"I understand that the returning RN Pacific Fleet, in 1945, ditched a large number of airworthy lend-lease American kit overboard - to keep post-war scrap prices high?"
An uncle of mine was a Hellcat pilot on HMS Pursuer (with the BPF) in the last few months of the war and he used to tell that after VJ day the aeroplanes were dumped into the sea because if they were written-off as war losses then the UK did not have to pay for them.