USS Bainbridge, a 7800-ton nuclear-powered guided missile frigate, was built at Quincy, Massachusetts. Commissioned in October 1962, she shook down off the U.S. East Coast and in the Caribbean area until February 1963, when she began her first Mediterranean deployment. This included demonstrations of her long-range high speed dash capabilities and operations with the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Enterprise (CVAN-65). Bainbridge returned to the Mediterranean in May 1964, this time joining Enterprise and the guided missile cruiser Long Beach (CGN-9) to form the all-nuclear-powered Task Force 1. At the end of July the three ships began Operation "Sea Orbit", a two-month unrefueled cruise around the World.

In October 1965 Bainbridge again rounded the Cape of Good Hope, en route to the Western Pacific for the first of eleven Seventh Fleet cruises. Operating for much of this deployment off strife-torn Vietnam, she screened aircraft carriers, served as a radar-picket ship, and performed search and rescue missions. In June the frigate crossed the Pacific to her new home port, Long Beach, California. Her next five Far Eastern tours, in 1966-67, 1969, 1970, 1971 and 1972-73, also involved Vietnam War combat operations, as well as voyages to Australia and, beginning in 1970, the Indian Ocean. In 1967-68 Bainbridge underwent shipyard overhaul and her first nuclear refueling. The ship's seventh trip to the Far East, beginning in November 1973, included a lengthy visit to the Arabian Sea, a locale that would become very familiar in the coming decades.

Bainbridge received an extensive modernization and refueling between June 1974 and September 1976, with post-overhaul work lasting until April 1977. While in the shipyard, at the end of June 1975, she was reclassified from frigate to cruiser, receiving the new designation CGN-25. Her next Seventh Fleet deployment ran from January to August 1978 and included visits throughout the region, from Japan and Korea to Thailand and Singapore, with her homeward-bound voyage taking her to Australia and through the South Pacific. Bainbridge made three more WestPac tours, in 1979-80, 1981 and 1982-83. Each of them involved extensive operations in the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea.

After receiving her final nuclear refueling overhaul in 1983-85, Bainbridge left the Pacific after two decades, transited the Panama Canal and rejoined the Atlantic Fleet. Her operations thereafter included counter-drug smuggling patrols in the Caribbean, several deployments to northern European waters and four Mediterranean cruises (1986-87, 1988-89 -- including combat operations off Libya, 1991-92 -- with a Red Sea and Persian Gulf tour, and 1994 as Flagship of the Standing Naval Forces, Atlantic). Inactivated in October 1995, USS Bainbridge decommissioned in September 1996. She was towed to the Bremerton, Washington, in mid-1997 and in October of that year entered dry dock to begin "recycling", the process by which nuclear-powered warships are scrapped.

USS Bainbridge was named in honor of Commodore William Bainbridge (1774-1833), one of the leading figures of the early 19th Century U.S. Navy.