# Is there a halfway-possible way for a warship to be salvagable, 30 years after sinking? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 23, 2014, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-halfway-possible-way-for-a-warship-to-be-salvagable-30-years-after-sinking/686747 "2014-04-23T05:25:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![SpyOne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/82dd89/32.png) [@SpyOne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpyOne)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2014, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-halfway-possible-way-for-a-warship-to-be-salvagable-30-years-after-sinking/686747/41 "2014-04-27T14:01:53Z")
I had heard, years ago, of a plan to try and salvage a car that was in the cargo hold of SS Andria Doria. The salvagers said that the conditions (depth, temperature) made it likely that the car hadn’t rusted at all. However a quick check of the wikipedia entry show the ship itself has not fared well, so that idea for how a ship might remain in decent shape underwater for 30 years appears dead. For an interesting way to raise a sunken vessel, try filling it with ping pong balls. Mythbusters have shown it can work. I first heard of this in a story that a guy wanted a patent on the process, and was denied because the relevant authority had remembered seeing it in an old Donald Duck comic. > [@nevadaexile](#): > > As someone stated earlier there were only 4 Iowa class battleships ever constructed and all are intact and are being used as floating museums. There 6 commissioned , but plans for two were scrapped as WWII had ended and the need for the _ **Kentucky** _ and the _ **Illinois** _ was rendered irrelevant. Construction had begun on Kentucky, at least. When USS Wisconsin collided with a destroyer in 1956, the repair was expedited by taking a 68 foot section of Kentucky’s bow and using it to replace Wisconsin’s damaged bow. Because the transplant didn’t match perfectly, Wisconsin is actually longer than her sisters by 16 feet. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2014, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-halfway-possible-way-for-a-warship-to-be-salvagable-30-years-after-sinking/686747/42 "2014-04-27T15:08:37Z")
> [@NagaSadow](#): > > Hello! > Not a battleship but > German submarine [Wilhelm Bauer (former U-2540)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_submarine_Wilhelm_Bauer) was sunk in 1945, raised in 1957 and put back into service in 1960. However, it was scuttled off Flensburg Firth which is actually quite shallow. Sinking an Iowa class battleship in the Atlantic is going to be a different matter. ---
**Author:** ![casdave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c6cbf5/32.png) [@casdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/casdave)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2014, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-halfway-possible-way-for-a-warship-to-be-salvagable-30-years-after-sinking/686747/43 "2014-04-27T15:51:08Z")
I think a scenario where the ship is retired to some other role - like floating oil jetty is a more useful option. Maybe you can use HMS Warrior or SS Great Britain as an idea. > **[HMS Warrior (1860)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Warrior_(1860))** > > HMS Warrior is a 40-gun steam-powered armoured frigate\[Note 1\] built for the Royal Navy in 1859–1861. She was the name ship of the Warrior-class ironclads. Warrior and her sister ship HMS Black Prince were the first armour-plated, iron-hulled warships, and were built in response to France's launching in 1859 of the first ocean-going ironclad warship, the wooden-hulled Gloire. Warrior conducted a publicity tour of Great Britain in 1863 and spent her active career with the Channel Squadron. Obs... > **[SS Great Britain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Great_Britain)** > > SS Great Britain is a museum ship and former passenger steamship that was advanced for her time. She was the largest passenger ship in the world from 1845 to 1854. She was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806–1859), for the Great Western Steamship Company's transatlantic service between Bristol and New York City. While other ships had been built of iron or equipped with a screw propeller, Great Britain was the first to combine these features in a large ocean-going ship. She was the first... Both ships were retired, partly stripped down and their history largely forgotten, and then they were rediscovered and restored. You could imagine an Iowa class battleship being moored up and pretty much forgotten and left largely intact or even was used as a floating test platform for some new weapon control system - this has changed her profile significantly so she does not have the romantic old lines, then imagine its a sister ship to one that is much more famous that is being used as a floating museum. That is why she gets forgotten. Your forgotten Iowa class battleship has some new technology but is deemed as out of date with its huge guns(perhaps even militarily unfashionable), however its the very combination of those guns and the super control system that makes her the only vessel in the world that is capable of your mission. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2014, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-halfway-possible-way-for-a-warship-to-be-salvagable-30-years-after-sinking/686747/44 "2014-04-27T18:11:15Z")
> [@zoid](#): > > I remember getting up at 6:00 am to watch that in the 80’s. > Good times 😃 That they were. There was a lot of editing done from Space Battleship Yamato to Starblazers we were too young to catch on to. The doctor wasn’t ‘happy’ all the time and drinking ‘spring water’, he was constantly drunk on sake. The sexual content is removed, a good part of the WWII references are removed (including the entire scene in episode 2 of the _Yamato_ being sunk by American aircraft while on its suicide mission to Okinawa) and the ship is renamed the _Argo_ in Starblazers, the significance of _Yamato_ being lost on an audience of American children; [Yamato](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamato_people) refers to the entire Japanese people as a race. Though the [magazine explosion](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/Yamato_explosion.jpg) as the _Yamato_ sank makes the far fetched idea of turning it into a space battleship even more implausible. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-halfway-possible-way-for-a-warship-to-be-salvagable-30-years-after-sinking/686747/45 "2014-04-28T02:25:12Z")
> [@SpyOne](#): > > For an interesting way to raise a sunken vessel, try filling it with ping pong balls. Mythbusters have shown it can work. I first heard of this in a story that a guy wanted a patent on the process, and was denied because the relevant authority had remembered seeing it in an old Donald Duck comic. That doesn’t sound right. I think Fiction doesn’t normally count as prior art. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-halfway-possible-way-for-a-warship-to-be-salvagable-30-years-after-sinking/686747/46 "2014-04-28T03:08:50Z")
> [@SpyOne](#): > > For an interesting way to raise a sunken vessel, try filling it with ping pong balls. Mythbusters have shown it can work. In shallow water. In deep enough water the balls will implode and lose their air. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-halfway-possible-way-for-a-warship-to-be-salvagable-30-years-after-sinking/686747.md?page=2)