What lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defence Forces correctly identified a false alarm on 26 September 1983
Stanislav Petrov Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov (Russian: Станисла́в Евгра́фович Петро́в ; 7 September 1939 – 19 May 2017) was a lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defence Forces who became known as "the man who single-handedly saved the world from nuclear war" for his role in the 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident.
Boris Shpitalniy Boris Shpitalniy graduated from MAMI Moscow State Technical University in 1927. Three years later, Boris Shpitalniy together with Irinarkh Komaritsky designed the ShKAS machine gun, a 7.62 mm machine gun widely used by Soviet aircraft in the 1930s and during World War II. In 1939, a small number of Ultra-ShKAS were produced featuring a firing rate of 3,000 rounds per minute, but these saw only limited use due to reliability problems. ShKAS served as the basis for the ShVAK cannon in 1936 (designed in collaboration with Semyon Vladimirov). This 20-mm autocannon was installed in many Soviet aircraft including Yakovlev Yak-1, Polikarpov I-153 and I-16, Lavochkin La-5 and La-7, LaGG-3, early Ilyushin Il-2, and Soviet-modified Hawker Hurricane aircraft, as well as T-38 and T-60 tanks. His 37 mm autocannon, the Sh-37, was less successful though, and saw only brief service between 1941 and 1942.