After the unit under his command was devastated by Luftwaffe bombing attacks, he was arrested in Bryansk charged with criminal inaction, cowardice and failure to obey orders and executed at the Kommunarka shooting ground in October 1941.

After completing seven grades of school he worked as a mechanic at a local depot before he entered the Red Army in 1930 and was assigned a Komsomol travel ticket.

He returned to the Soviet Union in 1937, by then having accumulated 115 flight hours in combat and gained five individual and two shared aerial victories.

[5][6] On 22 June 1941, the first day of Operation Barbarossa, Luftwaffe bombers attacked the airfields Chernykh's division was stationed at.

Despite making various attempts to resist the barrage of attacks, which included Major-general Chernykh joining the survivors of his men in flying the few usable fighters left, he was still charged with criminal inaction and cowardice later in; such charges were pressed despite the fact that the 9th Division had lost contact with headquarters during the surprise attacks, was short of desperately-needed fuel, and few pilots in the division were trained to fly the new aircraft they had just received.