Exercise Dracula

The_Chieftain: You are correct, I saw the Bovington copy, and it was only the final report.   With respect to the politics, it may well be that there was something to a political intent behind the reason for the trials, but I think it unlikely that there was any particular sabotaging going on. If Last Parade for a Cromwell took longer than for Sherman, then that's pretty objective. Same with whether or not the oil leaked or crews had steering difficulty. Now, you can say that maybe the 3,000 mile "Test to destruction" was overkilling it a bit: Maybe they had good reason to believe that Sherman would survive longer and were counting on it: I note that in the 21st AG report, they're talking about tanks with mileages of less than 2,000. (And even in the Dracula days, that one officer was saying "Reliable, at least to 2,000 miles"). Again, though, two years later, it would stand to reason that they'd have fixed the problems. New idlers, tension systems, maybe a more efficient first/last parade schedule, etc. Obviously there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the basic power plant once they sorted out the teething problems, Centurion is proof of that. That said again, though, the Dracula exercise also does seem to indicate that the US testing was fair, and not particularly biased.   I saw nothing in the files you sent which were damning of Sherman, however. The only negative I saw was the issue that they tended to brew up in comparison to British-made tanks with armoured bins, which isn't particularly surprising since the Brits didn't get all that many wet stowage Shermans, as far as I'm aware.