Mikhail Maslov was born to the family of a serviceman in Mary (USSR, now Turkmenistan) in 1954, and was brought up in a town in the Urals. He graduated from the Moscow Aviation Institute (University) in 1982 with a degree in mechanical engineering and then worked as a structural design engineer at the Tupolev Design Bureau in 1982-86 and then transferred to the TsAGI engineering information department where took various posts, including that of a deputy head of the department.

From the end of the 1990s he has been actively involved in the restoration of historical aircraft, including airworthy Po-2, I-15bis, I-153, I-16, DIT, and MiG-3 airplanes. During his work at Tupolev, Mikhail became interested in the history of Soviet aviation of the 1920-40 period and began the research and analysis of archive material. In the last 30 years of his enthusiastic work he has written numerous articles and several dozens of books on the history Soviet aircraft of that period.