Nesterov was born on 15 February 1887 in Nizhny Novgorod, into the family of an army officer, a cadet corps teacher.

In August 1904, he left the military school in Nizhny Novgorod and went to Mikhailov artillery academy in St Petersburg.

By the laws of that time, an officer who married before the age of 28 had to contribute a so-called ‘reserve’ to the state treasury – a deposit of 5,000 rubles to provide for his family in the event of his death.

[1] In 1911 he built his first glider and learned to fly it, before entering flight training at the St. Petersburg aviation school at Gatchina in June, graduating 11 October 1912.

Despite the doubts of his peers, Nesterov proved his theory on 9 September 1913 (27 August by the calendar then used in Russia) and became the first pilot to fly a loop.

During the Battle of Galicia on 25 August 1914 (by the Old Style calendar still used in Russia), after trying various methods on previous occasions unsuccessfully, he used his Morane-Saulnier Type G (s/n 281) to ram the Austrian Albatros B.II reconnaissance aircraft of observer Baron Friedrich von Rosenthal and pilot Franz Malina from FLIK 11.