Like all UC-type submarines introduced into the German Navy after the spring of 1915, UC76 was intended as a coastal minelayer. With over one hundred similar boats eventually completed, it was inevitable that the basic design would be modified with experience and UC76 was one of the last batch of the second type [UCII -- Nos. UC16-79] which were double-hulled and had a larger range with better sea-going qualities than the UCI's. Displacing 410 tons (surfaced) and 493 tons (submerged), the final group of UCII's (Nos. 74-79) were 165½
feet long and built in the Vulcan Yards at Stettin. Fitted with six mine tubes and three torpedo tubes, they also carried a 3.45in. deck gun and could run at 11.8 knots (surfaced) and 7.3 knots (submerged).

UC76 was launched on 25 November 1916 and commissioned that 17 December. On 10 May 1917, she was sunk near Heligoland when one of her own mines exploded in the launching tube and 15 of her 26 crew were killed. Subsequently raised by the salvage vessel Oberelbe, she was thereafter used for training until the Armistice when she made a run for the Swedish port of Karlskrona where she was interned on 13 November 1918. Ceded and surrendered to the Admiralty on 1 December 1918, she was brought to the U.K. and broken up at Briton Ferry, Swansea, during 1919-20.