Soviet $$ Compensation for Kills

[Sublime]

So Ive been interested to note that when you kill bombers by say mid 43 in Kuban you get the 1500 Rubles for a 'transport plane'.  Im pretty sure its not a bug as I shot down bombers earlier on other campaigns and it goes through - so my question is why?  The SU was less desperate?  Easier to save 500 rubles..?

Just curious. Also has anyone ever heard of Luftwaffe pilots being compensated for kills?  Golodnikov in his lend lease interview claims he heard that from a German ace they captured named Muller but Ive never heard that in my life.

[Herne]

My guess would be, and it is a guess, that when Germany attacked Russia, initially Russia was very unprepared, they had i16's and i153's to go up against Germany's cutting edge (for the time) AC. The money reward would have been a small incentive to go for it, even if you were against the odds. Russia desperately needed to try and buy its troops time, and I think the powers that be decided that this was one way that they could go about it.

[[CPT]Crunch]

Another reason they did it, the cream of the crop would have the best rations and living conditions, boosting their success even further.  Just plain old common sense, the practical in action.  Every side did it in one form or another, except maybe Japan, doesn't have to be monetary.

[Finkeren]

I do not know what type of monetary awards, if any, were given to Luftwaffe aces, but there are a few well known fact about the nazi regimes' way of rewarding/bribing military leaders, which might give us an idea about how this would have filtered down through the ranks. For one thing soldiers and in particular officers of the Wehrmacht (including the Luftwaffe) were supposed to get first pick of land holdings in the conquered territories in the East (remember, the Germans were fighting a war of conquest and giving out parts of the conquered land as a way to pay your soldiers is an ancient tradition). Even as late as early 1945, when the war had been lost for years, and everything was crumbling around them, many German generals - including the big shots of the OKW and OKH - were still trying to expand their land holdings in the now liberated east, perhaps in some mad hope, that they would be paid reparations for their lost property after the war? Officers of the Wehrmacht were also bribed in a much more direct way. Members of the General Staff were regularly given "birthday presents" of several hundred thousand Reichsmarks, and this system very much filtered down through the ranks.

 

In short, I think it is a pretty safe bet to say, that Luftwaffe pilots were very likely rewarded/bribed in much the same semi-official way that the rest of the military was, but we really know very little about it, because we know so comparatively little about what the Luftwaffe was up to during WW2. Due to a combination of bombing raids and deliberate destruction of archives near the end of the war, it is estimated, that nearly 98% of all RLM records are lost, leading us to rely heavily on the sanitized and heavily distorted memoirs written after the war by de-nazified Luftwaffe personel, who now had lucrative careers in the rebuilt West German Luftwaffe and therefore had very little interest in speaking out about their part in the corruption of the nazi system and the atrocities it committed.

Edited April 26, 2019 by Finkeren

[Sublime]

Oh Im well aware of the corruption and bribery of the Nazis.  To be honest Id never even heard about the Soviet monetary prizes and this was interesting.  Its not a judgement at all to clear that with anyone - Im just interested if the Germans had a system -I can link the Golodnkov interview (I got it here) 

I also genuimely was curious about why the game drops bombers 500 rubles. Since they dropped it in game Im sure there must be some reasoning?

Thanks for the answers

[gorice]

Speaking of the Soviet prizes, I remember reading in someone's memoirs (Pokryshkin's?) that they would award kills made in a sortie to pilots who were lost during it, so that the pilot's family got the money.

[Finkeren]

When I kill bombers in BoK I think I get the normal 2000R "bomber prize". You are sure the He 111s you shot down weren't flying as cargo transport? I know they can do that in the Stalingrad career. 

[Ribbon]

My pilot (Savva Shilov) earned 432 000 rubels so far, quit army and moved to Thailand

[-SF-Disarray]

Sorry to break it to you Ribbon, but most of the money wasn't paid out. What was paid typically was sent to the pilot's parents or wife and kids. What with the war and all the money was welcome back home to buy things they needed and there wasn't much use for cash on the front anyway, something to do with everything being blown up I guess. I did some reading on this a while back and the consensus seems to be shoddy record keeping is the reason for most of the lack of pay out. There were even some implications that a pilot such as yours, who racked up a whole bunch of kills, and thus a boat load of cash, was expected to refuse to take payment of the money in a show of communist zeal and patriotic fervor.

[Sublime]

2 hours ago, Finkeren said:

When I kill bombers in BoK I think I get the normal 2000R "bomber prize". You are sure the He 111s you shot down weren't flying as cargo transport? I know they can do that in the Stalingrad career. 

Oh really? I wasnt aware of that.  However Ill get you some screens when Im home.  I doubt they used Ju87s for the same?? Because I distinctly remember being awarded the same for Ju87s, Ju88s, He111s, etc.  I figured as the situation grew less desperate the Soviets scaled back the money.

Thanks for the observation. Im certain Im not misremembering - this has been on my mind several days before other stuff I read about the $$ made me curious enough to open a topic.

So if I have screens and whatnot I wonder what the answer is. Obviously I dont doubt your assertion - so I wonder whats going on here..

1 hour ago, Disarray said:

 There were even some implications that a pilot such as yours, who racked up a whole bunch of kills, and thus a boat load of cash, was expected to refuse to take payment of the money in a show of communist zeal and patriotic fervor.

This.  The Soviets went back and did a lot of non Soviet things to help their war effort besides the money (awards and ribbons being brought back hard, commissars losing power) but I could see later in the war the Soviet state almost resenting people who did well and accepted the prizes.

Of course thats my opinion and Id much rather hear what happened, or a good recommendation of a memoirs online or text about this or delves into this.   I was genuinely surprised - Id totally never heard of that, that I recall, before in more than 20 yrs of studying WW2 with thw Ost Front my favorite to study.