Drag measurements for a flat plate equipped with passive boundary layer turbulence manipulators, the so‐called Large Eddy Break Up (LEBU) devices, have been carried out in a towing tank at plate length Reynolds numbers of 5–20 million. The towing tank facility allowed direct drag measurements as opposed to indirect methods based on, e.g., measurement of momentum loss thickness of the boundary layer. The LEBU devices consisted of two hydrofoils arranged in tandem, with a spacing of five to eight boundary layer thicknesses at the manipulator position (&dgr;m) and a height in the boundary layer of 0.5&dgr;m–0.9&dgr;m. Four different manipulator configurations were tested, with and without a trip wire on the test plate. The LEBU foil section was 10% thick and symmetric. The ratio between the LEBU chord and &dgr;mranged from 0.8 to 1.1, and the chord Reynolds number ranged from 25 000 to 100 000. Only for the lowest Reynolds number was a 2% drag reduction obtained. However, the main body of the experiments showed no drag reduction in contrast to previously reported experiments.