Just out of interest sake
In the 40's and early 50's International Harveter Corp. made a diesel for construction and agricultural use that was designed to be hand cranked to start, although electric starting was an option. They were 4 cyl, of somewhere above 300 cu in displacment and even with thier relatively low compression ratio of about 14 to 1 they were impossible to turn over, much less start by hand. The designer's solution was to place a third valve in each combustion chamber which opened to an auxilary combustion chamber with a spark plug fired by an impulse type magneto. The mechanism that opened these valves also operated two buterfly valves in the intake manifold, one of which closed off the normal air intake, and the other opened to a small updraft carburettor which had a choke, but no throttle valve. The engine could be cranked over if your shoulders and arms were of stouter stuff than mine and with the impulse magneto would fire fairly easily and run at a fast idle on gasoline till the combustion chambers were warm enough to ignite the diesel. When you judged that the time was right you closed the compression release and opened the fuel lever and IF you held your tongue just right and your timing was good it would begin to hammer away on diesel and when the smoke turned from white to black you could settle it back to idle and not shut it off unless you had to. I owned one in a crawler for a while and it was a delight to use in the same way as a wooden block or a capstan windlass.
It made me appreciate the old guys that made our land. There were thousands of these on the Alaska Hwy. and the DEW line in Canada's north country where in the 40's you could not rely on a battery to give you any juice at all at 40 below.