CAPTURED INTACT

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 80, 7 April 1945, Page 5

CAPTURED INTACT

GERMANY’S LARGEST DYNAMITE FACTORY CUNNINGLY HIDDEN IN FOREST . London, April 5. Americans captured intact Germany’s largest dynamite factory—a vast plant covering 2000 acres—says the “Daily Mail’s” correspondent with the First Army It was so cunningly hidden in the depths of a forest that not a single Allied bomb hit it during the war. The plant turned out 5500 tons of dynamite a month American patrols clearing the forest stumbled across buildings

which were heavily guarded by packs of ferocious German police dogs and thousands of workers, mostly from occupied countries. The factory turned out in addition to dynamite vast quanties of aerial bombs, sulphuric acid, nitrate acid, oxygen and 500,000 shells a month. The Americans captured thousands of tons of high explosive, stacks of V-l warheads, mines and shells. They found 600 foreign workers starting to wreck the plant. Many had stolen large quantities of wine and were racing half drunk through the factory on motor cycles and lorries. Others brought out the factory fire engine and watched their friends set fire to the wooden barracks where they had been kept as slaves for years.