maybe some motor heads can correct me on this but i think if you choke a diesel engine of air intake it will blow black smoke too
also, just to be clear, the giant diesel engines of large ships, i'm pretty sure they have giant heating coils that help ensure the diesel is hot enough to gasify in the combustion chamber, and if that heat level drops too much it WILL blow black smoke because that's unburned oil... like the grease smoke of a frypan up too hot