In the final two years of World War II, the Imperial Japanese Army constructed transport submarines — officially the Type 3 submergence transport vehicle and known to the Japanese Army as the Maru Yu — with which to supply its isolated island garrisons in the Pacific. Only submarines of the Yu I type were completed and saw service. The Yu I type was produced in four subclasses, each produced by a different manufacturer and differing primarily in the design of their conning towers and details of their gun armament, although one source[1] states that the Yu 1001 subclass differed from the original Yu 1 sublcass in other ways, being longer, having a slightly larger displacement and more powerful diesel engine that increased the maximum speed by, and probably having no deck gun installed. None of the Yu I-type submarines carried torpedoes or had torpedo tubes. Yu 1007 a unit of the Yu 1001 subclass.[2]
Japan Steel Works (Nihon Seikojo) constructed at its plant in Hiroshima, Japan.[2] [3] Records of the details of the construction of Yu 1007 have not been discovered, but the earliest Yu I-type submarines of the original Yu 1 subclass were laid down and launched during the latter half of 1943 and entered service at the end of 1943 or early in 1944.[3] [4]
Yu 1007 spent her operational career in Japanese home waters.[5] She was assigned to Detachment Kuchinotsu, Transport Submarine Group, on 15 May 1945, and to Detachment Mikuriya in June 1945. Surviving records of the activities of Imperial Japanese Army submarines are fragmentary,[4] [6] and no records have been discovered describing her specific activities in support of any particular operation.[3] [1]
World War II ended with the cessation of hostilities on 15 August 1945. Yu 1007 surrendered to the Allies later in August 1945.[3] She sank in a storm at Mikuriya either later in 1945[3] or in 1946,[7] according to different sources. She subsequently was salvaged, and was scrapped by Kawanami at Nagasaki in January 1948.[7]