Hi There!

What Type of Submarine is the Polar Tang?

So the first thing I wanted to determine, is what type of Submarine The Polar Tang is in the first place. I looked into both diesel-electric and nuclear powered subs. While diesel-electric engines are smaller and would allow for more space in the Tang, I didn't feel that it could accommodate for the canonical speed of the Tang. Not to mention diesel-electric engines aren't designed for long journeys while nuclear engines are. As a nuclear sub, The Polar Tang would have more speed, attack capabilities, stealth, and the ability to go underway for longer stints.

Once I determined that The Polar Tang was a nuclear submarine, I started looking into the build and interior of nuclear subs. I didn't base the interior design for the Tang off any one sub, but some of my major references were the HMS Sceptre, the HMS Vigilant, the Swedish A-11A, and the American NR-1. (I also took quite a bit of information from Rick Campbell's site).

I particularly liked the NR-1 design as a starting point since it was the smallest nuclear sub the US built and it held a crew about half the size of the Heart Pirates. It was also a spy vessel and therefore had a similar level of stealth that the Tang seems to have.

How big is the Polar Tang?

This is a question that has bothered me for a long time. I feel like most people either grossly over or under estimate the size of the Polar Tang so, to try to solve this mystery I went through and collected as many screen caps as I could find that had the Tang next to other vessels (namely the Thousand Sunny) to compare it's size.

And I came to one conclusion: The Polar Tang and The Thousand Sunny are roughly the same size.

Oda has already given a fully layout of the Sunny (if you'd like to see that I have it in pdf form here). So keeping that in mind, when drawing up the floorplans/blueprints, I tried to make sure that the Polar Tang wasn't any larger than the Sunny.

Additional References and Info about the interior design of The Polar Tang

So I wanted to include some miscellaneous information that I may not have included in the main images of the layout as well as some reference photos for what some of the interior might look like to give people a better idea.

Intercoms

The entire sub is outfitted with an intercom system. There are intercoms in every room, hallway, and in several sections of the engineering deck. These intercoms can be used to call specific rooms or decks as well as to make ship wide announcement and alerts. Every intercom can both send and receive messages and alert sounds.

Crew Quarters and Bathrooms/Showers

The crew Quarters and bathrooms/showers are co-ed (I say co-ed, but I like to think that Ikkaku is the only female Heart Pirate because I find it amusing and she's the only female crew member we canonically know of). For a better idea of what the crew's bunks look like, I was thinking something like these:

I mentioned above that the bathrooms are also co-ed and shared (yes this includes Law, he doesn't have a private bathroom or shower, just a sink vanity. A shower would take up too much space imo). I do think that (assuming Ikkaku is the only woman on the crew) Ikkaku would have a designated shower stall that none of the guys use, to insure her privacy and a clean shower. (look it's me cramming in my own hcs lol)

Helm Controls

I also wanted to include a reference photo for the Helm control since we only get to see the control on the Tang from one perspective with Hakugan at the Helm.

Engineering Deck

While the engineering deck doesn't have rooms, it is still a walk-able space, but is very tight with some spaces only being accessible if you were to crawl into them to work on those sections of the engine. Similar to the Galley, the engineering deck would have a fail safe system in case of a fire. The deck is split into sections separated by fire doors. If a fire is detected, an alert will sound (accompanied by flashing lights) and crewmen will have a finite amount of time to vacate the area before the fire door seal it off and suck all the oxygen out to extinguish the fire and prevent an explosion

For more real life photos of Nuclear Submarine interior spaces I have a link to a google docs folder here (because tumblr limits how many photos you can have on one post). For more reference screencaps of The Polar Tang, I've put them all in another google docs folder here.