Did Marines have access to Easy 8 Shermans? And if not would that have been due to a lack of funding or a lack of need for the heavier guns? Did the Marines have any of their own Sherman variants or were Shermans uniform across services? Are there any resources for the specifications of Marine tanks from WWII and their markings?
And lastly, are there resources for armored tactics in WWII that go beyond the spearheads of Guderian and Rommel and focus more on the actual platoon-level tactics of armored warfare in that period - dealing with things like movement over land, Sherman tactics for fighting enemy tanks, combined arms operations from a tank commander's perspective and how infantry and armor most effectively operated together?
In 1942 and most of 1943, the USMC relied on M-5 Stuart light tanks. Before the assault on Tarawa, in November 1943, it was decided to add a company of Sherman tanks to the Second Marine Division. In popular histories of World War II, it is often said that most of these Shermans did not even make it to the beach and point to one Sherman tank, named "Colorado" as being instrumental for the Marines to win the battle on Betio island. However, this web site shows other Shermans did make it onto the beach. It also discusses the tactics they used when they got there.
http://tarawaontheweb.org/usmctank.htm