He briefly worked as a flight instructor in Moscow and Kyiv before enrolling the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy in February 1939.

Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in July 1941, Khrushchev's regiment fought on the Eastern Front as part of the 22nd Army.

On July 26, Khrushchev's plane was hit by Luftwaffe fighters near Moscow, forcing him to crash land and hospitalizing him with a broken leg, with the bone protruding through his boot.

Impatient while idle, Khrushchev would shoot bottles on friends' heads for entertainment, and in one incident he accidentally killed a drunken Soviet Navy officer.

[6][7] This, together with the fact that his father was already a member of the Politburo and one of the most important political figures in the Soviet Union, gave birth to a number of conspiracy theories about the circumstances of his death.