GreenKnight121
Senior Airman
- 673
- Mar 16, 2014
Don't forget... the Wildcats (and Avengers, etc) that went to the UK military were Lend/Lease equipment.
The UK was required to either return it to the US (at the UK's shipping expense), pay full price for it... or show that it had been "destroyed in service".
Therefore, it was cheaper and easier to just dump excess equipment/planes/etc overboard at sea (documented, of course) than to ship it back to the US - especially since the US had said "we don't want worn or obsolete equipment returned to us - we have enough of that crap to scrap ourselves"!
The CVEs were all returned - and most were then sold to civilian shipping firms and converted to merchant ships, with the remaining being placed in reserve (and scrapped in the 1950s & 60s).
The UK was required to either return it to the US (at the UK's shipping expense), pay full price for it... or show that it had been "destroyed in service".
Therefore, it was cheaper and easier to just dump excess equipment/planes/etc overboard at sea (documented, of course) than to ship it back to the US - especially since the US had said "we don't want worn or obsolete equipment returned to us - we have enough of that crap to scrap ourselves"!
The CVEs were all returned - and most were then sold to civilian shipping firms and converted to merchant ships, with the remaining being placed in reserve (and scrapped in the 1950s & 60s).