Having had a look around on the net, I’ve found some useful sites connected with this issue.
This one confirms that the majority of Sherman engines were made by Wright and were petrol. However, the British used a GMC Diesel on the Sherman III and IIIc:
http://mailer.fsu.edu/~akirk/tanks/U...nks/M4/M4.html
On the same site is a good, personal, view of the Sherman from George Forty:
http://mailer.fsu.edu/~akirk/tanks/U...roduction.html
One of its central points is:
“While I was researching for an earlier book about American tanks in World War Two, I remember receiving an anecdote from one of my correspondents, an American named Frank Woolner, who had served as a reconnaissance tank destroyer Sergeant and later as a combat correspondent with 3rd Armored Division. He wrote that most of the German tankers they captured seemed to have the same stock joke: "Von off our tanks iss better than ten off yours", the captured German would say. "Then, just about when you had decided to punch the guy on the whiskers, he would shrug, grin and say "But you always haff eleven!" I would take any odds that the vast majority of those eleven were M4 Shermans of one type or another.”
From the Sherman Register site is an interesting document from the Tank Museum archives which certainly indicates the British were using diesel Shermans in the desert campaign.
http://web.inter.nl.net/users/spoels...4/na_notes.htm
A good listing of the different types of Sherman can be found at:
http://www.wwiivehicles.com/html/britain/sherman.html
[ 19 October 2002, 05:37 AM: Message edited by: sommecourt ]