I beg the moderators pardon but this is an interesting small off-topic.
At first quotation from the GOC 4th Canadian Armoured Division Maj.-Gen. George Kitching's memoirs:
Once we were ashore in France and had set up our headquarters, I went to see General Simonds. He invited me into his caravan where he was in conversation with General Dempsey who commanded 2nd British Army. I knew Dempsey from Italy and although he greeted me very pleasantly, it was obvious that he was under a considerable amount of strain. His first words after greeting me were, "Are your tanks petrol or diesel?" When I told him they were petrol, he seemed disappointed. I did not understand the significance of this remark until after he had gone when Guy Simonds told me that only two days before over 150 tanks of three British divisions had been knocked out during an all-out attack to gain the high ground south of Caen. Since many of the tanks were petrol-fuelled Shermans, they had caught fire more easily and more rapidly than those fuelled by diesel. General Dempsey wished that our tanks were diesel and, as we became involved in battle, so did we.
Source:
George Kitching
Mud and Green Fields. The Memoirs of Major-General George Kitching
Vanwell Publishing Ltd., St. Catharines, Ontario, 1993
ISBN 0-920277-73-X
page 188
I think that we have to remember that the Diesel-powered WWII-era tanks were also:
▪ M3 Stuart (Stuart Mk. II) manufactured by the American Car & Foundry Co. The tank powered by the Guiberson T-1020-4 Diesel engine
▪ M3A1 Stuart (Stuart Mk. IV in the Commonwealth's Armies)
▪ M3A3 and M3A5 Lee
▪ M4A2 Sherman
▪ Also the M10 tank destroyers and their Achilles versions powered by GM 6046 diesel engines
Best regards
C.
