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NEW YORK (CBS/AP) ― A Navy-backed dredging operation to clear bottom mud from around the USS Intrepid was reported complete and the high-powered tugboats were ready, but officials were silent on Thursday on a possible second try to move the historic aircraft carrier from its Hudson River mooring to a New Jersey dry dock for a two-year overhaul.

Officials indicated earlier that a second effort before winter sets in was a certainty. Speculation centered on Dec. 8, when tides would be most favorable. Suzanne Halpin, a spokeswoman for the floating military museum, said Thursday she had "nothing to announce" concerning a timetable.

The 36,000-ton World War II relic, a popular military and space museum for the past two decades, was to have been moved on Nov. 6, but that plan, arranged with much public fanfare, was called off after the ship's rudder and four 15-foot propellers dug into the mud, thwarting efforts by tugboats to dislodge it.

After that effort failed -- despite being timed to the year's highest tide -- the Navy stepped in, hiring a private contractor to clear mud from the ship's stern and starboard side. The project was completed this week, said Pat Dolan, spokeswoman for the Washington, D.C.-based Navy Sea Systems Command. She said the dredging had removed more than 35,000 cubic yards of mud.

The Intrepid, a legendary Pacific war campaigner that survived torpedoes and five kamikaze plane attacks, is overdue for rehabilitation after sitting idle for 24 years at the Hudson's city-owned Pier 86.

The aging pier itself is to be demolished and rebuilt while the ship undergoes a $60 million overhaul at a dry dock in Bayonne, N.J.

On Thursday, Craig Rising, spokesman for McAllister Towing Inc., whose powerful tractor tugboats would handle the towing job, as they did on the first attempt, said his firm was waiting for a go-ahead from Intrepid officials. He said what matters is not the amount of mud but whether the propellers and shafts are clear.

"Does it need to be floating free? Probably not," he said.

Although Intrepid officials had emptied its ballast tanks of water and fuel to lighten it by about 600 tons, Rising said the ship's weight was not a factor.

Intrepid weighed 27,000 tons when launched as the Navy's third Essex-class carrier in 1943, but major upgrades in the mid-1950s, including an angled flight deck, boosted it to about 36,000 tons.

When combat-ready with a full crew and loaded with everything from bullets and bombs to pancake batter, it displaced about 42,000 tons.

Major warships such as aircraft carriers, with a projected life span of 50 years, normally undergo extensive overhauls every eight years or so. Intrepid's last overhaul was in the 1960s, nearly a decade before it was decommissioned for the last time in 1974.

Slated for the scrapyard, it was rescued in 1981 by New York developer Zachary Fisher and turned into the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, a popular tourist attraction that has drawn 700,000 visitors annually.

In the refitting, expected to last 18 months to two years, Intrepid will be renovated inside to provide more space for visitors to see and undergo a stem-to-stern refurbishment including the hull, which has some corrosion below the water line.

Even in retirement, Intrepid has been inspected yearly by the Navy, and while this does not include sending divers down to check the hull, there have been no signs of problems from the inside, Dolan said.

"It would take a whole lot before you'd find internal damage on an aircraft carrier," she said.

Also soon to be moved is the Concorde supersonic jetliner that has been part of the Intrepid museum since 2004, when it was retired by British Airways. The sleek aircraft, which still holds the speed record for a commercial flight across the Atlantic, is destined for a temporary home at Floyd Bennett Field, a historic airport in Brooklyn.

(© 2006 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)