There was an immense amount of ocean dumping of really neat stuff after the war was over.
Too true. I had heard of Midget subs before, but one capable of carrying a couple of flyable bombers and could go around the world one and a half times without refueling? Astounding.
“There was an immense amount of ocean dumping of really neat stuff after the war was over.”
They bulldozed aircraft into piles on Pacific islands and pushed new aircraft off the decks of carriers, rather than bring them back. Those that were stateside were declared surplus and sold. Corsairs, Mustangs, B-17s, B-25s, etc.
My father was the machine shop NCOIC for an engineer regiment on Okinawa at the end of the war. MacArthur had the regiment supplied with entirely new heavy equipment, machine tools and all the rest, with the idea that the regiment was going to Japan with him.
That plan was dropped because the army sent the regiment home, instead. They left all of the brand new hardware behind on Okinawa to rust. Some of it was never even unpacked from the shipping crates.