Operation Deadlight was te collective scuttling of a bunch of German U-Boats after the war, off the coast of Ireland.
I spoke with a fellow that was involved in scuttling many of those submarines.
Not all of them were scuttled, according to him.
There was a real demand for those subs from many nations all over the world, including the US, Italy, France, Brazil and Argentina to name a few. Many of them were fully operational and service ready, with full complements of munitions and torpedoes.
Many were sold to approved purchasers and some even went to private corporations and individuals, minus weapons of course.
About half of them were in pretty sad condition. They had been damaged during the war and limped into Irish waters to offload their crews.
He told me many of the captains wanted to take their subs back out to sea for scuttling, rather than turn them over to the Irish government, because there was a belief that they would turn the subs over to the UK.
The Irish government wouldn't allow this to happen, for all sorts of reasons and if possible, boarded and took the ships under their control, after checking them for booby traps.
He also told me there were several airstrips with dozens of different warplanes from every nation fighting in the European theater in WWII. Similar to Switzerland.
He also told me, to his knowledge, none of the ships, subs, aircraft were given or turned over to any of the Allies or Axis nations during WWII, even though they all had Consulates in Ireland.
The planes/ships were in high demand and brought some very good prices, according to him.
I found that a bit strange as many similar planes and ships were being sold for less than the cost of the fuel in their tanks in North America, from 1946-1955.
Still, there were all sorts of wars going on around the world at the time and such implements of battle would have a lot of value to some perspective buyers, such as the new born nation of Israel and many others.