Before crossing to the island Apel was taken to Podlipki (today Korolyov) where he was reunited with a large quantity of heavy machinery and equipment that he had last seen in Germany during the closing weeks of the war. The German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 had forced the Soviets to build up an impressive expertise in deconstructing factories and their equipment, crating them up, and relocating them by train to places beyond the reach of the German army. After the war they had taken the opportunity to perfect their skills, crating up surviving German factories and their equipment, and taking them to the Soviet Union by way of war reparations. The 1937 Opel Kadett turned up in 1947 as the Soviet built Moskvitch 400. They had also applied their skill to the rocket facility in the mountain. The Red army had used 717 railway wagons to carry away 5,647 tonnes of machinery, munitions, and partially constructed rockets. By the end of 1946 a further 2,270 railway wagons had transported another 14,256 rocket construction plant, partially constructed rockets, and specialist machinery from the former Nazi facility in the Soviet occupation zone to a new rocket research facility in the Soviet Union. Secrecy was so complete that ten years later the world still believed that Soviet rocket programme was based on Soviet rocket science. The Americans had taken away only 400 tonnes of "rocket materials" from the Nordhausen facility. After inspecting the Soviet hoard, Erich Apel joined his colleagues on the Island of Gorodomlya.