[1] Although he arrived at the warfront in 1941 and soon began to participate in combat, he only gained a single shared aerial victory in January 1942 before being transferred to the 434th Fighter Aviation Regiment.

During the ensuing dogfight, captain Vasily Murashev of the third squadron was shot down by William Hoyd while attacking the two F-86 on Vishnyakov's tail, and although he survived by bailing out of his crippled plane via his parachute, his injuries rendered him unable to continue flying in the war.

Eventually on 20 June Vishnyakov himself gained his first aerial victory over Korea, shooting down a piston-engined[a] US aircraft over Simbi-do island at an altitude of approximately 2000 meters.

Later on in the war on 8 June over Sensen, Vishnyakov took credit for his first jet shootdown after leading a group of 20 MiGs in a dogfight against 24 F-86; however, because he fired at the enemy aircraft from a significant distance during the battle and US records do not indicate any jets were written off that day combined with the high rate of overclaiming in the Korean War, the most plausible explanation is that Vishnyakov simply damaged an F-86 instead of gaining a true shootdown on that day.

On 1 December he led a group of 20 crews from his regiment to a spot where enemy aircraft were expected to arrive: there, at an altitude of 7,500 meters, they came across 16 Australian Gloster Meteors, which were fairly vulnerable to the MiGs.

Vishnyakov ordered ten of the MiGs under his command to stay above them as cover, while he led the remaining crews in an attack on the Gloster Meteors.

The next day he gained another credited aerial victory; there he led a group of 18 MiGs over Pyongyang, where they intercepted 16 F-84s at an altitude of 4,000 meters at 10:42 AM, which they subsequently dispersed and claimed to have shot down three of.

With cover provided by other aircraft in his unit, he pursued an F-84 and shot it down, presumably F-84E 49-2415 piloted by Hugh Larkin, who parachuted out of his stricken plane and declared missing.