It had a mixed reception by crews. It was faster and had a lower profile than the Sherman tank. However, while its armour was of equivalent thickness, it was less sloped and therefore less effective than that of the Sherman. The 75 mm gun, though able to fire a useful HE shell, was not as effective against armour as the 6 pdr or the 17 pounder that was fitted to the British Firefly variant of the Sherman.
The Cromwell crews in North-West Europe succeeded in the Cromwell with superior speed, manoeuvrability and reliability outflanking the heavier and more sluggish German tanks; however, the Cromwell was still not a match for the best German armour and British tank design would go through another stage, the Comet tank, before going ahead in the tank development race with the Centurion tank.
This is right from your link. Read Panzer battles of the 1st and 12th SS pzr Div. in Normandy where most of these late model Brit tanks showed up. What was printed and what I read is they were slaughtered resulting in many commanding Generals to be replaced almost costing ole Monty his command. There was really no way that these tanks even in their numbers could battle dug in and on the defensive German tanks I will give you my reading material refrence if you need more convincing. P.S. These website links you attached lack the indepth information and first hand accounts and do little more than scratch the surface .
I have over 300 books on various WW2 weapons, guns and first hand battle accounts and have read them all more than once. I also have a business that pertains to WW2 history, so I don't believe I need a history lesson. I'm not saying that I know everything , I still learn things all the time but my nose is always in a book regarding WW2 history. Sorry but hope as you might the Brits did not have a tank that was capible of going head to head with German armor, they were more designed for infintry support, hence the regard made to a useful HE round and the refrence to not being affective against armor. The Russians where the sole reason that German armor came to be what it was and since the Brits had little interaction with the latest of German armor up until Normandy they really had fallen far behind in tank design. Also their tactics were as far as armor interaction with ground troops and flatout one on one tank battles were they were once again not in the same leage.
