In general, submariners in the German, American and British navies received more pay than their surface counterparts. In the case of the Kriegsmarine, the base pay was similiar to other ordinary seamen, but the sailor received both a Tauchzulage (diving pay) and Raumbeschrankungszulage (confined spaces allowance) when the boat was at sea during operations. The USN submarine ratings received between an extra $5-$20 a month for volunteering for submarine service. In the RN, the submarine allowance almost doubled the typical rating's pay.

Part of the reason behind the higher pay for submarine service was to attract high quality volunteers and reward difficult service, but the higher pay scales also reflected the unique nature of submarine service. Submarines were highly technical vessels and their small size meant that their crews needed to have some degree of specialization in their training. There was little room on a Second World War submarine for extra bodies. Submarine crew often received training in specialist equipment such as sonar or torpedoes, which in many navies' pay schema meant an increase in salary.

The importance of specialization to the submarine service highlights another appeal for volunteering for sub duty: career advancement. In larger surface ships, the opportunities to receive this type of training were relatively limited, but submarine duty could fast track an ordinary seaman into a specialist. It typically was also easier to gain promotion inside the submarine service, whether as petty officers or officers wanting their own commands.

There were also other perks for submarine service that were a powerful inducement during the Second World War. U-boat sailors received regular leave when their submarine was not at sea and the Kriegsmarine provided express trains from France back to Germany for sailors on furlough. The small size of submarines and their also minimized, but did not eliminate, the social segregation between officers and ratings or various ship compartments (i.e. stokers, gunnery, etc.) that was common in larger surface ships. Discipline was often more lax in these cramped conditions. Reginald Ashley, a RN veteran reminisced about close quarters "made people more pally with each other. I mean even the officers, you know, was very good to you. In the submarine service, I mean, the officers and men were very close together. Well in my own experience, I mean, I was with the same captain all the time. He wouldn't have anyone else." The small size of the submarine's crews helped foster a degree of esprit de corps among the entire crew that was much more difficult to accomplish in larger vessels. The intrinsically unhygienic conditions of submarine also eliminated much of the spit and polish busywork that was common in navies in this period.

Sources

McKee, Christopher. Sober Men and True: Sailor Lives in the Royal Navy, 1900-1945. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.

Mulligan, Timothy. Neither Sharks nor Wolves: The Men of Nazi Germany's U-Boat Arm, 1939-1945. Annapolis, Md: Naval Institute Press, 1999.

Spector, Ronald H. At War at Sea: Sailors and Naval Combat in the Twentieth Century. New York: Viking, 2001.