scientists to become rocket construction specialists. He recommended introducing a new college degree at Dnipropetrovsk State University: a master of sciences in rocket construction.
In 1954 the administration of this automobile factory opened a secret design office with the name �Southern� (konstruktorskoe biuro Yuzhnoe � in Russian) to construct military missiles and rocket engines. Hundreds of talented physicists, engineers and machine designers moved from Moscow and other large cities in the Soviet Union to Dnipropetrovsk to join this �Southern� design office. In 1965, the secret Plant #586 was transferred to the Ministry of General Machine-Building of the USSR. The next year this plant officially changed its name into �the Southern Machine-building Factory� (Yuzhnyi mashino-stroitel�nyi zavod) or in abbreviated Russian, simply Yuzhmash.
The first �General Constructor� and head of the �Southern� design office was Mikhail Yangel�, a prominent scientist and outstanding designer of space rockets, who managed not only the design office, but the entire factory from 1954 to 1971. Yangel� designed the first powerful rockets and space military equipment for the Soviet Ministry of Defense. Moscow sent specialists and invested money into Yangel� and his colleagues� projects. Yangel� collaborated with talented engineers who later became the leaders of military production in Dnipropetrovsk and the official directors of Yuzhmash. Two close collaborators of Yangel and of his successor V. Utkin (1971�1990) were the Yuzhmash directors Leonid Smirnov (1952�1961) and Aleksandr Makarov (1961�1986).
In 1951 the Southern Machine-building Factory began manufacturing and testing new military rockets for the battlefield. The range of these first missiles was only 270 kilometers. By 1959 Soviet scientists and engineers developed new technology, and as a result, the �Southern� design office (KBYu � as abbreviated in Russian) started a new machine-building project
