The plant was kitted out with equipment from more than eighty US engineering companies and several German firms. The new factory was officially opened on June 17, 1930, and the first tractor to begin production on the assembly line was the 15-30, manufactured in the USA by the McCormick Deering company; in the USSR, it became known as the 15/30 STZ (or STZ-1). By April 1932, the Stalingrad Tractor Plant was working at full capacity, with 144 tractors a day rolling off the conveyor. Tank production began in 1932 with the launch of the T-26 light infantry tank, which was easy to manufacture and operate, and considered to be more reliable than foreign equivalents. In 1939, the first automated machine tool line in the USSR was designed and commissioned at the Volgograd Tractor Plant on the initiative of I. P. Inochkina, a design engineer who worked at the plant for 35 years. By the end of the 1940s, dozens of such lines were in operation at bearing and automotive plants. By the time war broke out in September 1939, the tractor plant had produced a quarter of a million standard tractors as well as 40,000 tracked versions. During World War II, the plant was retooled to produce military equipment and weapons for the Soviet Red Army, most notably the T-34 tank. The plant became world-famous during the Battle of Stalingrad. When the German "Wehrmacht" reached the city in the summer of 1942, the tractor plant was their first target, and it was largely destroyed during the fierce fighting that ensued over the next few months. Once the hostilities had ended with the final victory in February 1943, the site was cleared of shells and debris so that restoration work could begin immediately. Full-scale production resumed at the plant within months of the city being liberated. In 1992, the Volgograd Tractor Plant became a private joint-stock company, and entered a period of economic uncertainty with a decline in productivity. The company was floated on the public stock market in 1995 and became an OJSC. By the late 1990s, the plant was producing fewer than 3,000 tractors per year. In December 2002, following rising debts and many changes in ownership, OJSC Volgograd Tractor Plant was divided into four separate business units within the group:  Responsibility for military technology projects was allocated to a separate concern, the Volgograd Machine Building Company VgTZ ("Volgogradskaya mashinostroitel'naya kompaniya VgTZ"), which was not connected to the "Volgograd Tractor Plant" group of companies.