Well I think it's fairly conclusive as to what occurred in the drive motors in boner. As the picture below shows, one of the copper brush holders snapped. The rest of the brush holder was then running against the commutator. I'm assuming that was what the large screeching noise/crunching feeling was ( the death cries of a motor). I find it incredible that this occurred before I got into battle with one of them. When running them in that state, the two copper elements heated up and burned the copper wire right at the crimp point. The rest of the armature was fine.

http://i.imgur.com/vGZ9gJW.jpg