This is a myth, one I have posted about many times on FR. I am a historian by qualification/trade, have researched this, and the US arms were not thrown into the sea, they were melted down for British war production, in 1944, as they weren’t needed and the Home Guard was being disbanded. The sea myth is complete nonsense. And if you think about it for a second, would make no common sense anyway.
Those privately owned American firearms loaned to Britain in WWII were melted down, and that is somehow BETTER!!?
What I’ve found says they were thrown into the sea.
http://www.thehighroad.org/archive/index.php/t-651362.html
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/650257/posts
http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=17760
I saw an old movie (A TWIST OF SAND) in which SMLEs are dumped into the ocean.
What a waste if they were! I know that back in the early 1970s several US Coast Guard cutters dumped tens of thousands of handguns confiscated in NYC into the ocean.
I didn’t say anything about them being dumped in the sea, just that they were destroyed. Being melted for any purpose would qualify as destroyed.