# If an Nimitz class aircraft carrier was found in a cornfield in Kansas...
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-nimitz-class-aircraft-carrier-was-found-in-a-cornfield-in-kansas/608794
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [January 8, 2012, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-nimitz-class-aircraft-carrier-was-found-in-a-cornfield-in-kansas/608794 "2012-01-08T03:51:26Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)
#### Post date: [January 8, 2012, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-nimitz-class-aircraft-carrier-was-found-in-a-cornfield-in-kansas/608794/1 "2012-01-08T03:51:26Z")
…how would the Navy go about getting it back to the nearest ocean? How she got there isn’t important, just assume she’s fully intact and undamaged. Would she be possible to move at all, at least without completely disassembling her? How would sitting out in the open on dry land affect her structural intergrity? Ships do go into drydock on a regular basis, but that’s a controlled enviroment and the ships aren’t sitting directly on dry dirt ground. Could she be made seaworth again?
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### Author:  [@boytyperanma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/boytyperanma)
#### Post date: [January 8, 2012, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-nimitz-class-aircraft-carrier-was-found-in-a-cornfield-in-kansas/608794/2 "2012-01-08T03:54:14Z")
> [@alphaboi867](#):
>
> …how would the Navy go about getting it back to the nearest ocean? How she got there isn’t important, just assume she’s fully intact and undamaged. Would she be possible to move at all, at least without completely disassembling her? How would sitting out in the open on dry land affect her structural intergrity? Ships do go into drydock on a regular basis, but that’s a controlled enviroment and the ships aren’t sitting directly on dry dirt ground. Could she be made seaworth again?
I think they’d just strip it and call it a loss. My guess is the cost of moving it would exceed the cost of building a new one.
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### Author:  [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)
#### Post date: [January 8, 2012, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-nimitz-class-aircraft-carrier-was-found-in-a-cornfield-in-kansas/608794/3 "2012-01-08T04:03:03Z")
I am also fairly certain that people couldn’t move it in any reasonable time-frame. Could God make a rock so heavy he couldn’t lift it? I have no idea but people can build things they can’t move intact once they are done. You could disassemble it and move in theory. People have relocated everything from whole castles to the London Bridge thousands of miles away from where they were originally built. It is just a matter of time, cost, and maintaining the structural integrity of such a piece of engineering.
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### Author:  [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)
#### Post date: [January 8, 2012, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-nimitz-class-aircraft-carrier-was-found-in-a-cornfield-in-kansas/608794/4 "2012-01-08T04:13:09Z")
Maybe they could spend a few decades engineering a series of super-tornadoes to whisk it out of there? Would probably be easier.
And… need answer fast?
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### Author:  [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)
#### Post date: [January 8, 2012, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-nimitz-class-aircraft-carrier-was-found-in-a-cornfield-in-kansas/608794/5 "2012-01-08T04:36:01Z")
It would be scrapped. It’s far too big to move, plus there’s really no way it would be “undamaged” unless it’s sitting in some kind of fairly sophisticated dockyard cradle. Even sitting in/on the dirt would seriously damage the structural integrity of the ship.
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### Author:  [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)
#### Post date: [January 8, 2012, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-nimitz-class-aircraft-carrier-was-found-in-a-cornfield-in-kansas/608794/6 "2012-01-08T04:36:24Z")
Dig a canal under it to the Gulf of Mexico. Easy peasy.
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### Author:  [@appleciders](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/appleciders)
#### Post date: [January 8, 2012, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-nimitz-class-aircraft-carrier-was-found-in-a-cornfield-in-kansas/608794/7 "2012-01-08T04:46:15Z")
Simply sitting in the dirt would probably be enough to snap the keel. These ships are designed very carefully to be supported by the water that surrounds them, and to simply be balanced on the keel would probably cause it to snap. Remember in _Titanic_ when the keel snapped simply from being out of the water? That would happen. Even worse, carriers have a pretty pronounced V-shape cross-section, so it would certainly be lying on its side, a position it was not designed for and probably couldn’t maintain. You’d have some extremely critical welds simply ripped out of position, and the whole thing would be ruined. You _might_ be able to reuse some of the essentials (maybe the radar tower, and some structures from the flight deck) in a refit of an existing ship or as part of a replacement, but most of the body would be scrapped.
Even if she were miraculously undamaged, no, there’s not a realistic way to move a single object that large over that distance. I guess you could jack it up, then move the jacks on wheels, and it’s a fairly straight and level shot from Kansas to the Mississippi, but even a moderate curve in the freeway would probably ruin your day, even assuming that you didn’t do tens of millions of dollars worth of damage to the freeway itself from the weight of the thing.
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### Author:  [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)
#### Post date: [January 8, 2012, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-nimitz-class-aircraft-carrier-was-found-in-a-cornfield-in-kansas/608794/8 "2012-01-08T04:46:33Z")
I’d suggest putting on a stern face and telling whoever put it there that it’s not nice to play with other people’s property without asking and they have to put it back where they found it.
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### Author:  [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)
#### Post date: [January 8, 2012, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-nimitz-class-aircraft-carrier-was-found-in-a-cornfield-in-kansas/608794/9 "2012-01-08T04:49:22Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#):
>
> I’d suggest putting on a stern face and telling whoever put it there that it’s not nice to play with other people’s property without asking and they have to put it back where they found it.
No ,it’s a _good_ thing it’s there.
A _very_ good thing.
Don’t we all agree it’s a good thing?
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### Author:  [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)
#### Post date: [January 8, 2012, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-nimitz-class-aircraft-carrier-was-found-in-a-cornfield-in-kansas/608794/10 "2012-01-08T05:19:48Z")
> [@runner pat](#):
>
> No ,it’s a _good_ thing it’s there.
>
> A _very_ good thing.
>
> Don’t we all agree it’s a good thing?
😃
Sure is hot.
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### Author:  [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)
#### Post date: [January 8, 2012, 6:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-nimitz-class-aircraft-carrier-was-found-in-a-cornfield-in-kansas/608794/11 "2012-01-08T06:52:59Z")
Open a museum.
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### Author:  [@Mr.Excellent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Excellent)
#### Post date: [January 8, 2012, 7:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-nimitz-class-aircraft-carrier-was-found-in-a-cornfield-in-kansas/608794/12 "2012-01-08T07:09:26Z")
> [@runner pat](#):
>
> No ,it’s a _good_ thing it’s there.
>
> A _very_ good thing.
>
> Don’t we all agree it’s a good thing?
It’s good that you wished the Nimitz into the cornfield, son!
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### Author:  [@bengangmo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bengangmo)
#### Post date: [January 8, 2012, 7:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-nimitz-class-aircraft-carrier-was-found-in-a-cornfield-in-kansas/608794/13 "2012-01-08T07:18:06Z")
Fill it up with animals and then wait for it to rain?
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### Author:  [@Foggy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Foggy)
#### Post date: [January 8, 2012, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-nimitz-class-aircraft-carrier-was-found-in-a-cornfield-in-kansas/608794/14 "2012-01-08T07:29:40Z")
> [@alphaboi867](#):
>
> …how would the Navy go about getting it back to the nearest ocean? How she got there isn’t important, just assume she’s fully intact and undamaged. Would she be possible to move at all, at least without completely disassembling her? How would sitting out in the open on dry land affect her structural intergrity? Ships do go into drydock on a regular basis, but that’s a controlled enviroment and the ships aren’t sitting directly on dry dirt ground. Could she be made seaworth again?
Are you watching old episodes of seaQuest DSV?
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### Author:  [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)
#### Post date: [January 8, 2012, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-nimitz-class-aircraft-carrier-was-found-in-a-cornfield-in-kansas/608794/15 "2012-01-08T11:47:47Z")
Pump extra water into the oceans (or melt some more glaciers) until the sea level rises enough to flood the cornfield, then float it out.
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### Author:  [@Noone\_Special](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Noone_Special)
#### Post date: [January 8, 2012, 11:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-nimitz-class-aircraft-carrier-was-found-in-a-cornfield-in-kansas/608794/16 "2012-01-08T11:52:07Z")
Find out how it got there in the first place. Follow the same procedure to move it once again.
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### Author:  [@OldOlds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldOlds)
#### Post date: [January 8, 2012, 12:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-nimitz-class-aircraft-carrier-was-found-in-a-cornfield-in-kansas/608794/17 "2012-01-08T12:06:21Z")
> [@bengangmo](#):
>
> Fill it up with animals and then wait for it to rain?
When I first read that, I thought it said “Fill it up with admirals and then wait for it to rain?”
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### Author:  [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)
#### Post date: [January 8, 2012, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-nimitz-class-aircraft-carrier-was-found-in-a-cornfield-in-kansas/608794/18 "2012-01-08T13:48:42Z")
> [@appleciders](#):
>
> Even if she were miraculously undamaged, no, there’s not a realistic way to move a single object that large over that distance. .
Thats not true. You build an eathern berm around it but say X times as long as the ship. Flood it water. Move to end. Drain. Shift berm dirt around until vessel is at the back again. Flood, move forward. Rinse, lather repeat. How far is it to a river big enough to float it? It might get ridiculously pricey fast depending on distance but its doable.
Actually, you wouldnt even have to drain it. You could keep it floating and work the berm system more like a series of locks.
I actually saw a version of the OP scenario this summer. I think it was in Oklahoma driving along the major high way in flatish desert country. All of a sudden along side the road is a frickin large WW2 Sub. WTF? How did that get there?
Shortly there after we crossed a large river. So, it looks to me like they floated it up the river. I don’t know if they used mechanical devices to move it or a flooding berm system.
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### Author:  [@Uber\_the\_Goober](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uber_the_Goober)
#### Post date: [January 8, 2012, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-nimitz-class-aircraft-carrier-was-found-in-a-cornfield-in-kansas/608794/19 "2012-01-08T13:52:48Z")
> [@billfish678](#):
>
> \
>
> I actually saw a version of the OP scenario this summer. I think it was in Oklahoma driving along the major high way in flatish desert country. All of a sudden along side the road is a frickin large WW2 Sub. WTF? How did that get there?
>
> Shortly there after we crossed a large river. So, it looks to me like they floated it up the river. I don’t know if they used mechanical devices to move it or a flooding berm system.
Where!!! I want to google map this 🙂
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### Author:  [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)
#### Post date: [January 8, 2012, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-nimitz-class-aircraft-carrier-was-found-in-a-cornfield-in-kansas/608794/20 "2012-01-08T14:00:40Z")
I think this is the place: You’ll have to do a little research to find its exact location on google earth.
[http://www.ussbatfish.com/](http://www.ussbatfish.com/)
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