Yakov Taubin

Taubin was born in 1900 in Pinsk in the Russian Empire (present Belarus). The date of his birth is not known. His father, an accountant, died in 1915.

In 1929 Taubin entered the Odessa National Academy of Food Technologies (then called the Odessa Institute of Grain and Flour Technology) in the Faculty of Design. While there, during student military training at the academy in the summer of 1931, he encountered a grenade launcher, the single-shot Dyakonov. He set himself the task of creating an automated version.

On the night of 16 May 1941, Taubin and several associates were arrested on charges of "preserving samples of unfinished weapons and egregiously plotting production of technically unfinished and unsatisfactory weapons systems", namely the 23mm cannons and the 12.7mm machine gun.

Following trial, Taubin was executed by shooting on 28 October 1941, in the village of Barbysh near Samara, Russia (then called Kuybyshev). This place is now Yuri Gagarin Park within the city limits of Samara and contains the mass graves of several thousand victims of execution by Soviet authorities.

The actual impetus for Taubin's arrest and execution was likely Kulik's strong opposition to the AG-2 automatic grenade launcher and consequent hostility toward Taubin.

After his death, leadership of OKB-16 fell to Alexander Nudelman, who would design aircraft guns, rockets, and missiles used extensively in the Cold War.

Taubin was rehabilitated on 20 December 1955.