Many of Ploesti’s Oil Plants Destroyed

Manawatu Times, Volume 69, Issue 208, 2 September 1944, Page 5

Many of Ploesti’s Oil Plants Destroyed

LONDON, Aug. 31. Reuter’s Moscow correspondent says that German resistance over the whole of the southern front has broken up into a series of scattered actions in which the Germans in varying strength are being rapidly cleaned up. The Germans set fire to the Ploesti oil installations. Some Russian detachments had to fight their way into Ploesti through walls of flame. The British United Press’s Moscow correspondent says: Russian chemical experts and Rumanian engineers are Wrestling with the blazing oilfields. Not a single street in Ploesti remains untouched by fire. Street battles went on throughout the night in the middle of this inferno.

Despite the Russians’ record-break-ing advance from Buzau to prevent the Germans from completing the destruction of the oilfields, the enemy succeeded in setting fire to oil pits and blowing up many pipes and refineries, Several plants were completely wrecked.