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One of the interesting salvage stories is told at the underwater or undersea museum near Port En Bessin in Normandy where a large range of materiel recovered from the offshore sea bed is on display including a couple of DD tanks.
The salvers operated for many years after the war and worked in conjunction with a local smelter or foundry. From memory everything had to be cut up so as to pass through a one metre hole. Unfortunately not knowing French I couldn't glean all of the information presented but suspect that all the Mulberry block ships and much more went through such a hole.

Not far out of Lae in New Guinea sitting in the jungle there was a pile of aircraft debris almost the size of a house. The debris consisted of what parts of the aircraft that were of no interest to the salvers who had brought in a smelting plant to recover the aluminium. I have no idea how many aircraft they processed.
Today they call it recycling. It went on all over. Wherever there was a dollar or few cents to be made from it there were the entrepreneurs, the opportunists, the unemployed, the destitute.
After WW1 there were enormous quantities of shells laying all over the battlefields and people were employed to remove the copper drive bands with hammer and chisel. Every now and then one went off. No problem, plenty of others looking for work. The human detritus of war.

David