Initially refused entering military service due to his age, he was then enlisted, and sent to serve on reconnaissance missions during the Battle of Moscow as part of a ski battalion.

Wounded again in action, he returned to service as a political officer with the tank forces, ending the war in Berlin.

Mikhailov remained in the armed services after the war, specialising in military-political work, and in 1960 was assigned to the Strategic Rocket Forces.

He rose through the ranks, being promoted to major general in 1976, and being appointed head of the Riga Higher Military Political School in 1977.

[1][2][3] He turned seventeen on 22 June 1941, the day Operation Barbarossa was launched, beginning the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.

[4] On the second day of the war Mikhailov went with his classmates from secondary school to the district military enlistment office, but as a minor, was refused.

Each member received a carbine, warm clothes, and bottles with a combustible mixture, with one light machine gun for the entire battalion.

The rapid deterioration of the Soviet military position that summer forced the call up and deployment of the students, and Mikhailov was sent to the North Caucasus as commander of a 45-mm anti-tank gun.

[3] He then took part in the Crimean offensive, where in fighting around the town of Malin, forces under his command knocked out two Nazi Panzer IVs.

[3] Mikhailov studied at the Lenin Military-Political Academy after the war, graduating in 1960 and joining the Strategic Rocket Forces.