You know, a few weeks ago I submitted a thread entitled "Sherman Tanks". I had heard that the Sherman was powered by a Ford engine and was asking if it was a Flathead. Well I learned that is wasn't, but I was curious if it was a Ford engine none the less. Lo and behold in the January 17 issue of "Old Cars Weekly" there is a great article entitled "A Time of Transition" where they talk about the very subject. According to the article by Tom and Joyce Brownell, the Sheman was actually designed by Chrysler's Tank Division (obviously necessitated to drive the streets of New York City). At the time they did not have an engine available to generate the required 450 HP needed to drive the Sherman. They did some calculations and found that if they took five 90 HP Chrysler six cylinder engines in a star pattern driving a single output shaft, they could achieve the 450 HP needed. They called the engine the "Chrysler Multibank Engine". Mostly all of these early Shermans went to the lucky British under "Leand-Lease" Unfortunately for the British the Chrysler multibank was a miserable failure. The article doesn't state why, but it does say they were temporarily replaced with GM bus diesel engines. These Allison engines belched such a thick cloud of black smoke, that the Germans could see the tanks coming from miles away. In stepped Henry Ford , who according to the article developed a "superb dual overhead-cam V-8 engine producing 450 HP and the bulk of the Shermans received these". My question in the original thread was if Ford could develop this "superb" engine in the early 40's why didn't he exploit it and use it in his trucks and cars. Obviously cost was the reason....the Flathead was still doing it's job at a very reasonable price. Henry was quite amazing during the war. He developed an assembly line that generated a new B-24 Bomber at the rate of one an hour. At the time it was the largest assembly plant in the world. Another interesting fact...after the war, according to the article, the British offered Henry Ford the "Wolfberg Works" which they found in Germany. Apparently Ford walked through the bombed out plant and inspected the weird looking little cars there and said "no thanks". We all know what happened with VW in years to come. Interesting stuff for whoever may be curious!!!!

 

""superb dual overhead-cam V-8 engine producing 450 HP"

I'd love to know more about that engine, sounds a lot like the 427 cammer that they came out with some 20 years later. I'd be curious if it is a true DOHC engine like some of todays or a SOHC that was simply mis labeled since there are technically 2 cams but only 1 in each head.

Some quick googling found out a bunch about them, they were V8 versions of Fords V12 engines and were true DOHC gear drive engines making 500hp and 1050 Ft-Lbs of torque:

http://home.alltel.net/bsprowl/Sherman.html

I see it's also been a topic here before:
https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/4...ne-else-2.html

Search Ford GAA V-8 to find pages on it.