![]() Sir Giffard Martel, Director of the Royal Armoured Corps during the war, wrote “The Sherman tank was a dual purpose tank and was a… reliable machine, but it was not as good as either the Cromwell or the Churchill for their respective roles. The resulting debt, which ran into many billions of pounds, was only settled by the British Government in 2006. In late 1941 President Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease Act allowing the British, who were effectively bankrupt, to effectively hire the tanks and other materiel they required from the US. Both of these would play a critical role in the war before the US was able to contribute its forces. In 1940, designs for what would become the Grant and Sherman had been advanced over less promising British designs. There was no option but to accept American designs built to American specifications. As a result, Dewar’s mission was informed that the US would design and build its own tanks which the British could purchase. Meanwhile, the US military was coming to terms with the idea that its neutrality may be short lived. The nation that had invented and pioneered the use of the tank just 25 years before was lagging behind not least because of a lack of pre-war investment and stretched resources. It took two years just to iron out the bugs and flaws in its design. For example, the Cromwell tank was designed in 1942, but did not see action until late 1944. Partly because of this, British tanks lacked reliability, although the designs themselves were also poor. The workshop mentality of `craftsmanship` over automated production lines added many man hours and saw a lack of standardisation in the finished products. Britain had not yet fully adopted the mass production techniques which had made the American automotive industry so powerful.
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