8 June] 1910 in the southern town of Yeysk in the Kuban Oblast (present-day Krasnodar Krai) of Imperial Russia into a poverty-stricken family.

His formal education did not began until at age 15 in the midst of the socialist campaigns to eradicate illiteracy; around that time he found employment in various jobs involving manual labor, including as a porter and railway depot employee.

In December 1935 he was transferred to serve as a flight commander in the 10th High-Speed Bomber Aviation Squadron of the district at Smolensk, flying the Tupolev SB.

There he participated in the Spanish Civil War as a Tupolev SB bomber pilot, remaining until March 1937 and receiving the Order of the Red Banner upon his return to the Soviet Union.

[8] He arrived at the rear airfield of Lanzhou, where an aviation base was created, to which SBs were flown in from Irkutsk across Mongolia and the Gobi Desert.

"[4] Returning to the Soviet Union, Khryukin commanded the SB-equipped 10th High-Speed Bomber Aviation Brigade at Belaya Tserkov in the Kiev Military District.

Stalin personally ordered General Vasily Gordov of the Stalingrad Front to instruct Khryukin to launch a massive aerial assault against the Germans to the right flank of the Soviet forces during a conversation by direct wire on 23 July 1942.

[17] A less-than-desirable number of aircraft translated into insufficient resources for aerial reconnaissance, while Il-2 Shturmovik units had to fly without fighter escort.

[18] By the end of 1942, Khryukin increased the count of enemy aircraft pilots had to destroy in order to attain the status of ace; simultaneously, he promised a recommendation for the Hero of the Soviet Union title to each of those who could succeed in doing so.

Its performance under the freshly transferred Khryukin during Operation Bagration in Belarus was noted as "excellent" by Marshal of the Soviet Union Vasilevsky, an eyewitness, in his memoirs, The Matter of My Whole Life (1973).