AID FOR RUSSIA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25212, 29 April 1943, Page 5

AID FOR RUSSIA

SUPPLIES POURING IN PERSIAN GULF ROUTE (Rec. 1 a.m.) NEW YORK, Apl. 28. War material destined for Russia is now reaching Iran faster than the Russians are able to take it away, reports the Associated Press correspondent somewhere in Iran.” Warehouses and goods yards in the Russian zone of Northern Iran are piled with tanks, trucks, guns, and jeeps awaiiing transhipment. _ . The corridor from the Persian Gull to the Caspian Sea has been transformed into a vast conveyor belt. Writhing lines of tractors are pulling convoys miles long, and American locomotives haanned by Americans are hauling war materials for the Red Army. Supplies are reaching Iran by air and sea, and a great air reception centre has been established on an island 45 miles long, where bombers are flown in and fighters arrive trucked in crates from cargo ships. Russian officers garbed in smocks and black boots rub their hands and kick their heels together as Mitchell and Boston bombers drop from the sky. The docks in the headwaters of the Persian Gulf are a noisy panorama ot winches and cranes. Quays are piled high with hundreds of thousands of tons of munitions, and ships are unloading cases of tinned meats, raw steel, brass, barbed-wire, tank's, tommyguns, and even diapers for Russian babies.

Originally the Russians rejected the Persian Gulf route on the ground that the 17,000 miles of water route from America was too long. They preferred to rely on Murmansk, but under British and American collaboration the Persian Gulf corridor was developed. Roads were built, railways elaborated, harbours dredged and enlarged, and the vast paraphernalia necessary for handling war shipments was installed.