In June 1941, Yeltsov belonged to the 127 IAP of the 11 SmAD.

On 22 June 1941, he claimed three victories, all of them while flying the Polikarpov I-153.
The 127 IAP made claims for 20 enemy planes on 180 sorties on the first day of the German invasion. In fact German losses had been quite low that day, amounting to perhaps a tenth of the total Soviet claims, the general chaos and heat of combat leading to some disproportionate overclaiming.

Yeltsov ended the war with 3 victories claimed while flying biplanes.

Claims:

Kill no.	Date	Time	Number	Type	Result	Plane type	Serial no.	Locality	Unit
	1941
1	22/06/41		1	Enemy aircraft	Destroyed	I-153			127 IAP
2	22/06/41		1	Enemy aircraft	Destroyed	I-153			127 IAP
3	22/06/41		1	Enemy aircraft	Destroyed	I-153			127 IAP

Biplane victories: 3 destroyed.
TOTAL: 3 destroyed.

Sources:
Triumf a tragedie - Milos Sedivy and Valerii Dymich, 2001 Svet kridel, ISBN-80-85280-70-1 kindly provided by Tomáš Polák