GREAT STEEL TOWN

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXIII, Issue 258, 29 September 1943, Page 5

GREAT STEEL TOWN

Dnepropetrovsk is a great steel town and before its capture in 1941 produced large quantities of raw materials for armaments and the armaments themselves from the vast deposits of coal and iron ore available in this part of Russia. Ihc Russians, to make use of the huge water power of the Dnieper for their heavy industries, built the great Dnieprostroy dam and hydro-electric plant at Zaporozhe 10 years, ago, but when the Germans were driving forward to the Dnieper in August, 1941, M. Stalin ordered the destruction of the great works under the Russians’ scorched earth policy. The darn was one of the most ambitious projects of the Soviet s Five Year Plan. It was planned to generate 750.000 horse-power as against Niagara s 430 000, while its maximum output was to be 3,000.000 kilowatts a year, sufficient to serve 70,000 square miles and a population of 16,000,000. Probably the maximum output was not reached, but the Dnieprostroy scheme meant a tremendous difference to the Ukraine and to Russian economy. The blowing up of the dam flooded a great area and delayed the enemy advance, but, more important, it denied the Germans the use of the huge power plant, which. would have been invaluable to them in the production of war materials.