine from the 1966 movie Destination Inner Space as far as what I know.

Several years ago my wife mentioned to me that she saw an ad in the paper that had a two man wet submarine for sale. I have always been interested in submarines from the earliest types on. My father was a submariner in WW2. I am also a diver. I called the number and spoke to a Mr. Mcfarland of Mcfarland appliances in Land O' Lakes, Fl. and he told me to come over and see it. His appliance business was just a few miles from where I lived and he had the sub in a back building on two sawhorses. While I was looking the sub over Mr. Mcfarland told me the person he bought the sub from had told him it had been in a movie years earlier but he didn't know which one. Mr. Mcfarland was in his middle seventies and was retiring from diving. He told me he had used the sub for loberstering in key west several times. We made a deal and I took the sub home and hung it from my garage rafters for several years and never got the chance to use it.

One day my cousin Steve called me and told me to turn on the t.v. to channel 10 that there was a movie on and he swore the sub on the movie looked just like mine. I turned on the TV and there it was. I couldn't believe it. Except for the missing propulsion unit that had been replaced at some later date by a rudder and a bracket on the nose that was a quick release topside tow line, and the passenger's missing wind /watershield, it was exactly like my submarine, even the same color.

I tried to reach Mr. Mcfarland again to see if he could remember and tell me who he had bought the sub from many years earlier, but he and his wife were on vacation and I never tried to reach him again. That was about a year and a half ago. I am going to try to reach him again and hope he is still alive.

I researched the movie on the net and found out the property master for the movie had died in 1998. Also both actors who rode in the sub in the movie are deceased. The movie was produced by United. I have tried to find out what happened to United but their trail runs cold after 1968 and I have been unable to find out whether some other company bought them out or what exactly happened to them so I haven't been able to locate anyone who could document the sub as being in the movie for me.

I will continue to try but it has been 38 years and time is marching on and starting to dim things so it may be that the only way I can document my sub is by photos of it today compared with photos of it in the movie in 1966. Unless by some chance I can get some info from Mr. Mcfarland if he still lives.

I have gone over the sub carefully and I see brackets and things that match the one in the movie exactly. I am convinced this is the same sub. The dive planes, shape, fin, even a remnant of a rear passenger windshield bracket is exactly the same as the one in the movie.

Take a look at the included photos and see for yourself.

Here's a bunch of photos of my sub, both from the 1966 movie and from today in 2004. Sometime during the last 38 years someone removed the original propulsion unit and replaced it with a rudder and also put a quick release bracket on the nose so the sub could be towed from a boat topside. Otherwise the sub is in remarkable condition.

Anyone interested please contact Bill at the following:

Bill Akins Hudson, Florida. United States. phone ( 727 ) 819-8352

E-Mail lakins1@tampabay.rr.com