During the early of the war, thousands of employees of Rostselmash went off to war. Their wives, sisters and children replaced them at their work places. Shops of the enterprise were quickly converted to military production. Machines were installed without foundation on common joists enabling to dismantle and displace equipment within some hours.
When German Army troops were at the approaches to the city, the workers of Rostselmash were producing military products sent to the front erecting defensive constructions and bomb shelters at the same time. On October 13, 1941, the personnel of Rostselmash received the order to start disassembly and expedition of equipment to Tashkent. Evacuation of the plant became a titanic task. The whole territory of the plant represented a continuous stream of moving loads which were carried with hoisting units, rollers and aviation. More than 3500 rail wagons were used for evacuation of the plant. On October 19, 1941, the last group of workers left the plant led by the director Titarenko M.M.
In Tashkent the personnel of the plant also performed exploits. The sites for accommodation of the evacuated plant were situated in different parts of the city. There was not enough place and they had to send out certain part of equipment to Chirchik situated 60 km away from Tashkent. So four subdivisions of «Rostselmash» appeared in Uzbekistan, three of them were located in Tashkent and one — in Chirchik.
The plant began to turn out military products and to send them to the front in 33 days after arrival of the equipment to Tashkent. Machine units and lines were mounted in the open air or in hangars or other premises equipped in haste for this purpose. In 35 day of continuous work they produced the cast iron for the first time. Within 3 months, the workshops of the plant evacuated to the rear area were erected on an empty area of 12 thousand square km. Rostselmash produced 82-mm and 120-mm caliber mortar bombs, heads for Katyusha missiles, high-explosive bombs of 50, 100 and 250 kg.
On February 14, 1943 the troops of the South Front liberated Rostov-on-Don. The city had been turned into shambles. Almost all the enterprises including Rostselmash with its workers settlement had been destroyed. During eight days before the capitulation German troops had been methodically exploding and burning down the plant. All the workshops, accommodation units, cultural center on Clubnaya street, the building of the Agricultural Machinery Institute and other buildings had fallen into ruins. The material loss inflicted on the plant exceeded 180 million rubles.
On February 23, in 10 days after the liberation, the first 33 machine units started to work. At the same time preparation for military goods production was started, technical servicing of tanks, tractors and motor vehicles was organized. They had to clear away 150 thousand m3 of rubbles, to put 21 million of bricks, 37 thousand m3 of concrete, to mount 8 thousand tons of steel work and 185 thousand m3 of roofing. Within a short period of time 145 thousand square meters of production facilities were put into operation.
While the plant was being actively restored Rostselmash engineers A.A. Krasnichenko, B.B. Proshunin and I.I. Popov designed a new harvester named
«Stalinetz-6». On April 30, 1947 new harvesters
«Stalinetz-6» were assembled in the department of harvesting machines. The designers of the new model became Stalin award winners.
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