HACKENSACK, N.J. (AP) --

A group of military veterans in New Jersey is desperately trying to save a World War II submarine.

The Navy gave the U.S.S. Ling to the group of veterans, who wanted to use it for a naval museum, The New York Times (http://nyti.ms/2svoiIF ) reported. The Borg family, which owned The Record newspaper, offered to help the veterans with the project, as the submarine sat near their headquarters along the Hackensack River.

Thousands of tourists visited the museum over the years, but the submarine eventually became trapped in muck when the river filled with silt, and it was later damaged by Superstorm Sandy in October 2012.

The Borg family is now planning to redevelop the 20-acre (8-hectare) property and wants the submarine moved.

"It's tragic - it's rusting through in a number of places," said a former chairman of The Record, Malcolm Borg. "It would take a lot of permits to get that boat out of there. It's stuck in the mud."

But no one seems to know what to do with it, or even how to move it.

Water levels are too shallow to move the vessel, and government officials probably won't dredge the Hackensack River again, according to Les Altschuler, vice president of the Submarine Memorial Association.

The sub could be extracted out of the muck with a flotation device called a cofferdam, but the vets would still need to find a place to relocate the sub, Altschuler added.

"We're caught between a rock and a hard place," he said.

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